Hello, Goodbye

On closed gates, open hearts and the parks of life we play in

Even if you’re the most casual Beatles fan like me, you’ve probably heard the name Brian Epstein. In case you haven’t, Epstein was the Beatles manager from 1961 until his untimely death from an accidental drug overdose in 1967 at the age of 33. I’ve always kept a curious eye on how many brilliant creative types struggle with substance use, addictions and mental well being, but that’s a different story for a different day. A name you may be less familiar with as it relates to The Beatles is the name Alistair Taylor.

Taylor was the behind the scenes player who sometimes filled the role of assistant to Brian Epstein and then eventually became the general manager of Apple Corp, the multimedia corporation, founded by the Beatles after Brian Epstein’s death.

Taylor has told a story about how during the Beatles’ early years, there was a day that he visited Paul McCartney at his London flat. Paul had a fabulous harmonium in his living area, and one afternoon he invited Taylor to sit at the other end of it.

“You hit any note you like on the keyboard,” Paul told him.

“Just hit it, and I’ll do the same. Now, whenever I shout out a word, you shout the opposite, and I’ll make up a tune. You watch, it’ll make music.”

“Black,” Paul started. “White,” Taylor replied. “Yes. No. Good. Bad. Hello. Goodbye.”

Taylor has said that he always wondered whether Paul really made that song up as they went along in that moment, or whether it had already been running through his head the whole time.

Over the years, McCartney has described Hello Goodbye as being about duality and contrast in general, but to me the song has always carried a more specific kind of wisdom. To me the song carries the reminder that every ending contains a new beginning, and that everything which begins anew will, at some point, find its own ending.

The song doesn’t mourn that ending, but rather it just holds both things at once, hello and goodbye tumbling over each other in the same breath, neither one winning, and neither direction necessarily getting the final word as the song slowly fades off into 45 seconds of a non distinguishable chorus, “Hela, heba, helloa…cha,cha,cha” over and over again.

I’ve had that song running through my head all week as I have been thinking about and crafting this story, which all began on Wednesday morning after an unexpected discovery altered the course of what I thought would be a routine afternoon of play.

It’s spring break for the Herberts. No trip to Michigan this year, no waterpark adventure, none of the grander productions that spring break can sometimes become. Life circumstances don’t quite present those options right now, and honestly I’ve made a certain peace with that. We’re in that particular mixture that parents of school age children know well. It’s a combination of the quiet joy of a few extra unscheduled days mixed with the ongoing reality of work, responsibilities and all the things that still need doing regardless of what the calendar says. I keep asking myself the question that I suspect many parents ask at least once during a school break: what matters more, the task list or the memory we could be making right now?

I usually know the answer before I finish asking the question, even if my actions sometimes try to speak a different truth.

Tuesday was one of the the days I designated as a full workday for me. In the morning I kept up with some of the things I do helping run our men’s community. I did some writing. I also worked one of my two shifts per week at the restaurant during the day. I had some client contact and I even did a brief client session in the afternoon after my shift at Joes, after which, I caught up with some friends while I was commuting home from downtown.

While all that was in progress, my wife Christiana spent a full day with Emma. The two of them headed out to the suburbs to visit cousins with grandma and grandpa and a day that included an indoor playground, a visit to a local library and everybody’s favorite burger and custard place - Culver’s! By all accounts, a beautiful day was had by all.

Wednesday was role reversal day. I took care of some work in the early morning, got my walk in, and caught up with a few of the guys from our facilitation team along the way. By lunchtime I was ready to turn the world off and give the rest of the afternoon entirely to my daughter. The weather had made one of its characteristically dramatic Chicago pivots toward something resembling warmth, and on a day tilting toward seventy degrees there was really only one reasonable question: which park?

We have no shortage of options for parks in Chicago. Within walking distance alone there are three or four parks that Emma has christened with names of her own invention. There is the Fish park, named for the roof shelter that resembles the scales of a fish. There is the Blue park, for its white and blue plastic slides and climbing structures. Further south along the river sits the Home park, a name whose origins remain somewhat mysterious even to those of us who live here, but which feels entirely right nonetheless.

When the weather invites a proper adventure and we have a little more time and a little more gas in the tank, there is really only one destination that rises above the rest. Henry Proesel Park in Lincolnwood, which Emma and I have always called the L Woods park because of its proximity to one of our favorite supper clubs. Tube slides and swings and a sandbox and climbing structures and enough open space to play hide and seek until the light changes and your stomach starts reminding you that dinner is only a few steps away.

Emma and I have been going to the L Woods park since she first became interested in playgrounds. During the long, strange months of the COVID pandemic, when the world of choices had narrowed itself down to whatever we could in fresh air, the L Woods park became something close to sacred ground for us. We would grab lunch from the world famous SuperDawg, spread a blanket in the grass and stay until the afternoon started to cool.

Over the years that park has become a kind of scrapbook, each visit leaving behind its own particular page.

There was the day Emma stood at the top of the blue tunnel slide and cried, and stood there, and cried again, and then finally nudged herself too far over the edge to stop the momentum, shooting herself down the tube, where she came out the bottom saying the word that all parents have heard more often than they can count, “Again!”

Then there was the afternoon Emma tried to play Carol of the Bells on the wind chimes with joyful abandon. I loved it so much that I made a video of Emma and her frantic arm movements and sent it to friends and family, but only after dubbing in the perfectly played version of the song on a background track, which made it look like she was some sort of child prodigy, which, of course she is in so many ways.

There was the day she finally climbed the rope ladder to the giant green tunnel slide, the one that had been only for big kids only for so long, and came down grinning like she had just conquered something that had genuinely needed conquering in order to cross over into the enviable category of big kid.

