In the Name

During the Church's required Baptism class for parents of children receiving the Sacrament, the facilitators talk to you about the different symbols used throughout the ceremony: the water, light, fragrant chrism oil, and white garments that your baby is bound to burp or in our case poop all over. They teach you about your role and those of the Godparents. They lay out the order of events, prep you for the terse responses to the Priest's questions, and reinforce how important the ritual is. What they don't mention though is how many times they will say your child's name throughout the service; and just how important that name is. Bobby's full name must have been called a dozen times throughout his Baptism on Sunday, and at each mention I think I beamed with a little more pride. 

While at the end, the Priest petitioned for St. Robert to pray for us, I was hoping that four other men would provide their intercession as well.

Bobby was named after his four great grandfathers; four men who helped make the Greatest Generation even greater. A baker, a bricklayer, a banker, and a builder - each man never solely defined by a profession, but by all the electric elements of their well lived lives.

Bobby was baptized with the name Robert. With the turn of the century. With flour, salt, water and yeast and the sweet aromas of bread filling the small Midwestern city of Quincy, Illinois. With tailored suits and shined shoes. With a bombshell bride whose style rivaled his own. With a mean golf swing and a passport into the most amazing swimming pool on either side of the Mississippi. With a storyteller who always broke after the punch line. With grasshoppers and divinity. With an artistic hand that could bring a boy's imagination to life on a blank piece of paper. With tees, and tackle, and sharp ties. With roses, geodes, lightening bugs and summer clouds outside, and a very hot house inside. With a polished politico who loved playing Mayor or just making a new friend.

He was baptized with the name Bob for short. With a thick head of wavy black hair tucked under his Navy cap. With a room on the Pacific to receive and report radio signals, carrying news from every corner of the War. With an old time Domer, cheering for the Irish in their hey day. With a train ride to Union Station where he met his super soul mate. With a special table for two in a favorite Paris bistro. With an invitation to join us on the Shirley B, docked at Slip Number Six in Burnham Harbor. With Chevys, Cadillacs and cars that were OK! With wheat, corn and soy trades, options, burgers, and safe deposit boxes. With a serial entrepreneur, dressed in blue, always looking for his next venture. With a man who marched to the beat of his own drum, encouraging each of his children and grandchildren to do the same.

He was baptized with the name Barry. With bright red hair and freckled Irish skin. With steel and iron and Pittsburgh pride. With a ruptured ear drum, that kept him on U.S. soil and out of a tank destroyer unit that mostly perished during the War. With a blessing in disguise that brought eight children and their offspring into the world. With rich earth and the potatoes, asparagus and tomatoes that sprout from it. With the skill to jitterbug with his beloved Croatian bride. With a hearty laugh that would shake a belly filled with the Chef's beef birds and baked goods. With a voice that was never on key, but confident enough to belt out any melody. With Easter eggs, apple cider, and burgers. With mason jars ready for their pickled fillings, a shot of Jameson, and a closet full of intermediates. With a stubborn streak, a will to survive and an emotional side reserved only for the people closest to him. 

And he was baptized with the name Schultz. With a war hero who built the bridges over the Rhine, leading the Allied Troops to victory. With a handsome GI who marched through the Arc de Triomphe to find his bride and bring her home. With a humble engineer whose mind could tackle anything from the most complex compounds to the most delicate dollhouses. With potato pancakes and brats for dinner, and kaffe and kuchen for dessert. With the faith that the Cubs would someday be #1. With over engineered doors for the cats to go out and see the brilliant blue skies of Colorado. With cement, Warsteiner, hammers and nails. With the will to fix anything, no matter how broken. 

On Sunday, Bobby was baptized with the names and love of his four great grandfathers, shining down on him from heaven. But ultimately, Bobby was baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son and and the Holy Spirit, who I pray will continue to bless and keep him throughout his days. And naturally we feted, toasted, and celebrated the newest, cutest little Catholic all weekend. 

 

 

     

A toast to the ever inspiring Greats. We will continue to do our best to fill your legendary shoes.
Lo. 

Illinois

The other day, a little girl on the street showed us the bug she had caught. I coaxed Mary to take a closer look at the potato bug as Anna crinkled up her nose and told me it was a rolly polly! It's not the first time that terms and phrases from my childhood have confused others. Lighting bugs. Oh, fireflies. Hello Dollies. Oh, seven layer bars. Fritzers. Yeah, those would be farts.

Growing up, Hello Dollies or seven layer bars were a seasonal cookie, available just twice a year: the week of Christmas and the week we were in Quincy, Illinois with my grandparents.

Usually that trip required a flight to St. Louis; then a two-hour drive in our family-sized Buick rental, boasting just enough room to prevent space wars from breaking out.

You could tell we were almost there by the slowing pace of the world - the car pulling off the Highway and onto Broadway Street, the light softly setting over the Coca Cola plant, the gentle sway of the Sycamore Trees, and the sweet smiles of kids catching lighting bugs. As my Dad would point out where Sally, Marshall, Riff and Dean the Butter Bean used to live, my Mom would pass around her little pink brush. Shoes on. Brush hair. Pack stuff up.

