Dearest Rachel –
Last week, the sun was out, and the days were in the eighties. I could work up a sweat walking through the forest with Lars (and probably needed to). Last night, I was wearing three layers to go to bed comfortably, even with the one space heater on. Such is weather in Chicago, and especially autumn, where, if you don’t like it, as the saying goes, all you need to do is to wait ten minutes. Of course, if you do like it, you can’t afford to get too attached to it, either, because it’s not going to stick around.
And yet, for all of its unpredictability, we always know it’s going to happen, especially as the area transitions from summer to winter or vice versa. One day – or even one moment – it will lean toward the one, and the next toward the other, as it seemingly tries to make up its mind. It’s like someone trying on outfits in its closet, which is appropriate, since its caprice precludes us puny humans from determining what to wear ourselves on any given day. Mom actually had to send me home from the ‘office’ with one of Dad’s old sweater-jackets yesterday because the two layers of shirts I’d worn there wasn’t sufficient for the freezing drizzle I was about to encounter outside (well, technically, she’s just trying to slowly empty the closets in her house of his stuff, since he’s no longer around to wear them, and unlike me, she knows someone in the family who could give these a good home, but still, I needed it out there).
When it comes to the weather, it seems like an oxymoron to say that the only real constant is change, but here we are. It’s not specifically predictable – indeed, that’s the problem in trying to deal with it from day to day and even moment to moment – but the actual unpredictability we wind up having to deal with during these seasons is. On a macro level, it’s the same today, this year, as it’s ever been – and unless the world comes to an end in our lifetimes (not so much yours as mine or Daniel’s), it will always be thus.
It’s a cheery thought to wake up to of a weekend morning, when I’ve spent at least one day complaining about how nothing happens (followed by a day in which I made light of that complaint amid a flurry of activity – by the way, I managed to get a room in the main hotel for next year’s ACen, for what it’s worth), and I mean that facetiously. I can’t get my footing with one metaphysical microclimate or another sweeping by and around me, while at the same time, it feels like there’s little hope of things ever really improving from here.
And I know I shouldn’t be moping around about that; there’s nothing I can do about it, so I might as well make the best of the life I’ve been given. It’s not a bad life, either; these past few years have been full of sunshine and adventure as well as cloudy gloom and toil – more of both than most people’s, I dare say. I even get the chance that many folks don’t to write down what and how I’m experiencing it in the moment; something I didn’t think – or have the time, or the words – to do in the days when we were together, much to my regret, now.
But of course, that’s the thing. As long as I can’t share this with you – or someone in your place (I would say “someone like you,” but at this point I know better) – it’s all a case of “plus ça change.” Things change around me like the weather – and as quickly and unpredictably as that – but the lack of someone to weather it with me does not, and will not.
Now, you could point out that I still have Daniel, and as his father, I should be pouring myself into him in any event, so he can one day be the independent man he’ll need to be. And I’ve been doing a little of that, albeit more as an older peer than the mentor I probably ought to be, since I consider myself woefully underqualified for the latter role. Indeed, this need for companionship and someone to show the world to rather gets in the way of properly raising him, as I should also be trying to let him go and function on his own (not that he really wants to). Hanging onto him as a travel partner actually stunts his growth; I need to back away, or push him into the wider world, rather than latching onto him. And as you’ve been reading, this dynamic has been going on since the accident, to one degree or another – and probably will for a long time to come.
So there you have it, honey; changes come and go, but they leave us much the same. I might wish for more, but I’d be just as well off wishing for world peace, for all the difference it makes. At least that last would benefit others as much as (if not more than) myself. I’d ask for your well wishes, too, if I thought it would make a difference; then again, maybe it’s holding back the snow. In which case, thank you, honey; I don’t think I’m ready for that yet.
