Writing Boots

A dear pal named Eddie Reardon died in 2007 and I wrote a piece, “Chicago, Without Eddie.” I wrote: “I’ve got lots of friends and family who live in places with better climates and prettier terrain than Chicago. When they’ve occasionally asked me why I insist on living on this cold, crowded slab, I haven’t stammered about the architecture or the cultural institutions or the rich history. I know that the best answer I could give them is an evening with Ed Reardon in a smoky saloon.”

In Chicago this week, there have been many tributes to another guy it’s unpleasant to imagine Chicago without: Tony Fitzpatrick, who died Saturday at 66. Fitzpatrick was an artist, a writer, an actor and a general expresser of himself and of everything he found beautiful in his life in and around this town. And that was a lot. And it included Chicago hot dogs, and Chicago conversations with Chicago people. All of which overflow from this video, from the MediaBurn archive.

I offer very little advice in my forthcoming book, Soccer Dad (out in April from Disruption Books and available for pre-order wherever books are sold).

Why?

Mostly because it’s fighting words, telling parents what to do. Tell someone they maintain their lawn badly, drive badly or even do their job badly, and they can sluff you off: “Well, at least I’m a good parent.” But tell somebody they’re fucking parenting up, they can’t exactly retort that at least they’re good at pickle ball.

That said, if you’re following your kid(s) on Life 360 or whatever the hell it’s called, you’re fucking parenting up. And the older the kid, the worse you’re fucking it up.

[Insert 1,000 caveats here, about the logistics of your life and the psychology of your kid.]

That said: One cannot live a properly adventurous life if one grows up knowing one’s parents know exactly where one is at all times. A part of growing up is doing things your parents don’t want you to do in places they have told you specifically not to go. (Or in places they don’t even know about, like that bonfire way down in the woods.)

I raised my kid in the city of Chicago. She didn’t tell me until the summer before her senior year of college that, in the spring of her senior year of high school, she frequently skipped class and went to the beach, returning to the school just in time for soccer practice. At the time, I would have been infuriated. (And a part of me still grinds my teeth at the thought.) But in hindsight, really: How cool is that?

Once when she was in high school, I got up at 3:00 a.m. to ride my motorcycle to Milwaukee in time to catch at 7:00 a.m. ferry across Lake Michigan. My bike lashed down on the ferry’s deck, I felt sufficiently exhilarated to text her a picture of the sun coming up over the lake. I figured she’d see it about 11:00, when she got up. Was surprised when a text came right back, with a picture of her own. Same lake, same sunrise. Same spirit, who had talked her friends into riding their bicycles, pre-dawn, to the little bridge at Diversey Harbor, where they jumped off, into the lake. (She didn’t tell me that part until a couple years later.)

If I have her coordinates on my phone, none of that happens. If she wants to do something daring, she has to paint herself into an electronic alibi—a friend’s basement, maybe. Feel like the kinds of things she’d have done down there would have been both less adventurous and more dangerous.

Part of growing up is doing what you’re not supposed to do, and facing the consequences. (Or getting away with it.)

Part of being a parent is knowing that, and (tremblingly) daring to let it happen.

Or so I believe. Not you?