Day 6: Chicago, IL
Image of the day: A lion at the Lincoln Park Zoo barely notices as a B-2 bomber roars overhead. Photo by Katie Grim.
Trip meter at start of day: 1,006.0 mi
Gas: None bought today.
Today I met with a Peace Corps friend of mine, Katie, who was in Moldova from 2004 to 2006. We decided to meet, along with two of her friends and my sister, at the waterfront for the 49th Annual Chicago Air and Water Show. The show takes place along the waterfront and is free, unless you consider that the show is done with public money and the headliners are military units that our tax dollars pay for. Planes had been streaking across the city at high speeds for the previous few days, so I knew I had to check it out.
Unfortunately, the weather didn't want to cooperate. While it never poured, it rained off and on and the clouds were thick all day. As a result, my sister went home after less than an hour, and the rest of us spent our time alternating between walking around the Lincoln Park Zoo and watching the show from a nearby strip of park. It was at the zoo that Katie took the amazing image of the day.
When I mentioned in conversation to Katie that I had already visited with some old friends in Chicago, she said I had more friends than she did in the city. She's been living in Chicago for two months, and as she said to me, "I've only got, like, three friends." I wouldn't mention this if I thought that Katie would remain friendless in her new city. She'll make many friends, but it shows an interesting aspect of American culture: Americans, as opposed to people in most other parts of the world, are fiercely independent from their parents. Katie, for example, has lived in Ohio, North Carolina, Moldova, France and now Chicago. At 18, I moved 2,600 miles away to college, and at 22, I moved to Eastern Europe. Americans, in general, need to keep moving, need to establish themselves in a new place, but then can't stand staying there for too long. America is a culture in which the closer you live to your parents, the lower your social status is. This dynamic doesn't exist in other countries, but Americans are obsessed with the need for a fresh start.
Katie could have stayed in Ohio for college, grad school, and the rest of her life. She would have known lots of people, had support nearby all the time, and never would have had to feel like she was starting from scratch. I could have stayed in California, too, and perhaps have lived a less complicated life until now. But something deep down inside every American says that it's time to move. We adjust in the new area, and soon that becomes the home to which we are so closely attached. Luckily, what I'm discovering this week in Chicago is that you can go home again.
