A Change is Gonna Come

Winters in Chicago are long, and they’re rough. By the time spring finally starts to roll around, it’s like Chicago explodes. Where the hell did all these people come from, I ask myself each year. Were they hibernating for the last five months? Even if it’s just a tease, like today, when the sun is shining and bars start opening their patios—although really it’s only 54 degrees and not warm, exactly—I feel my spirits start to lift.

The sun is shining. Warm weather is coming! Longer days and music festivals and flip flops and sundresses and vodka lemonades!

These are the kind of wild ideas that torment and tease us all until it really warms up for good. You know, in June. But there’s something about that anticipation, that wait for spring and summer, that I think makes Chicago summers feel, well, just fucking magical. Believe me, I know. Last summer was during my brief stint back in Indiana, and having to stick out a winter in Chi without the gift of summer was akin to getting grounded the week before spring break, and sitting at your grandmother’s house while all your friends went to the beach and partied without you.

I was thinking about this as I sat in my favorite coffee shop working today. The door was propped open and the sun shone bright into the doorway, the breeze blowing in almost warmly, but not quite. It felt like spring. It almost looked like spring. But across the street, the trees and plants were still bare and brown.

Sometimes it feels like winter is never going to come to an end. Every year, I have to question: Okay, when exactly will there be green leaves on the trees again? When can I finally not be bundled up every time I step out of my apartment? But then, like magic, one day I walk outside and they’ve just appeared. And suddenly, it’s spring.

It’s hard to keep faith that change is coming sometimes. Last year at this time, I was about to start packing up my apartment to move back in with my dad. I’d been waiting tables, interning, and job searching for two years, and nothing had happened. I felt like I was driving repeatedly into a brick wall, then getting out of the car, and banging my head into the wall for good measure. I felt defeated. I was broke, and knew I had to go home. While I tried to put up a brave face, and I reminded myself over and over that not all people were fortunate enough to have a parent who would invite them to move back in, rent free, at the age of 26, I still felt like a big, fat, fucking failure. The first week back in my childhood bedroom, I laid awake in bed each night, my heart racing, wondering if I’d still be sleeping there in a year. In five years? IN TEN?

In Blossom.

temperature’s rising, but the buds still refuse to grow
“he loves me, he loves me not,” played out on broken twigs
with no petals to be found

if I wanted to play that game I’d be sitting on a heap
of sticks by now
can’t just sit and wait for that shit to grow

before I might kick it, paw at the dirt
trying to force something there that is not

the difference is now, I know
just cause the bloom ain’t out don’t mean it’s not there
you feel it, you’re at the root
maybe the trees are still bare, but come spring,
and the green returns

so maybe I water it, ease the growth on its way
like a house plant
but even that’s still got to grow on its own

why stress over it anyway?
the beauty is, it’s coming, it’s growing
a little faith is all you really need
the seasons continue to change

quit playing with sticks
there’s beauty in dirt
without it, where would the flowers bloom

no need to force it
one day you’ll look up
and realize you’re covered in petals

Finding Hope in a Dead Bouquet

The roses had already been dead for more than a week, but I couldn't bear the thought of putting them in the trash.

Twice, the cats had knocked the vase over. The first time, I came home to find it knocked over on the middle of the table, water still slowly but steadily dripping across the table, onto the floor. I had left my three new journals and paperback stacked neatly next to the flowers. The once-crisp pages were now wet and bumpy. Ruined before I could write on a single page.

The second time the vase knocked over I was in the bathroom. I heard it crash against the table and opened the door, quickly. Mufasa was sitting perfectly still next to the overturned roses as if it never happened. "Dammit!" I picked up the already-dying flowers and glared at her.

She blinked at me, slowly, then yawned.

I probably should have just pitched them right then and there, but I couldn't. I carried the vase to the kitchen, refilled the water, then placed the vase gently back in the middle of the table in the other room.

There's something so hopeful about that bouquet of flowers when you get them, whether someone walks in carrying them as a surprise, or you simply pick them up at the grocery store. They're fresh, beautiful, vibrant. My mood instantly lifts when I'm standing in the kitchen, arranging a bouquet of flowers. For the short time the roses lasted, everything looked brighter, nicer, more romantic, even.

But even if you arrange them just so, if you know just the right tricks to keep them alive longer, still you know, as soon as you set that new bouquet out, that sooner rather than later, they will be dead and drooping. My cats immediately attack flowers, chewing and swatting and biting at them. As soon as they're even in the same room as flowers, their little cat noses start twitching, and you can tell they are about to freak out. But every time, I still put them where they can reach them, because I keep hoping and kidding myself, that maybe this time, they'll just leave the flowers be.

Of course, they didn't. So after a solid week of chiding the cats and fretting over the roses' safety, I almost forgot what the table looked like before they were there.

Of course I couldn't just throw the roses—white roses, edged with pinks and reds—in the garbage. It seemed so unfair, like I was pretending they'd never existed. So first, I saved a few of the dried buds and stuck them on the bookshelf. The table looks bare and boring without the vase.

The roses are still beautiful. Just in a different way, like they know something they didn't before.

Because I remember when I was you.

A conversation I overheard this past Saturday keeps popping up in my head. I thought about it while I was driving back to Chicago Monday afternoon. I thought about it while I was putting on my makeup the other day. I thought about it while I was waiting on a table last night. It just keeps popping in my head, uninvited, at random moments. I don’t really know why. Maybe it’s because it has nothing and everything to do with me.

I was out to lunch in Indy with my brother and his girlfriend. The restaurant was crowded, and the table behind us was a group of loud, giggly young women. My guess is they were freshman or sophomores at Butler—they all had that excited, freshly realized air of independence about them. From my seat, I was facing their table. While we were waiting on our food for what seemed like forever, I was getting increasingly cranky—a combination of being so hungry I was about to start chewing on the tablecloth, and the table of loud women. If one of them giggled one more time, I was going to throw a bottle of hot sauce at them. Basically, I was hungry. (If I’m this cantankerous at 25, can you imagine what I’ll be like at 65? Yeesh.)

Anyway, once our food arrived, I pretty much forgot about them, until I overheard one girl talking to the now silent group. She was talking about someone going through chemotherapy and how it had been really tough so far. “But the good thing is, she hasn’t gotten any mouth sores yet,” she said. By this point, I had realized this girl was talking about her mother. My sandwich, which had been absolutely delicious until I heard that statement, became tasteless. In that one statement, I heard how scared she was, and how much she needed her mom to be okay. I looked up, and the girl who’d been talking was directly across from me.