Better than Sesame Street

Sense of place is often my favorite part of a story. I love it when the setting of a story becomes its own character. For example, I don’t remember much about the movie Mulholland Drive but I do remember loving the city lights of Los Angeles and how the city became a strange, breathing, living thing that kept me unsettled but also transfixed.  Or the book Heaven’s Coast by poet Mark Doty which highlights Boston and Provincetown as major characters both in heartbreak and healing. Or anytime Jhumpa Lahiri places a short story in Boston or the bible refers to "the wilderness". And what would Gilmore Girls be without the main star, Stars Hollow?

In my own life, I think of my middle school connection with a forest preserve where our cross-country team would practice in autumn. I can still feel the clickiness of my Walkman as I started my mixtape and the way the machine popped in my hand when the tape ended abruptly. I still find comfort when I recall sitting in my dear friend’s papasan chair in her first apartment located in Lincoln Park and the way she loved to cook something from the recipe book of Dr Andrew Weil while I read the trilogy of Griffin and Sabine from her library. I can visualize the layout of so many people’s homes, the direction of light that came from different lamps and windows, the smells, the way I feel the barometric pressure either drop or rise when I enter, the texture of their rugs or furniture. The kitchen chairs that were covered in fabric at my childhood friend’s home- the ones that spun around so fast and we would sit with Hostess cupcakes and spin and spin. 

My husband’s parents own a three-flat that I call Sesame Street. At a very special time, two sets of our friends rented out two of their flats. There was an evening that Ben and I dropped by with our three-year-old daughter to visit. We found his parents hanging out on the front porch steps and we began chatting there. Suddenly, a window from the second story was tossed open and Brady joined in the conversation, his upper body hanging out the window for a better view. The couple in the garden apartment opened their front door letting their three-year-old daughter dash out to join mine on a tiny patch of grass. Bailey & Kevin leaned against the brick exterior and we all chatted in these casual spaces until the cicadas started to sing. It was a moment that I knew made my soul so joyful but was not going to last forever. My job was simply to savor. The theatrical positioning of our bodies reminded me of a 1980s Sesame Street scene. Hence, the name Sesame Street continued. 

There was also a fun season in Ben and my life where we hosted a small group for our church every Monday evening. I worked a ten-hour shift on Mondays in that same season and would often arrive home to greet my husband and two-year-old daughter along with twenty to thirty people who were already settling into my living room. This sounds exhausting when I write it out now but we loved providing a space to congregate for Northwestern students, young couples and families, and anyone willing to join the chaos. I enjoyed coming home and hearing the distinct voices of people I cherished. Our six years of hosting ended quite suddenly with the pandemic but one evening, over Zoom, our friend Josh confessed that he missed our kitchen and could vividly imagine the overhead lighting and how it made him feel so cozy in our home. This made my heart sing: someone else carried the sense of place that our home provided.

As with all things in life, nothing stays the same. Half the battle in life is recognizing that a place of comfort or beauty or the people within those spaces can be fleeting. It is only then that you can take a moment to be thankful for and savor it. In an instant, places can be torn away, burned down, left behind, overtaken, lost, vacated, or taken from us. Lake Michigan water levels rose significantly in the spring and summer of 2020. Ben and I were taking a drive as we often did during the early pandemic and we saw our favorite beaches were completely covered in water. It was as if they never existed. We can carry treasured places in our memories and hearts if we allow them the space. What a privilege having a home or welcome space can be, especially when there are so many displaced people and unsafe spaces. When your town, city, or country itself is in turmoil. My brain is wired to constantly be aware that this happens every day and could happen to anyone, anywhere. But this is also when I lean on the belief that what lies here on earth is not my final home. I appreciated a quote from Author Jen Pollock who writes, “In the beginning of time, God made a home for his people and at the end of time God will make a home for us.” She goes on to point out that our first home was in a garden, and our last home will be in a city. Better than Sesame Street.

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* Postcards by Bob Eckstein found from The Wasteshed

** Fun resource: YOU! I would love to hear what your favorite space is :)