Detroit's skyline from Windsor, Ontario (yeah, I know it isn't perfect with this post, but I don't have my own photo of Chicago or NYC at night)When I was a young girl I was highly romantic. After watching movies I would act out the role of lead actress in front of the dresser mirror in my bedroom.
I didn't think the small Michigan town where I grew up was worthy of romance. My fantasies were in cities like Chicago or New York. In old movies I watched, everyone was rich, so city life took place in vast, glamorous apartments or penthouses, with skyline views through floor-to-ceiling walls of glass. Men wore tuxedoes and women wore evening gowns, even at home. And when they went out to clubs, the men wrapped mink coats around the women's shoulders.
Since my mom was from metro New York City, I also fantasized about her life before marrying my dad, the Baptist preacher, and wished she had played piano in a black satin dress at Carnegie instead of in a polyester dress at the Baptist church.
So when my oldest sister got married and lived in "Chicago" (it was really Skokie) in "an apartment" (I had never seen an apartment except in movies), you know what I was thinking: She had been transformed from an ordinary sister who wore simple straight skirts and cat-eye glasses, into Rita Hayworth (redhead, like my sister) in an evening gown; their apartment had a big, shiny, black grand piano, and there was a wall of easy-gliding drapes that opened with the push of a button looking out onto a fabulous Chicago skyline. And guess what, we were going to visit!
Well, after the five-hour drive, after Chicago skyscrapers and giant red neon Magikist lips, and on into the bland northern suburb of Skokie, when we walked up the short stairway and through the door to the modest, neat apartment with tweed furniture and four-foot windows with short insulating curtains looking out at a blonde brick neighborhood, as a shy nine-year-old you know I didn't give voice to my inner scream, "WHERE IS THE GRAND PIANO, WHERE ARE THE VASES OF ROSES, WHERE IS THE SEA OF TWINKLING CITY LIGHTS, AND WHERE THE HELL IS MY SISTER'S EVENING GOWN!"
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