Suburbs V Chicago: Reflections at a Funeral

I tell a lot of people I'm from Chicago, but this is not quite accurate.  I was raised and currently live in Bolingbrook, IL, a suburb of about 75,000 people (according to the 2010 census and Wikipedia, which makes the village the 17th largest incorporated area in Illinois).  I tell people I am from Chicago for three reasons:
1) It's just easier to tell people I'm from a large city that everyone knows about and can find on a map.
2) I did legitimately live in the city for a while.
3) I'd like to identify myself more with the ethos of the city than the lack of ethos of the suburbs.
The thing about suburbs is that they are almost personality-less places.  There are some connotations about certain suburbs being more affluent (Naperville, Burr Ridge, Wheaton, etc.) and some are more working-class (Romeoville, Joliet, Aurora, etc.), but most suburbs are just names of irregularly shaped and borderless places.  And because most suburbs are squeezed together, it really becomes impossible to tell whether you are in one place or another.  The suburbs just become a stretch of grayness: faceless strip malls with a Starbucks, TGIFridays or Target every few miles; hundreds of cookie cutter residential subdivision with four varieties of houses; and stoplights as far as the eye can see, bleeding into the horizon.  The difference between any two suburbs is really negligible.  I defy anyone to legitimately know the difference between Oak Brook and Oak Brook Terrace.

One of the biggest difference between the suburbs and the city is the lack of tight-knit communities.  Certainly, if I wanted to, I could join up with a community effort in Bolingbrook through a church group or community center, but I don't know my neighbors in any significant way.  In fact, beyond the three houses immediately nearby, I don't know anything about the people that live on my street.

Earlier this week, I went to a funeral for my Dad's brother's wife's brother (my Aunt's brother who married into the Lannon family).  I am in no way related to Mark, but I went because I wanted to pay my respects to my Aunt.  I expected to see the rest of my Dad's family who likewise would know my Aunt and her family, especially after all these years my Aunt and Uncle have been married.  What I did not expect was to see my Mom's cousins.

Four families: the Lannon's, the Schulze's, the Leahy's and the Sullivan's.  As I found out over the course of the wake and the funeral, these four families were quite intertwined.

If I understand it correctly, my Mom (Sullivan) had cousins (Leahy) who lived near my aunt's family (Schulze) in Oak Park.  My Dad's cousins (all Lannon's) moved into the neighborhood.  My Mom, an only child, used to spend a lot of time with her cousins.  My Dad's brother would hang out with his cousins and got to know the Schulze's and the Leahy's.  The four families were (most of the time) friends.  There was a softball team formed (though my Dad, it was said, took it too seriously for most of the Leahy's and Schulze's).  They often ran into each other at the bars around Oak Park and in the city.  My Aunt and Uncle are not the only Schulze-Lannon marriage.  My Mom was friends with my Dad's sister before she knew my Dad.  All through the wake and funeral, my Dad's family would smile and hug my Mom's cousins, trying to cover the ground between when they lost saw each other.  It was a close knit group, and though most everyone had moved away from Oak Park, everyone came out for the funeral.  It became a bit of a reunion and a lot of stories were told about the old days in and around Oak Park (which might as well be the City).

This is probably the biggest difference between the suburbs and the city.  The space and mobility of the suburbs doesn't force interaction from those that live near each other.  I don't know anyone from my neighborhood who married someone that lived near them.  My brother, and two sisters are married; two (one sister and my brother) have spouses with families in or from Wisconsin.  My other sister married a man from around Chicago, but I don't often see his family, and I'm certainly not close to any of them.

When Catherine and I talk about raising a family and living somewhere, I worry about growing up in the faceless suburbs where everyone has to drive to get to somewhere and see some people they know and like.  Despite being surrounded by houses I can see, the ease of mobility has created an extremely isolated suburban existence.  At this funeral, I thought it would be nice if my kids grew up in an environment with such a strong community.  It's not that I haven't had a good childhood out in Bolingbrook.  And my high school (Benet Academy) and my college (Monmouth College, particularly ZBT) provided me with a close knit community in which I could belong.  I just would have liked more of that more often through my life.