Chapter 1: Back to Where I Once Belonged

Sunday, June 26, 1983

Angie, Jas, Paige, and I were up at eight. Dad ‘suggested’ that we wait for brunch. I think all of us felt just a bit hungry, but it made sense in terms of the trip. Brunch here meant we’d get to Chicago without a lunch stop.

More shopping was on the menu before brunch, but only an hour or so of it. We bought almost nothing, in the end. Mom bought two little paintings, and I bought one for Jas (a watercolor of Green Bay — the actual bay, not the city). Jas specifically picked it for ‘our place.’

We packed up the car and drove just a short distance to a restaurant that I’d heard of but had never actually seen. Even before I saw it, Paige’s comment rang a bell for me.

“Wait!” she said. “Are those... goats?”

Angie looked out the window. “Yup. Definitely goats.”

“What are they doing on the roof?” Paige said.

Jas giggled. “It looks like they’re eating the grass.”

“Why do they have grass on the roof?” Paige said.

“For the goats, of course!” Dad said.

That got everyone laughing.

Dad said, “Apparently some Swedish buildings have grass roofs. The restaurant people wanted the grass trimmed and brought in goats, and it became a tourist attraction.”

“I’m a tourist and it’s attracting me!” Paige said. “Goats are cute!”

We all agreed that, yes, goats are cute.

The restaurant turned out to be Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant and Butik. The food was absolutely wonderful, at least if you love Swedish pancakes (and eggs and bacon and other breakfast food). I’d happily eat there again, and everyone else felt the same.

We were on the road to Chicago by eleven and made it to Skokie by three-thirty. Dad checked back into the Hilton (just one room, of course), and then we drove over to Northwestern. They had tables set up for us to check in.

The day was unusually hot for Chicago (which, admittedly, runs hot and cold). The funny thing was that I remembered this day very well. It’d been nearly one hundred degrees in the sun. The dorm where I would stay had only one air-conditioned room, the common room at the front. So many kids had packed into it that the air conditioning hadn’t caught up.

My roommate and I had opened the window at night. We woke up the next morning to find that the outside air temperature was in the forties. We argued much too long about who would go close the windows. In the end, I volunteered.

Here I was again, roughly forty-one years later for me, in the same place on the same day. While that happened again and again (for instance, most Sundays at church), I seldom remembered those with anywhere near the clarity I remembered parts of this day.

Elder Hall was a U-shaped building, with the U lying on its side. The interior of the U was a courtyard reachable from the basement. Almost no one went into it, if I remembered correctly. Girls were allowed into the lobby (reached from one arm of the U) and the common room (adjacent to the lobby), but that was it.

The girl (most likely a graduate student) at the check-in table crossed me off the list, handed me a room key, then a bag with paperwork. “Breakfast will be at eight tomorrow,” she said. “Normally there’s a range of time, but since no one knows where anything is, tomorrow we’ll have people move as a group.”

I nodded. “Thanks!”

“Meet in or near the common room. Be there by eight. If you miss, you’ll still eat, but you’ll have to wait for someone to come get you.”

“Got it.”

She smiled. “Thanks for coming to the Northwestern Summer Institutes, and have a great summer!”

“You’re most welcome.”

I headed back to our group. The entire crew went inside to wait while Dad and I went to my room. I didn’t need his help, with the other bags at Robert’s, but he wanted to see the dorm.

As we walked to my room, I felt déjà vu creep up. First floor, all the way around the U from the entrance, and an interior room facing the courtyard. Could I be in the same room?

If not, it couldn’t have been more than a door or two down from the room I’d had before. There was, and had been, no obvious alphabetization, but ... maybe Gene was the only change from first go-round. If so...

If so, the déjà vu would probably continue.

The room was fairly similar to my room at Indiana, but even smaller. Two built-in desks with small bookshelves, two twin beds that each could roll under their sideboard to make ersatz couches, two small dressers, and two tiny closets (really, little more than built-in wardrobes).

I picked the left side (which I’d had before) and put my bag on the bed. Hopefully, that made it clear that I’d arrived and had picked a side. My roommate and I had spent much too long figuring that out first go-round.

After that, Dad and I headed back, joined the ladies, headed back to the car (semi-legally parked along the curb), and drove over to Bobb-McCulloch, the girls’ dorm. We couldn’t park as close to their dorm, but they were a lot closer to most of the places we’d want to be. It was at least as large as Elder, but I didn’t know if there would be as many girls or not. Probably so, or they’d have picked a smaller dorm.

In my first go-round, I’d not even seen the inside of the girls’ dorm. Not so much as the lobby. I’d certainly talked to girls, even danced with a few, but none were friends or even close acquaintances. That was where things were totally different this time.

The girls checked in, then started moving their bags. I was forbidden from visiting their rooms, but Dad was allowed to, just for today. He carried a couple of bags as they headed in, and Mom went along to look. I didn’t know if she’d even been in a college dorm before.

While I was waiting, I’d asked the guy at the desk about relatives picking up kids for off-campus activities. Apparently, there were forms available in the main office. He gave me directions.

As it turned out, none of the girls were rooming together, nor did any of them get Cammie as a roommate. They didn’t recognize their roommates’ names, either. I hadn’t even realized that I could check my roommate’s name, so the mystery would remain until I got back from dinner.

By the time the girls were done checking in, it was about five. We headed out and piled back into the Suburban. Before Dad could get going, I said, “Dad, I checked on one thing and it might be handy.”

“What’s that, son?” he said.

“If you and Mom agree, you can sign something that would let Uncle Robert or Aunt Monica check us out, if we wanted to do something with them, or if they felt like letting us do something else, with them or Kenneth and Ryan or whatever.”

Dad looked at Mom, and she shrugged. “It makes sense to me,” she said. “We certainly trust Robert and Monica, and pretty much the boys.”

“Just them, right?” Dad said.

“Yes. You have to name the people in advance and they have to be over twenty-one.”

“Which both of your cousins are,” Dad said, nodding. “Honestly, we trust you in Houston, and I’d trust you here, but I understand why the program can’t trust you. This is fine with me.”

“Me, too,” Mom said.

We headed over and found the appropriate people. A few minutes later we had forms on file for all four of us. I hadn’t realized that the Nguyens and Seilers had given Mom and Dad temporary guardianship forms, but it made complete sense. What if either of them had needed medical care? Or anything else had come up?

Northwestern was willing to accept the temporary guardianship, especially once they got Camille, then Jean Seiler, on the phone, and both verified that, if Mom and Dad trusted our relatives, they did, too.

That left Cammie high and dry, but if Cammie’s parents would send a note allowing her to join in, they would let her join in, too. I wasn’t at all sure they would, nor even that it was the best idea, but if we could do something awesome and Cammie could join in, why not?

I already had a target in mind. In my first go-round, many of the students had been very unhappy that Northwestern hadn’t made the Simon and Garfunkel concert at Comiskey Park one of our outings. It got worse when quite a few of the counselors and staff went and (mostly unintentionally) rubbed it in over the next few days.

If we could go, I wanted to. I’d never seen Art Garfunkel during my first go-round, and hadn’t seen Paul Simon until 2018, in a very different show. This would be special, particularly because it was a second chance to do a specific thing I’d missed out on the first go-round.

Once we’d gotten the permission forms sorted out, we headed over to Giordano’s. Uncle Robert and Aunt Monica joined us, complete with the rest of our luggage. Dad, Uncle Robert, and I moved it between cars before we ate, while the ladies decided what we were eating.