I recently learned that the store that two summers ago I bought the Michael Kors eyelet skirt, that still hangs in my Valencia closet, was no longer the store that I knew. It was not the store that I visited before and after lunch at the Bank Lane Bistro, in Market Square in Lake Forest, Illinois, where I met friends and ate tomato-basil soup and talked about the changing weather and my continued saga towards motherhood; it is now a J Crew. Where you now you can buy a Jackie cardigan, a City-fit trouser or a charming charm bracelet was the long time home to the very first branch of Marshall Field’s department store.
I still lived there when Marshall Fields’s became Macy’s and I, like many others, mourned this loss and fed my grief with Frangos. I was still in Forest and Bluff when Macy’s announced they would be shutting down the historical store in Winter 2007. But I was not there to see it happen or to see my favorite store come and take its place.
The Lake Forest Marshall Field’s was like the ladies of society who shopped there for nearly a century: elegant, refined and petite. Opened in May 1928 by Marshall Field and his family, the elite of Lake Forest society had all walked up and down the elegant staircase of this retail jewel box. Perhaps F. Scott Fitzgerald when visiting Lake Forest had been to Marshall Fields prior to writing a letter to his daughter in which he said that he thought Lake Forest was the most glamorous city in the country.
You know how I love a J Crew and if J Crew had been there when I lived there I wouldn’t have had to make so many visits to Northbrook Court and/or buy things at Talbot’s because I was too lazy to drive to Northbrook. When I heard that J Crew had come to Lake Forest I felt a triple layer of sadness: 1) Forest and Bluff has changed and I wasn’t there to see it; 2) Why couldn’t there have been a J Crew only two miles from my home when I lived there?; 3) An important piece of Lake Forest history is forever gone.
J Crew is not the only change. I recently learned that Don’s Finest Foods market, where I often bought roast chicken and overpriced gourmet goods, has closed. Holly’s American Bistro, the place that we ate when I was too sick from IVF to cook or went when spring turned to summer and it was possible to eat steak salads at their outside tables, has closed and that a new restaurant is soon opening in its place. Rev. David Lucey, who was my favorite minister, and the only one whose sermons made much sense to me, at the Church of the Holy Spirit Episcopalian church (during my “maybe if I go back to church I can get pregnant” phase) has moved to Rhode Island.
In doing a little reading anout the news of Lake Bluff I found that I was wrong and that there is crime in my safe city. So much change and yet in my mind and memory nothing has changed. There are still roast chickens, outside tables at Holly’s, sermons by David peppered with Jung quotes and no crime.
This week I have twice dreamt of my ideal home. The first dream I was going to the Lake Forest fireworks display (the most beautiful fireworks I have ever seen) and the second time I was going home but I didn’t have a ticket and was understandably sad and panicked. I still cannot accept that I am gone from this place that I loved. It is has been almost a year and a half since we left and I still can’t believe it. There is another part of me that can’t believe I ever lived there. Igor says that my mind returns to mourning for Lake Bluff because I have ended it with bird friends and withdrawn from my mother so that I so desperately want to fly home and once again feel hope to have family.
When we lived in Lake Bluff I had a plan. I was going to get pregnant.We were going to have a baby. Our baby would go to the Forest Bluff Montessori School in Lake Bluff and then on to Woodlands Academy of The Sacred Heart if it was a girl and to Lake Forest Country Day School if it was a boy. We would go to the library. We’d go to breakfast at Egg Harbor and grocery shopping at the Jewel. There would be seasonal festivals and lacrosse games and concerts in the park. That may all sound boring and average to you; to me it sounds like a dream.
When I was in Lake Bluff I didn’t have Igor, my Hair-Angel, or, even, Lily but I did have hope. I miss hope. Hope is nice.
Ways I feed my grief and homesickness:
News about Lake Bluff and Lake Forest
Forest and Bluff Magazine
Films set in Forest and Bluff: Ordinary People, Oceans Twelve and The Wedding( Robert Altman).
Books featuring Lake Forest:Classic Country Estates of Lake Forest; A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genious; The Official Preppy Handbook; The Razor’s Edge and The Great Gatsby.
