ORD, Terminal 3. Thoughts on Home?
Written by Maria Anzalotti
Image courtesy of Calli McGowan
I am sitting at the gate in O’Hare, (my least favorite Chicago airport), and wondering what people think of my city. Calling it“ my city” is dramatic bordering on entitled, especially since I moved to the ‘burbs in middle school. So, what do these people: the business exec having a loud conversation about remote work without headphones; the dad telling his kid when he’s going to be home; the woman using her flip phone (!) to make a call; the college girl eating a remarkably protein conscious meal; WHOEVER IS WATCHING BASKETBALL WITHOUT EARBUDS BEHIND ME; what do they think of it?
Do they notice how many shops have closed, even in the airport, only to be beaten out by cheap chains? Do they notice how the highway is built around and through the airport, and thus how it is near-impossible to get anywhere with grace on the 90 at 5? Do they notice how many layers of hoodies, sweatshirts, and jackets their fellow passengers are decked in? Do they notice how O'Hare is too big for its own good, how the sprawl confuses more than clarifies? Do they notice the sunset?
I joke, fairly often, that the suburbs stole the sunset. And while I reserve the right to do something poetic with that sentiment someday, for now I’d like to disagree. When you can see the sunset from the window of terminal 3, it is damn pretty.
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A woman just walked by me; she is wearing a warm tan wool coat and leopard print scarf, toting a matching pinkish lavender carry-on purse combo. She is chic– and I think that about Chicago. Not always, not even mostly, but Chicago can be stylish when she wants to be. And I don’t just mean downtown, though the loop has glitz and glamor if not style. I mean the house parties in Lincoln park, the streetwear worn best in the long winter, a logan square vintage shop, a Wicker park restaurant that ruined me for normal flowers, the matching coral sweatpants and collared sweatshirt on a man de-planing at my gate. In many ways, having style here takes work. (That’s why I love when I see streetwear that seems built for this – I don’t see it very often where I live, so I keep a lookout.) When I arrived at the airport, I was sweating from my excessive travel-layer technique. But now, at the gate with the sun nearly gone? I am freezing. No one looks good at the airport- but some of these people really do.
I would like to be one of those stylish people, I certainly tried to be. Somehow though, despite my meticulous packing list, my pinterest boards, and my imagined cutting figure strutting through ORD, I do not feel stylish at all. My outfit is fine and my hair looks great, but my carry-on's wheels won’t move the right way and my personal item is obnoxious and my travel pillow takes up a lot of space on my body and I feel, in general… frumpy. I’m not even entirely sure what that word means, but it does perfectly define how I felt going through security trying to keep the line moving while jumping out of so many layers of straps and sleeves. I consider myself very stylish in general, just not here, I guess. That takes a kind of magic I have yet to learn.
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These people walking into my city, do they look around them and take notes? Do they laugh at the billboards and look instead towards the skyline, and do they learn something about how to be? Should I have kept a closer watch all these years, trying to become more of myself through the city? Or have I been doing it all along, without realizing?
I never thought I would need to come home so badly as I did when I first left for college. I thought that everything I loved about Chicago would be true of every city I stepped foot in, especially the downtown metropolitan area where I live for school. I figured that there could only be bigger, better things once I left the humble midwest. Of course, I conveniently forgot how truly massive my home was, not just in its neighborhoods' square footage but in the height of its skyline. No matter where I’ve lived, (outside the city, closer to downtown, in the 1.3 square miles within the city that isn’t technically Chicago,) the skyline was always gazing down on me. The very same highway I was complaining about earlier is the easiest way to explain it- once you get on the highway, you’ll see the skyline, almost wherever you are. It might take a minute if you live further out than me, but once you start driving towards her, Chicago watches you arrive. It’s a gaze only possible from the strength and art that is the skyline, different from any other.
And, apparently, that makes a marked difference on the vibe. I couldn’t explain it if I wanted to, but I will try. Without a God-size skyline, a city doesn’t feel animated, and with an overcrowded skyline a city feels impenetrable, unnavigable. Chicago feels like a forest, yes because in the Loop the skyscrapers feel like redwoods, but also because each neighborhood feels like a secret, a treasure trove you stumble upon. No matter how often I’ve gone to my favorite (and now Chicago’s only competent) cupcake bakery, it still feels like I’m discovering it. Every time I’m hopping off of the L at State and Washington where the trains get the loudest, I feel like I’ve discovered surround sound.
That rush reminds me of an Art institute exhibit I saw three years ago. There was a room full of steel beams, left standing bare. You could walk between them, touch them. The room was full with silence. But when I closed my eyes, I heard the rush of wind in between buildings, the drone of traffic and engines, the chugging of L cars, and the crashing and scooping of the Lake above it all.
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The people of Chicago come in every kind. They congregate in groups and neighborhoods by choice and by force, they have fights with each other often, they don’t always see each other until they are made to. But something I do think is true is this: cold outside makes warm inside. Maybe it's the infiltration of Midwestern niceness into the city center, but I don’t think that’s all it is (the burbs are more polite and“ nice”, but less genuinely kind). The people I know and love in Chicago, from strangers to workers to business owners to family and friends, care less for niceties and more for each other. When you meet a stranger at a concert, you don’t just say“ Oh, I love your earrings”, you have a whole conversation about the life you lived here and the one you hope to lead, you follow each other on instagram and you see each other next in the same protest movement, miles apart. (That is a true story of mine !) When you ask someone for help, a few extra questions you probably could’ve googled, they help you by asking questions right back, about your life and your needs, and you wish each other a very happy new year and mean it. (Also a true story !) Chicagoans aren’t soft and aren’t to be trifled with, but recently I’ve realized how profound the kindness is in my city.
By recently, I mean this winter season, since coming home from school and preparing to go abroad. I’ve missed being home, and I’m anticipating missing it even more. But as I anxiously wait to leave the continent, as I sit with everything I need to live for the next three months, I worry that I’ve not paid enough attention to my city. Giving it its due, acknowledging how even I am a traveller here, is a scary concept. It requires giving up a claim to home, in a small way. I will shout from the rooftops about how I’m from Chicago, but I haven’t spent permanent time there in 8 years. So I’m trying to learn from this city, to gaze upon it all like she does. And if I can do that here, choosing to look from the outside but feeling invited in, maybe I can do it anywhere.
Maybe the people here, in this crowded and frigid terminal, will be invited in too.
