Endless Winter

As February draws to a truncated close, temperatures drop and the final days of January begin. I rotate my coat rack so the denim and fleece move toward the back, wrap a scarf around my neck and zip the double layers of my ski-coat. The night to make my resolutions is around the corner. I assess my level of success and disappointment and promise to avoid the same mistakes next year. 

Beyond that proclamation of a better year lies Christmas.  Snowflake and tinsel decor frame the doorways of my favorite bookstores, unavoidable holiday tunes dance a fine line of entertaining and depressing.  I gift my loved ones inexpensive sentiments of presents. Symbols of love or friendship or co-workerness. Soon after, when I shop for those trinkets of my affection, I find some joy in finding just the right gifts.  I stress about my limited funds and do endless math to figure out where my money goes. I decide to start saving more aggressively after the holidays. 

When Thanksgiving comes around, I savor the extra days off work, but find myself bored with all the free time – so accustomed to my jam-packed days. I take Metra home to the suburbs, but forget the pie I won at pub trivia in my refrigerator. I prepare to be challenged by my brother.   

On the Metra back home on Sunday night, my bags full of clean laundry and leftovers, I plan for a vast array of Halloween costumes that I won’t wear because Halloween will fall on a weekday, and I just go to work as usual, but I wear socks with black cats and buy some candy for my team. That night, I try to find something Halloween themed on TV, and feel shock and surprise that tomorrow is already November 1^st. 

I wonder what happened to summer and why I feel like its been winter forever already.

Let's Not Rush This

My mom gives me a dog for my ninth birthday. She says, “There needs to be some father figure in this household” as she fits as collar around his neck. He’s a Bernese Mountain breed with a lame hind leg and fur that sticks to your hands if its was hot. Mom says he needs an ID ‘straight away’ and asks me his name.
“I don’t have a name yet,” I say.
She rolls her eyes and stops working the collar. “It’s just a name Andrew,” she says.

Mom gets like this. Exasperated is the word Dad uses. She breathes loudly through her nose and starts tapping one foot.

“Don’t be so exasperated mom,” I say, but that just makes her more. Now she’s pulling on the collar and the dog lets out a small whine.

“Can I think about it? I need time,” I say. She nods but it doesn’t seem enough so I add, “I need to see what kind of dog he is.”

I know what she’ll say. She’ll say, “He’s a Bernese Mountain dog!” but that’s not the point. I need to know what name will fit. Dad says I’m such an Andrew and Mom says she gave me the name so I hope she’ll understand how important this is.

“Well what are we going to call him while you make up your mind?”

“Dog?” I say, and she lifts her hands up like the criminals do with cops and says, “whatever you want.”

It doesn’t take long for me to meet Dog. Or maybe I should say all of Dogs. He’s not a ‘straight shooter’ as mom would say. He’s actually everything. He can be sad or mad or quiet. Like yesterday, Mom had me wait in my room when Dad dropped me off. Dog ran into my room - crashing into my legs, licking my ankles. He was really, really happy. Then when the shouting started Dog froze, his eyes look wetter and he pushed his face up against mine as we sat in the corner quietly, listening.

It comes to me that same day. It’s a good name and I am excited to tell Mom. “I’ve got a name for Dog!” I say.

“Oh?” She’s at the computer reading something without her glasses. She doesn’t look up.

“Proteus,” I say.

She scrunches her face in a way that makes her look small and says, “Prometheus?”. From her tone I can tell she doesn’t like it.

“No!” I say, getting exasperated myself. “Proteus.”

“What is that?”

“It’s a Greek sea god,” I say. She spins around and her eyebrows sat high on her face.

“Mom, Proteus changed into anything he wanted. He was a changer,” I say. Still she looks confused. Dad was right when he said Mom just didn’t get it.

“Like a Transformer, mom!”

She speaks slowly and gives me a weird look. “Did your Dad teach you this?”

I watched it on the Transformers DVD extras but I didn’t want to tell her that. Instead I say, “I can read Mom”.

Her mouth is open and she looks as wounded as Proteus, when he was just Dog, that day they were fighting. I bite my lip and looked to Proteus. That was only yesterday.

I think she might say no, give him an easier name and I start thinking up a good backup when she says, “How do you spell it?” and I have to admit I don’t know.

Virginia is For Lovers

We were on fire. 

We touched each other’s elbows and hips fluidly and constantly like we were strung together with silk. Our unrehearsed lines hit every time with bursts of laughter. The kisses between us were offered and sought simultaneously. It had been the best weekend of our relationship, maybe of any relationship that I had ever been a part of.  I’d loved you since the day we re-met, but this weekend I understood what it meant to be loved.

Even though you didn’t know anyone but me at the wedding, you pinned your confidence to your chest and revealed yourself to be everyone’s best friend.  You followed and fed and watered me and made me feel smart and sexy and wanted. You made everyone else want you; if only to be treated the way you treated me.