Even in the dim light, you could see my Grandparents oak tree as soon as we turned the corner onto Forrest Avenue. Behind it was the little white house labeled 719. We would park in the driveway lined with roses and shuffle up the stairs to the front door. Butterflies, fluttering with anticipation of cookies, circled through my stomach. By the time my Dad rang the door bell, my Grandma and Grandpa were there to open it. I would have lingered over my hug and kiss longer, but I could see that platter, particularly the line of Hello Dollies from the doorway. Heaven in the form of a bite-sized layer cookie melted in my mouth.

We would take turns bragging about ourselves, giving my Grandma and Grandpa dance recital, home run, A+, and leading role proof points. Around my fourth, okay fifth Hello Dolly, my Grandpa would start to nod off or as he put it, rest his eyes. He was snoring five minutes later.

Bedtimes didn't matter on arrival night. Cookies, hugs and checking into Uncle Jim's old bedroom / corner of a hallway were the only prerogative. My sister would get the next bed over in Aunt Ann's room. Come to think of it, Erin was the only one who actually got a room. My parents and Adam always slept on the cots in the basement next to the ping pong table.

I would finally fall asleep on that first night with sweet visions of radio rolls, roast beef, Dieter's chipwiches, and Spring Lake dancing through my head. A week of fun, exclusively manufactured in Illinois, awaited.

***

There is something about where I live: the Sycamore Trees in the parks, the smell of my gas stove as I turn it on, the Fiesta Ware in my cabinets, the lighting bugs and potato bugs in my back yard, and the August air that reminds me of Quincy every summer. Maybe it's just having Illinois in common, but something about living in Chicagoland brings me a little closer to my Grandparents. And I feel like it's my responsibility to bring a little bit of Quincy to my guests, especially when they happen to be family.

Last night, Mary stayed up to see Nana and Opa arrive. She waited on the front stoop with me, eating her first Hello Dolly as a couple lighting bugs flickered around her. It was getting close to her bedtime, but it was a special night, so I let her stay up. It was worth it; worth the hellos, the hugs and the extra Hello Dolly.

Lo.

Hello Dollies

Ingredients: 
1 cup butter, melted
1 cup graham cracker crumbs
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup (plus a little more) chocolate chips
1 cup (plus a little more) butterscotch chips
1 cup sweetened coconut flakes
1 can Eagle brand condensed milk

Directions: 
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a 9x9 inch pan, mix together butter and graham cracker crumbs and press down to line the pan with a graham cracker crust. On top, evenly sprinkle nuts. Then layer on morsels - I do chocolate and then butterscotch. On top evenly sprinkle coconut and then top, evenly again, with sweetened milk.

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the coconut is golden and toasted. Let cool for at least 30 minutes. It's easier to cut them and pull them out of the pan though when they are completely cooled. I cut them small, because they are so indulgent and they need to fit in little hands.

Quincy

If someone asked me to draw a map of the United States when I was five years-old, I might have only created five dots within the country's border, representing the cities that I knew. There would have been a big circle for Pittsburgh - the center of the universe.  Two more for Disney World in Florida and its predecessor in California. There would have been a big star for New York City (at an early age I had big dreams to make it to Broadway.) And I would have finished my map with a big circle in the middle - Quincy, Illinois. It's size and stature in my young mind were just as big as the bustling island of Manhattan. Growing up, Quincy and the people that inhabited it were larger than life.

The oak tree outside of my grandparent's house reached the sky. And the cookie tray inside their house had more rows of sweet treats than could fit in my tubby belly.

The pool was like an ocean and swimming all the way across it was unheard of. 

I got to watch a world class golfer putt on a pristine green, and he would give me and his other adoring fans big hugs when he was through. 

  

All it took was walking up the plank and saying the magic words, 'F 59' for a Chipwich to appear in the window.

In Quincy, I was allowed to eat two pieces of zucchini bread and a radio roll from Underbrink's Bakery for breakfast

Nowhere else in the world were there Maid Rites. Quincy is home to the best sandwich shop ever.  

There were big fish that lived in these lagoons. We would catch a breakfast's worth of them with Grandpa and Grandma would fry them up. 

There were more swings in more parks than you could possibly imagine. 

Everyone always dressed up for dinner. 

There was tons of sand - to play in, bury each other under, and build castles with.

  

And there was a restaurant that baked their bread in terracotta flower pots. Too cool.  

This past weekend, my extended family met in this epic location for a reunion. Most of hadn't been back for ten years. And most of us found ourselves saying, 'it seems smaller than we remember.'

Maybe it was because our own maps were now filled with the brighter lights and bigger cities of our travels. Maybe it was because our adult limbs got us to the center of Spring Lake a little faster. Maybe it was because eating a Strip Tenderloin and a Maid Rite didn't seem like a feat anymore. Mostly though, it was because the two people who made Quincy so special, so storied, and so sweet weren't there this time around. Without Grandma and Grandpa, Forrest Avenue wasn't as warm and welcoming; the locker room and dining room of Spring Lake were quieter; the picnic didn't have the same kind of fried chicken and there were no Hello Dollies; the lap lanes didn't have their graceful side stroke swimmer; and the 19th hole was missing its favorite golfer.

But in my grandparents' stead, making Quincy and Spring Lake as lively as ever, were more than 35 of their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. And as an adult, I got to see the magic of this place light up the eyes of my cousin's children as they experienced everything for the first time.

The legends and lore of Quincy will always live in my heart, and I can't wait to pass the stories and their setting on to my children someday. However, as it was this time around, it will continue to be difficult to replicate the hero role. There was no one like Grandma and Grandpa.

Lo.