Part II: Chicago
I grew up in a house that was always bursting at the seams. Our family of six lived in a crowded four bedroom, and I shared a room with my youngest sister. Shut doors would burst open without warning, and the house always bustled (sometimes shrieked) with the sounds of playing children - or fighting children, it was rather ambiguous. In college I lived first in dorms, in a suite shared by six girls. Then I moved to a tiny apartment in the upstairs of a large home, and had best friends for roommates. The kitchen wasn't insulated against the Long Island winters and we had to dig our cars out every week, but we stayed warm in our rooms, huddled around a space heater with the type of camaraderie that only comes with shared misery. The next year I lived in a house with three strangers, and that is when I made the decision to move across the country for grad school. I found a small studio in a four story walk-up on the North Side of Chicago, where I would live alone for the first