today we attempt the impossible, when we cook thanksgiving dinner for my parents – a new step in the adult-child-parent relationship: hosting one’s parents for the holidays. the fridge has never seen as much food as it currently contains and i’ve been the house cleaning nazi for about a week now. plans to have purchased a couch by the time thanksgiving arrived were stymied: the operator at IKEA swore she had 80 couches in stock, but they were sold out by the time we found our way to schaumburg. football will have to be watched middle-eastern style, from floor cushions leaned up against the as-of-yet-undecorated walls.

seeing chicago with my parents is like seeing a whole different chicago: we eat dinner at trendy restaurants, take cabs up and down the festively decorated Michigan avenue, see plays where we actually paid for the tickets…it all feels very glamorous. my parents ask, what’s that building? and that one? and we have no idea. our chicago has been full of early morning train rides, long work days, seeing plays that one of us is in or had free tickets to, making “starving actor dinners” of spaghetti or pad thai with other impoverished friends. there hasn’t been a lot of time for sight-seeing (i work in the basement of the tallest building in chicago and i still haven’t been to the observation deck on top), but our vision of chicago isn’t so bad, either. i am thankful for both versions.