In the hours we weren’t together I let the maid of honor convince me to drink from a tiny bottle of cake-flavored vodka in the back seat of a limousine. It burned going down, but I felt confident and loved and a part of things.  Eventually, I felt a little drunk. You watched me walk down the aisle from your white folding chair in the grass, the Virginia vineyard spread out behind us, all of us with our fingers crossed that the October sky wouldn’t open up with rain.  It didn’t. The bride was beautiful, and there was no rain, and I fought tears as my friend wed the man of her dreams and I locked eyes with you across the crowd.

That night we danced. Your hand stayed on my hip. You let me drink wine with abandon; you held your own empty glass for hours ensuring you were lucid enough to take care of me.  Late into the night, you guided me to our room before I got sick, and were sweet when I woke up a little embarrassed.  You held me and offered to drive the rental car back to the airport so I could relax.

I’m sure that everything you pointed to on the drive north to DC was beautiful. The old farmhouses, the new sprawling single-family homes, the ways the hills dipped, lush and green, behind the trees.  I didn’t see much of it. My head ached with the memories of the night before, and when I closed my eyes, all I could see was you.

Office Coffee

My lips curled back in a snarl, expressing distaste milliseconds before my brain caught up.


“This coffee is sick,” I whispered.

I was alone in the kitchen on the 16th floor of my office building. Cold water, Reese’s peanut butter cups, and good old-fashioned stress had failed to keep me alert. I stared out the window at a Chicago being buried by a late winter storm.

Office Coffee was my last resort.

I drink coffee every day, like my mom. I worked at a coffee shop for half a decade, and grind my own beans at home. My teeth are not sparking white. I stood perplexed in the kitchen staring at the empty pot. Holding my empty mug. I had never made coffee here before.

My temp Elena taught me how to use the machine in the office kitchen, even though I've been here for more than 3 years. Elena moved about the kitchen with ease; she had often made the coffee on the 3rd floor she said, where she temped previously. I was supposed to know how to make it too, so I paid attention while she emptied the brew basket, poured the water, tore the small red bag and emptied the grounds.

"I like to buy my coffee," she said. "I like the flavors. Hazelnut." She hit the button and left the kitchen.

I took another sip and waited for my body to register the bitter, burning energy source. Down on the street below, people ran.  Sloshing through gray puddles, heads covered, like they would if they were caught, terrified, in an actual snow globe.

It was really coming down outside. Snow like this reminds me of college in Wisconsin, even though I wore boots to school all winter as a small Chicagoan. I remembered my first semester when four weeks had passed before my new found best friends and I (all running short on clean clothes) acknowledged that we didn't know how to do laundry. Another freshman that we met in the laundry room showed us how. It was the first of many lessons.

The pull to stand in the kitchen, look into the storm, and sip my freshly made coffee was strong. With a packet of fake sugar and a bit of milk, the coffee wasn't that bad at all.

There's a Word For That

In high school my dad, then living, would scream ‘be the ball!’ from the iron forged bleachers of the gymnasium whenever one was passed to me. And my mother, post-diagnosis, would for over a year think herself Ghandi and will me to ‘be the change I wish to see in the world’. My grandmother insisted I be a ‘good girl’, while my first boyfriend a ‘good girl’ and the words, the collective archive of beings and becomings sat sharply on my tongue. It may be that I was with the boyfriend and am not with the grandmother. I could say, ‘to be is not I am, is not I will, is not I was’. I could speak from the belly. I could give a sideline roar.

But there are no loud carry overs in my household. My mother would ask that I be the change. My father would roll over in his grave and my grandmother would spat something incoherent - some aggregation of words in air that would overstate without being understood.

There’s a word for that. There’s a dictionary of english words. There are 171,476 put to use, 47,156 obsolete- only if you discount the colloquialisms, inflections, TBA, and undeveloped technical vocabulary. And then there’s the Armenian alphabet, the Japanese, the Icelandic. There are the quick utterings of whatever he I chose to be with - a Danish professor, a Guadalajaran line cook. I may say ‘I am in love; I will marry you; I was wrong’. More likely, ‘I am angry; I am sorry; I was wrong’. But to just be - to become the architect of my own alphabet is never so simple. ‘I was wrong, I am trying, please forgive me.’

How To Become a Japanese Wife

If anything, don’t show your hands. Keep them clean and hidden. Oversized pockets are lazy when your back curves in such a way as to hold them in place, provided you assume good posture.

Stand tall. Nod, correct, and erect when your husband says, “model posture!”. Mirrors are vain - puddles mundane. Understand the efforts of the sun while seeking shade. Remember that a spider in daylight is welcome - in evening, an intruder.

Fear nothing smaller than yourself, but if so pray your face be white as the moon. Bleach under the auspices of aloe. Never mistake balm for beauty, but do heed its duty. Trust your neighbors, but not their neighbors. Bow in accordance to rank, never need.

Do so from the diaphragm. Release like a leaden plank, careful to remove any hardware that welcomes recoil. Dip with the weight of a pirates bounty on your back. Lower yourself to the ocean waters of an opt-in baptism. Find a fish of substantial size and emulate its spine.

Always be wary of nets.