Knock, Knock: Tomorrow’s Here

Life goes on, right? I’m not as certain about that as I used to be – or maybe I no longer understand the term “goes on.”

I’ve been pondering past decisions I’ve made in this life of mine – decisions of enormous impact, decisions that created my future, essentially out of the blue. Forty-nine years ago, for instance, I moved from rural, southwest Michigan to . . . ta da . . . Chicago. I’d been a back-to-the-lander for the previous four years, having transformed with many of my fellow boomers from antiwar activist and hippie to planet-saving environmentalist. I was also married, but that marriage – numero uno – fell apart and I found myself, in my late 20s, with my entire future in my hands. I loved gardening. I’d been raising barred-rock chickens. Every spring we made maple syrup. On and on. Love the planet, man.

But I found myself looking beyond the moment and knew I had a future to create – ooh, serious responsibility here. I knew I wasn’t meant to remain a farmer. What I loved was writing. And it was something I was good at. I also could envision only one way to make an actual living as a writer: journalism.

I’d been applying for work at local newspapers in the area, but doing so went nowhere. In the wake of the marriage breakup, I knew I suddenly had the opportunity to do whatever the hell I wanted.

And there was Chicago, just over a hundred miles away – a buzzing beehive of possibility! I knew I’d find something there. I didn’t know what, but suddenly I was certain this mega-city was my tomorrow. This is where the future is being created – and I definitely had to be a participant in the process.

I also knew the creative process is never simple or obvious. And the “welcome” I received to Chicago couldn’t have made this clearer.

As I say, I was just a young guy with no actual resumé in progress. Hippie: “doesn’t count.” Protester: “doesn’t count.” Environmentalist: “doesn’t count.” I had about $200 in my bank account. I had a friend who had an apartment in the city and stayed there during two preliminary visits. Visit #1: I grabbed a job as a door-to-door fundraiser. Visit #2: I got myself a studio apartment – a fifth-floor walkup in the not-yet-gentrified neighborhood of Lakeview. And my new life loomed, at $75 a month.

My friend Dick, who had a pickup truck, helped me pack up my life and followed me from rural Michigan to Chicago, We carried my stuff – some clothing and dishes, a few books, a bicycle, some pens and notebooks, all my writing – up to the fifth-floor studio. There I was! And then there was a knock on the door.

Huh?

I was a totally unknown entity in Chicago. Who the hell would be knocking on my door?

This was my moment of welcoming. I opened the door, and there stood . . . two Chicago police officers. They informed me they were in the midst of a murder investigation and they needed to go through my apartment and out the window, onto the flat roof (we were on the top floor) and enter the window of the apartment directly across from mine. They had some questions they wanted to ask the occupants, who apparently were not answering their door.

As I say, this was my moment of welcome! I let them in, they exited my window onto the roof and, apparently, got into the neighbors’ apartment and went on with their investigation. I never learned further details, although I did meet the neighbors eventually, a couple who, some months later, decided to get married. And they asked me (fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gents) to conduct the service.

Life goes on. I have no further memory of this couple, but I embedded myself in this city, found a career, found a life, found a zillion friends over the next half-century – and now here I am, facing life changes about which I have less certainty than I felt when I stared at the two cops at my door. I’m putting my house on the market, perhaps before the end of summer, and it looks like I’ll be moving up to Appleton, Wisconsin to be closer to my family. And I limp and hobble and endlessly ask: “What? What? What did you say?”

I’m not stepping into the future the way I did back in 1976, I’m not seizing – I’m not embracing – the chaos that looms, but rather asking for a little kindness from it. I guess this is understandable, old man that I am. But even as I hobble, let me commit to dancing with what comes next.

Is that a knock on the door I hear?

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