Just blew in from the windy city

Chicago lived up to its sobriquet. We visited this dynamic city to attend the wedding of the son of two of our oldest friends, Pat and Larry Szura. We spent Friday night in the western suburbs with Ernie’s sister, Mary Ann, and her husband, John. On Saturday we made our way downtown on the Eisenhower Expressway, which during the week is chaotic and congested. On Saturday afternoon it was . . . chaotic and congested. The wedding mass was at the exquisite church of St. Clement in Lincoln Park. Afterward, since we had a couple of hours to kill before the reception, we decided to drop into a nearby Starbucks. This is an area of Chicago that has everything: bustle, ambience, quaint shops, interesting people . . .but no parking. We eventually found a spot in the general area of a Caribou Cafe and fortified by a couple of lattes, we braved the traffic on Lakeshore and Michigan Avenue. We arrived at the reception at the same time as the limo with the bridal party and just in time for Ernie to chase down the street in hot pursuit of Inga’s veil, which the wind had snatched from her head and sent flying.

The reception was on the 66th floor of the Sears Tower, with a fantastic view of lights snaking down skyscraper-lined streets to the Lake. I was mesmerized by the sight of radio towers on a neighboring building swaying in the wind, until I realized that the structure in which I was standing had to be swaying too. Thankfully we could not feel it. The reception was elegant, but the warmth of Pat’s family (she is the oldest of twelve) overcame any stuffiness that might be expected at the wedding of two Chicago attorneys!


The rest of the weekend was spent with Mary Ann, and it was wonderful to see all four McCluskey boys, gathered in a bar to celebrate the end of the baseball season. Before we left town on Monday, we made a point of stopping by the visit Pat’s wife, Theresa, and their new baby, Andrew Jerome. Young Jack showed us his trucks, and Mary Ann got her fix of grandson hugging. We will all be together again at the end of January for Megan’s wedding and we can’t wait to return to that toddlin' town.