Recently, I stumbled onto Google’s satellite map website and searched for the address in Queens that Ed and I lived in before coming down to Florida. It was hard to navigate but I sort of got the hang of it. I was able to see our former apartment building and zoom in any direction to see the surrounding area. It was very nostalgic.

I also took a look at lower Second Avenue in Manhattan where my loft building still stands. Many changes. Lila and Terry, dear friends, still live in an adjoining loft. They tell me about the changes, but until you see them, you can’t absorb how very different things are. If I want to really stun myself, I will look up 151 Eighth Avenue, in the Chelsea neighborhood Jay lived in when we married. I’ll leave that to another time, when I am feeling stronger.

Chicago was next. The neighborhood that formed me is not only gone, but most of the surrounding area for miles has disappeared. Buildings are far apart, separated by empty lots and what appear to be many parking areas. It’s as if an urban planner laid out a grid and then forgot to build on it. Where once stood many 2- to 6-storey, closely packed buildings with ordinary (but when you are a child, nothing is ordinary) and sometimes exotic tenants (the strip clubs), extending all the way to the Loop, an urban delight to a child, always something new, if seedy, always full of temptation – all gone.

One little neighborhood on a nearby street sort of survives. I saw single family homes, obviously from the 20s and 30s, still standing, still close together, homes I know I passed every day when I walked to school. But it’s hard to get your bearings when most of your landmarks have disappeared.

I couldn’t find the Chicago Stadium, a landmark since 1929. I googled it. It was, I learned, demolished in 1995. It was just around the corner from my grammar school. On a dull day, during lunch, I might wander over, especially if a circus was in town, to look at the circus wagons in the huge lot behind the main building. They built The Urban Center a couple of blocks away to house the Chicago Bulls basketball team. The stadium, of course, housed many attractions. I saw Sonja Henie skate there. The Barnum & Bailey Circus came every year. The Democratic convention of 1936 was held there. Franklin Roosevelt, waving from an open car, holding his signature cigarette in a holder, slowly drove past our flat building in a long motorcade, on the way to the stadium. My parents and sis and I hung out our 3rd storey window, waving back. I loved going to the stadium -- nothing was more exciting than sitting in that immense arena and listening to the huge organ sound out the beginning of the program. It was major.

I sometimes like to travel back in time, in my mind, and imagine knowing my loved ones before I knew them. This was something like that, a virtual time travel, except when I got there ... it wasn’t there.

xx, Teal