Okay, so, not photo (singular) of the day but photoS. These have to go together and I really love this series.
When I moved to Chicago, I entered a ready-made community of old friends. Two of my best friends from college – David and Jackie – had moved there to pursue acting. David’s girlfriend (soon to be wife) Maria had of course come with David. This was just the beginning. I moved there in January or February. We all were there. I lived with Jackie. We would go and hang out at David and Maria’s, playing Pictionary, watching the Patriots, whatever. I got cast in a show with David (it was my first audition in Chicago!). Jackie was involved in the improv scene, and through her, I met him, maybe a month or so in to my time there. Less than a year later, Mitchell moved to Chicago. By then, I had my own apartment – it was literally a ROOM – and Mitchell moved in with me. Our little Rhode Island ex-pat community was complete. We had been thick as thieves in college and we always would have stayed friends, but being in Chicago together – adults now, not kids – was formative, life-changing. We did everything together. We went to each others’ shows. We gathered at David and Maria’s, who got married during this time. They were like the Mom and Dad of our crazy group. Mitchell and I were wreaking havoc romantically up and down the Lake Shore, and then we’d all gather at David and Maria’s on Sunday morning, for brunch, Pictionary, maybe a matinee at Facets. We all look back so fondly at this time. It was such a brief time, but so formative for all of us.
A couple years in, David applied to grad school in New York. He was accepted. That meant our little group would be breaking up. We all mourned as though we were in a Greek tragedy. Change. Big change coming. And, crucially, there was no social media – so if we wanted to stay in touch it would be through phone calls and hand-written letters. I mean, hell, the internet had been invented but I didn’t get email until I went to grad school. So glad of this. So glad that still half of my life was lived without any internet at all. But social media has made goodbyes easier. You can still “see” each other all the time. David and Maria moving, though … it had a finality to it.
After David auditioned – but before he got accepted – the group of us went to see James Taylor in concert, at a big outdoor venue (the name of it escapes me – I saw a bunch of people there, including Donna Summer). We all look back at this night as our last hurrah. David hadn’t been accepted yet, but we all had a feeling he would be. And there was some awareness of the approaching change, that our Utopia would not be forever. We didn’t plan on taking hundreds of pictures in the parking lot before the show. We weren’t like “Let’s commemorate our last big night out!” It was more spontaneous than that. I had my camera (it was a really good one), and the sunset light was BLAZING and made everyone look gorgeous and glamorous. There was a festive feeling among us. We all loved James Taylor. We were excited.
And so began a picture-taking orgy. These photos here represent just a small sample.
A week later, David got accepted into grad school. Three weeks later, he and Maria were gone.
And so these photos are cherished by all of us. Every time we look at them (I put them up on Facebook and also framed a couple of them), we think of not only our time in Chicago, and how we nurtured our friendships, and how much we all went through while we were there … but we think of it ending, of our little group being broken up … not our friendships, but our proximity to one another, the casual-ness of getting to see each other a couple times a week … that was over. We all see it in these photos. They’re a time capsule. A year later, David and Maria had their first child. A year later, Jackie met the man she would eventually marry and have two children with (they are still together!) A year later, too, I would decide to move to New York – being accepted into the same damn grad school David went to. I have regrets now about this decision. It was made rashly, because my heart got broken – not by Window-Guy, who remained a constant even after I moved – but by someone else – and I felt I needed to get away from him physically. Not exactly a good reason to move your whole entire life. Moving to New York did not change anything, not really, and I never really got over that guy. Listen, enough time has passed I can say that. So. I don’t know. It happened, I can’t change it now. But I do wish I had decided to stay in Chicago.
I have mixed feelings looking at these beautiful photographs, because of my own history. Bad bad times ahead of me. I had no idea.
But in that moment, the sunset light gleamed, the summer air was soft and cool, and my friends and I had a group photo shoot in the parking lot, laughing and talking and unloading our supplies, and reveling in the miracle of … us.
Also, sorry, but there’s nothing like FILM. Digital photos don’t look like this, I don’t care how good the technology gets.
