Kim Strickland is a pilot for a major airline, a novelist, and a mother of twin boys. Her novel "Wish Club" is about a women's book group that reads a novel about witchcraft and tries one of the spells for fun, only to have the spell actually work. Nuttiness and mayhem ensue.
Kim has also been a pal for twenty years and was kind enough to agree when I asked her to contribute a guest blog.
City Mom
by Kim Strickland
When Rick asked me to be a guest columnist on his blog, I agreed without hesitation. However, when the time came to actually start writing, I sort of freaked out. I have to write a column? Containing my opinion? About anything? What was I thinking?
I didn’t have any idea of what I would say. Then again, I am the same woman who wrote a 350-page novel. Having something to say, for me, is generally not a problem.
So, I checked out Rick’s blog for inspiration. Good stuff. My favorite bit is Suburban Man. From the safety of the 773 area code, I read about Rick’s suburban trials and tribulations with a smug, self-satisfied smile on my face.
You see, I am City Mom.
Ha ha, I laughed, as Rick lamented his minivan. Ha ha—those suburban stoplights sure are long. Ha ha, Rick got caught rocking-out to some cranked-up AC/DC. Ha-h—
Wait a minute. Could I be envious? Of the stereo in a minivan?
I think about the sound system in our Jeep and— Whoops. I admitted to the Jeep. Now I’ve done it. I’ve admitted to committing the biggest urban parent, City-Mom cop-out: buying an SUV. A minivan in denial.
But I need the Jeep, I tell myself. I need a vehicle large enough to transport the kids (I have two) and the dog (I have one) and all the giant rafts of paper products I need to buy at Costco. And have you ever tried to navigate a Chicago alley in January without four-wheel drive?
Before the kids were born, my husband suggested we get a station wagon. I pretended to be considering it, until a vision of my parents’ blue Grand Torino floated into my head, with a visible shudder. Next suggestion? Minivan, he says. (He’s always been the sensible one.)
Now the shudder transitions to full-blown seizure.
No. No minivans! I am City Mom. City Mom’s are cool. We wear low-rise bell-bottoms. We eat sushi. We don’t drive minivans!
Being cool. That’s what it all boils down to. I can give all sorts of reasons why we chose (Okay, I chose, my husband agreed) to stay in the city. And those may be fodder for another guest blog, if Rick is ever gracious enough to invite me back after all the vitriolic comments I’ll probably receive regarding my disregard, however tongue in cheek, for motherhood in the suburbs. And before any suburban moms write those vitriolic comments filled with examples of their coolness, you should know that I’m not terribly serious about any of this, but, that being said, I am fully capable of driving my Jeep out to any suburb to investigate rumors of suburban fashion sense progressing past 1995. Oh, kidding again. Some of my best friends live in the suburbs. They even wear black.
I love the city and I really, really wanted to raise my children here, but I was surprised at the opposition I faced. Friends and family demanded answers to yet another one of Kimmy’s crazy ideas: Have you thought about schools? What about gangs? How about all crime? I told them my husband and I had lived in the city for eight years and had so far resisted the urge to join a gang, and we’d never once committed a crime. (I don’t think that one incident with the parking ticket and street-cleaning truck should count.)
Perhaps more than anything else, my stubborn nature is what made me refuse to let go of the idea of living in the city with children. “Kids need the suburbs,” I was told. Yeah right. Just like I need my Jeep.
The real reason I love city living is not the restaurants and the museums or the ability to hop in a cab after too much wine at a girlfriend’s house, although I do love all of the above, the real reason is simple. I think it’s cool to live here.
So as I read about Rick, our hero, Suburban Man, perhaps the smile on my face shouldn’t have been so smug. I laughed with him in his embarrassment at being caught rocking-out to AC/DC at a stoplight, but doesn’t my Jeep have a Grateful Dead sticker on the back?
Perhaps the only difference, other than the obvious one of gender, between Suburban Man and City Mom is the area code. In terms of the quantity of Skittles squished between the cushions of the back seat of his minivan and my Jeep, in terms of petrified french fries under the floor mats, Rick and I are equal. Maybe it’s time we passed on the “baton of cool” to the next generation, to generation Z, or whatever they like to call themselves these days. I really don’t know. That’s how uncool I’ve become. But when I pass on the baton, you can rest-assured, I’ll be wearing my low-rise bell-bottoms and handing it out the window of my SUV.
Rick Responds: Kim used a word in her piece that I had to look up. "Fashion" apparently refers to something that is in style--usually clothing.
If you'd like to check out any of the previous guest bloggers (John Landecker, Spike Manton, Dave Stern), go to http://rickkaempferguestblogger.blogspot.com
Next week's guest blogger: Former Chicago disc jockey Bob Dearborn will explain the significance of "The Day the Music Died".
