My parents moved to DuPage County in the early 1980s, after they were priced out of the neighborhood they grew up in closer to Chicago. My dad took the train for work for years, leaving before we were awake and getting home tired with his tie already pulled loose. We lived in a small house that always needed something. The driveway cracked every winter, the basement took water once, and my mother kept saying we were “not made of money” any time me and my sister asked for something extra. It was not a perfect childhood, but it was ours. School mornings, snow days, backyard birthdays, church on holidays, and neighbors who knew when something was wrong before you even told them. I am placing this hex for my parents, for the years they gave us, and for the quiet life they built in DuPage County that I did not fully appreciate until I had a family of my own.