Got parka?

Am I allowed to say “ass”? Too late. At least I have no trepidation about saying “freezing,” “my” and “off.”
 

Those four words came together in my mind a lot while I was in Chicago in the winter last year. No masochism was involved in the making of this situation. I went to the bitterly windy city voluntarily, after three things—one harmonic—converged. My dad’s birthday is in early February, and it was his 70th in 2007; as an architect, his favorite American city is architectural-history-laden Chicago; he’s also a music lover, and pianist extraordinaire and living legend Keith Jarrett had scheduled a rare (these days) solo concert at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall in mid-February 2007. So my brother got two tickets to the concert and arranged for him and my dad to fly from Seattle, while I got one ticket and arranged to fly from Charlottesville, and there we were for a two-days-and-three-nights birthday bash. 

Enough exposition. Back to the cold. What I’m here to do is not only talk about, but also recommend going to Chicago in the winter, especially if you’re not feeling alive, or even if you are—it’s possible, you see, in Chicago in the winter to feel even more alive than alive. I, for instance, was feeling happy that my brother and I had pulled off doing something big for my dad’s 70th—but there was more to it than that. While I was walking in the single-digit temperature with the two of them down Michigan Avenue toward The Art Institute of Chicago or ogling the storefronts along Miracle Mile, dressed like a moderately but adequately prepared Arctic explorer, confident that a pretty important body part wouldn’t slide off even under extreme duress, my happiness as if froze into place. Prone-to-wavering emotion became almost a crystallized thing I could point to, like an icicle so sharp it could break the skin over a heart. 

All this is getting chillingly abstract, I know, not to mention a tad sentimental. But there are also plenty of concrete reasons for flying midwest in the winter, instead of, say, packing your Bermuda shorts and heading to Bermuda. Take the patches of ice on the Chicago River between bridges, the patterns as if forming immense murals that belong in the Art Institute collection along with the masterpieces by Seurat and Gauguin. I’ve never beheld such natural beauty right smack in the middle of a man-made place. As if on cue, it was snowing lightly as we crossed the river at La Salle Street on our way to a blues club the night before the concert, the flakes as if catching fire in the city lights before falling further through the softer glow cast by the ice. And then the next day there was the view from Navy Pier of Lake Michigan, spreading out like an ocean under a suddenly clear sky, the near surface not far from icing over and looking, to my eyes, beautifully brittle.

All right, I admit, there was something unforgivable about the rattle of an “El” train in my ears as a cruel night wind broke across my eyes while we walked up Randolph Street on our way to dinner before the concert. But there was something bracing about it, too—the rattle as if justifying the wind the way a blues chord validates pain. It was remarkable, though, how I didn’t at any time see any pain on the faces all around me. Chicagoans are true stoics. I saw plenty of hats, of course, but only occasionally did I, as if looking in the mirror, see a section of a scarf over a mouth. I saw many a pair of jeans, and not, as far as I recall, a single pair of wool pants. Maybe the stoicism is a respect for the sheer potency of the cold there, and the joy the respect brings. Stoic joy? As in overviews of the architectural creations of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, all things seem possible in Second City in the winter.

This is getting abstract again, and probably overly romanticized. What can I say? That’s how I remember it, and if I did it all over again, I guarantee I wouldn’t run whimpering into the smoke and body heat of a blues club, rather than linger on a bridge and admire the snowflakes. It’s true, I’m not generally a hot-weather person, perhaps on account of my fair skin. As Woody Allen said, “I don’t tan, I stroke.” And I’m aware that if I resided in Buffalo or Minneapolis, I might crack as the brutal winters piled up, and start over-romanticizing the odor of sunscreen. But we’re talking a brief trip here, a chance to soak up a special situation (whether it’s a special occasion or not) before releasing yourself back into the mild, as it were. Oh come on, try it.

By the way, the concert in the toasty warm Orchestra Hall was absolutely fantastic.