Bittersweet

How can something be both bitter and sweet at the same time?  How does my heart swell with happiness while my eyes are so filled with tears I can hardly type? That is what being here in Chicago does to me    ;-)

Scott and Laura are doing so fantastically well but my BFF is not here to see it.  My cousins are older and grayer but they still remember my parents and tell me stories I never knew.  A trip down Lake Shore Drive still excites me even though Chicago is wrapped in the dreary rainy cold fog I remember so well. 

Our first apartment looks better than ever and so does the old hotel where we were married.  The same letters are still on my old high school but Devon Avenue is unrecognizable.  Neighborhoods I'd be scared to walk in are now "gentrified".  Superdawg still waves at me from Milwaukee Avenue and Gino's East (the original) is still my favorite pizza joint.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness... we had everything before us, we had nothing before us." 

Yes Mr. Dickens, you said it well.