I should stop complaining about weather. All of my adult life, and most of my life before that, I've lived in the upper Midwest, and I should be used to weather that seems duty-bound to induce depression and melancholy.
I was actually born in Maryland. In the late 1960s my parents lived there while my father worked for the University of Maryland. I don't really remember much about Maryland, and what little I do remember may well be induced from looking at old photographs and hearing stories told about those days. I've been back since, looking for our old house (it's gone now) and could recall nothing of the area except that there used to be a restaurant made out of gingerbread somewhere around there and they sold candy. I can't remember the name of the place now, and I suspect that it's gone, too. Things like that imprint on small children, I suppose.
In late 1971, when I was not yet four years old, we moved to Minnesota. My father had been offered a teaching position at the Universty of Minnesota, and my mother got a job there as a researcher. They both worked up until they died in 1995.
1995. I don't think I want to go into that much right now, but I guess I owe the world at least some explanation, since I've mentioned it. My parents were on vacation in August, 1995, driving from home down to a place they liked in Tennesee, and got involved in a big accident in southern Illinois. They and one other person were killed and several other people were injured in a chain-reaction accident in fog on an Interstate. They were not wearing seat belts. I was here in Chicago, and got a call that night from someone from the Illinois State Police. I had a lot to do after that.
So yes, I guess I'm an orphan. That word seems strange in my mouth when I say it. I'm an adult woman whose parents have passed on, not some waif abandoned by the world.
I don't know what I am.
Do you sometimes feel a pressure to be able to explain yourself to others in one neat phrase or word? I looked at my home page, and realized that the phrase I use on my "about me" page is terribly, terribly sterile. An only child, with parents now gone. An Alger sort of phrase, and one I am not happy with. On the other hand, how do I explain this to others? My entire identity is not wrapped up in the identity of my parents. I am not only their daughter, though that's important.
It's been two years now, and I think I'm still adjusting to the idea that I can't call my father and ask how to do things. I can't call my mother and ask her to help me with decisions. I can't call anyone.
Such a person, someone I'd want and need to call, would have to be the most patient person in the world.
Fargo fell into the trash again. He sits on the kitchen table and leans far out over the edge to paw at the corner of the trash bin, and every once in a while he falls into it. I usually need to pull him out, or he'll sit in the bottom, beeping and squeaking until he goes to sleep. More than once, I've gotten up in the morning and thrown an empty yogurt container in the trash, only to hear him peep-peeping miserably in the bottom of the trash bin.
There's nobody for me to call, but Fargo can call me.
It's trying to rain outside. I worry on nights like this that the temperature will fall and everything will turn to ice. It's predicted to reach 50 tomorrow, so there's small chance of a winter wonderland, but this is Chicago, and anything can happen. I have someone to interview out in Joliet. Not in the prison, just in the city of Joliet. I hate driving out that way. I can't really say why, I just hate it. I used to have an aunt in Lockport, but several years ago she moved to Arkansas and died not long after that. She was my father's older sister, and she was horribly overweight.
I visited her once. After that, I immediately started cross-country skiing again. Somewhere I have a picture of me skiing. You can't really tell it's me... I'm too bundled up. But I think it's the only image I have of skiing, because it was one of the few times I went out skiing with someone with a good camera, a man I dated a few times about four years ago. I suppose I could post a picture of him as evidence that yes, Jeanne had a social life once.
Somebody write me and tell me what I am.