Category: Chicago

Chicago

Memory Script 012

I think my earliest memory was when we were in Chicago when I was five, we’d been on a long day out in the city to visit the John Hancock Center which is the tallest building in Chicago, we got home and we were recording a message to my grand mother on a tape so that she could hear all about our exploits and we were trying to explain to her that we’d been to see this tall building and my sister who was three, was also trying to be on the tape but because she was three she didn’t have a clear idea of what it was she’d seen but she knew she wanted to talk. So we are making the tape and my mother would be asking us what we’d seen and we would start to tell her and my sister would perk out with: “I wanna talk it! I wanna talk it!” And my mother would say something along the line of:“Well you can talk then tell us what you’ve seen” and my sister said “an elephant, I saw an elephant.” She hadn’t seen an elephant so my mother said: “You didn’t see an elephant did you? What did you see?” and she said “An elephant” so my mother tried and prompt her by saying: “You saw the John …” “An elephant!” And eventually after several attempts my mother had to say on her behalf that she ‘d seen the John Hancock Center. My sister still insists to this day she saw an elephant, it’s just simply not true.

Memory

Brother

Script 009: Marilyn Campiz

One of my earliest memories is of my mother awakening us in the middle of the night, with her finger pressed to her lips in a shushing motion.  “Let’s play a game of hide and seek.” , she began.  Her hair was long and dark, her blue eyes penetrating mine.  “But we must not make a sound.”  I saw suitcases in the corner, and our clothes were put on in a hurry.  Silent dressing of three children, as I was the oldest…I looked at my younger sister and put my finger to my lips as my mother had done to me.  My baby brother with his sparse blonde hair peeking through the the crib rails.

“Shhhhhh…we are going to hide, and now don’t make a sound.”  The quiet whispers as we went down the stairs…with my little sister in tow.  A low rumbling sound of an awaiting cab as we made it out the door, In the dead of night, with amber street lights…swishing by.  Feeling the rocking motion of wanting to sleep, during this game of hide and seek, leading us to a bus terminal the crowds not so thick, and tired blinking eyes of flourescent blindness. Climbing the steps with toddler legs to feel the stiffness of false comfort of a seat…as I looked out the window to see the flashing of the streetlights as we drove out of Chicago that hyponitized me into a deep sleep.

That was the night my mother left my father when I was barely four years old.

Memory