Not all of those threshold crossing moments were Emma’s alone. There were afternoons when I felt my own fear quietly rising as she climbed higher than she’d climbed before, and I had to decide what to do with that fear rather than hand it to her. I’m not so sure that I’ve done a very good job of steering clear of handing Emma my own fears, but we’ve got a lot of road to travel yet together to learn how to process that.

There was the first time I let our hide and seek boundaries grow wide enough that she disappeared over the hill and I couldn’t see her, and I stood there in the particular suspension of a parent learning to trust the world with what they love most.

As I write these things down, I’m reminded how many very routine moments in life make indelible memories that you may or may not access again, depending upon how the cards of life play out. How lucky am I that my life is a card game that plays out in a way that often reminds me of things that are worth remembering and telling stories about?

We hadn’t been back to the L Woods park since the colder months. Wednesday was going to be our first visit with real warmth in the air, a proper spring return, the kind of trip that deserves a good stuffed animal companion. At the last minute Emma chose Freddie the sausage cat, a VIP from the time of last year’s L Woods visits who had quietly slipped in the rankings over the winter, but who clearly felt the pull of the occasion.

On the drive up, Emma asked if we could listen to the Twelve Days of Christmas. I have never minded Christmas music regardless of the season, so I pulled it up without hesitation and listened to her sing all twelve verses with complete commitment, right up through the twelve drummers drumming, which is right about when I pulled the car up in front of Henry Proesel Park and saw…

A chain link fence.

And the yellow caution tape.

And then the sign.

I got out of the car and walked up to read the sign even though some part of me already understood what it was going to say.

Henry Proesel Park will be closed for complete renovation and construction from Mid March to mid November 2026.

The whole summer. Gone before it started.

I stood there for a moment longer than I needed to, running through the scrapbook of memories in my head. The slide. The wind chimes. The rope ladder. The hide and seek. All of it sitting behind a chain link fence for the next eight months, being taken apart and rebuilt into something we haven’t met yet.

When I got back in the car, I kept it simple. It looks like it’s going to be closed for a little while, I told her. They’re doing some construction and renovations.

“How long?” Emma asked.

“Probably most of the summer, sweetie.” I told her.

Then came the tears, and I won’t pretend they were only hers, but Emma, as she so often does, surprised me. Within about a minute she had gathered herself and was ready for Plan B.

The first thing Emma asked me after the initial impact of the moment had processed was whether or not we could drive to the park where the sandbox was closer to the other restaurant called Wildfire. I explained to her that that park was about 30 minutes away by car and then it was a little bit too far for us to drive on this particular day, so instead

I pulled up my phone and found a park about five minutes away in Skokie, which was met with Emma‘s reluctant approval.

We played the Twelve Days of Christmas one more time on the way there, because when Emma finds something she enjoys, she seldom tires of it too soon. When we pulled up to the new park she looked out the window and shouted with the enthusiasm of an excited eight year old, “Look daddy, they have a sandbox!”

What followed was one of those afternoons that you don’t plan and can’t manufacture. We went down the bumpy slide, first Emma, then Freddie and then me, to the resounding cheers of “Go Daddy, Go daddy, Go daddy” ringing in the warm spring air.

She learned to cross a bridge made of various shaped leaf cutouts, a thing she had never attempted before, and she did it on the first try with the particular quiet pride of someone who knows they’ve just added something new to their collection of capabilities. We found a small green plastic picnic table and played restaurant, with me and Freddie as customers and Emma rotating through the roles of maître d, server and cook with impressive efficiency.

I got to the table first so when Freddie checked in at the makeshift door of the makeshift restaurant, Emma hilariously repeated a phrase that will now forever be iconic in the Herbert home:

“First name Sausage, Last name Cat.”

At one point I accidentally stood up and started wandering around and looking at my phone as Emma was off in the “kitchen” preparing our meals. When Emma asked me what I was doing, I quickly made up the excuse that I was looking for the bathroom. Without missing a beat, Emma said,

“Well when you get back, Freddie needs to go to the litter box.”

Shortly thereafter our meals arrived. I had the chicken and the mac and cheese, at our server’s recommendation. Freddie had the whitefish and a glass of milk.

When Emma started looking a little tired, I asked how much longer she wanted to stay. She thought about it for a few seconds in the way she does when she’s taking a question seriously, and then she said, “I think about ten more minutes, daddy. Please set a timer. And then we can go to L Woods and get some chicken and mac and cheese.”

She spoke her words as a statement, not a question, but who was I to deny because that was already my master plan anyways.

On the way back to the car she asked me if this park had a name because she noticed the big sign as we were pulling away. I told her it was called the Emily Oaks Nature Center, and then I asked if she wanted to give it a name of her own. Emma paused in thought for a few seconds and then gave me her decision with the calm authority of someone who had let the name come through her not from her:

“We’re going to call this one the Sandbox park!”

Hello, goodbye. Goodbye, hello.

The L Woods Park will be there when it comes back on line, different in some ways and the same in the ways that matter, and we will go back and meet it for the first time all over again, finding out in the process together what it has become. In the meantime the Sandbox park is waiting, already named, already holding its first afternoon of memories in whatever way parks hold such things.

Places change. Parks close. The scrapbook keeps filling anyway, one bumpy slide and one plate of imaginary white fish at a time.

On days like these, it’s hard not to notice that the card game of life has dealt me the luckiest hand, and the best stories ever. I don’t always remember that, but that’s why I write these stories down. They serve as a reminder to me, and hopefully to others, that things are often way more magical than they seem on the surface.