Flurries

Today is one of those dramatically windy days where the dirt actually flies into your mouth. It was windy last weekend, but this display of Mother Nature today beats last Saturday's wind storm to a pulp. As long as our older apartment windows are in tact when we get home this evening, I don't mind too terribly, although notably, I'm not a wind fan as a general rule. It disrupts the evenflow of the day.*The posted image depicts the snowy view from my parents' current home in Indiana. I shot this photo from their porch exactly halfway through Christmas Day 2005. Having nothing to do with the wind that whips through Richmond this afternoon, I wanted to pay respects one last time to this old neighborhood before my parents abandon it. They were in that house for 14 years, which, for our family represents an eternity. Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before...(life story summary to ensue). I was born in Illinois, about 40 miles west of Chicago. My parents stayed in Illinois only the first two years of my life before we moved to Ohio, where we lived until I turned 9. Then we hit Texas for a 5-year stay. We followed that with a move to Indiana, where my parents settled for much longer than either of them had sat still since they were respective children themselves. I ditched southside Indy for Bloomington (IN) after only 3 and a half short years as a southsider, and have since lived in Michigan (Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and Taylor!), Missouri, Georgia, and now Virginia. I suppose I'm aiming to beat some sort of unspoken record although I'm sure I'm far behind others (especially those who can claim more than one country!) Anyway, back to present day, soon, when the southside of Indy house is sold and the papers signed, my parents will be relocating to Michigan (just west of where I spent my time) for however long. I've tried to be somewhat of a guidance counselor when I talk to them about their relocation. I remind them, as Craig and I have learned, it's okay to throw out, it's, in fact, healthy. It's okay to leave friends behind (especially now with the fancy tools we've got to keep in touch. Ask me about leaving friends behind before e-mail and internet access, having long distance friends, incapable of maintaining adhesion therein, too lazy or busy for pen and paper down the years). I've tried to express to my parents the sheer exhilaration of seeing a city turn into an ink spot on your rearview mirror and greeting the unfamiliar jagged skyline of a new city as it takes shape up ahead. It's never failed, when I've left a city, particularly driving myself alone in my own car, I've maniacally shouted Goodbye to the city, waving my hand wildly in the air so the city knows I'm bidding it its due farewell. Not that I can necessarily envision my parents recreating such an eccentric feat. Nevertheless, soon they will find themselves in a packed car, pulling away. It carries an air of slight sadness, that proverbial closing of one chapter. But the start of a new, the first sentence of the first paragraph of the first page, is alive with brilliant unchartered experience. I believe this. I think my parents do not disbelieve this, however I guess it might be different when you're not in your twenties anymore.*As an aside to all of this, and unrelated but because I want to remember this, today Craig was bickering with me about the fact that I hadn't picked up any 2 cent stamps yet so that we could drop our internet bill in the mail (postage recently increased). We were in the car on the way to lunch. I groaned that I hadn't felt like it yet. He started in about how he had been willing to put two 37 cent stamps on the envelope, but I was the one who carried on about wasting a whole 37 cent stamp. We continued back and forth like this for a few seconds and suddenly Craig leaned to shove his hand in his jeans pocket and I said, What, are you going to see if you have a dime? and he replied, Yes, so I can throw it out the window! He was seriously going to throw a dime out the window to prove a point, it made me laugh a lot. I love how well I know his wise assness. He can be such a know-it-all sometimes, which, to the shock of probably many, is one of the very many things I adore most about him. It comes in such comedic waves sometimes, the way he just insists that his word is truth coupled with his word choice to express it. He came by it honestly. Just ask him. But it's endearing all the same. I think about a third of my life is spent being amused by him, and really only a third of that third is a blend of amusement and frustration. Not such bad stats, really.*