You becha I’m glad

Earlier today Anne and I were discussing how glad we were to be Minnesotans because Minnesotans are “chill.”  That is, we as a whole are not overly concerned with appearances the way people from some regions *cougheastcoastcough* tend to be.  We’re humble, earthy, wholesome folk…to some extent, anyway.

Well, this evening I thought of another reason I’m glad to be Minnesotan: the ability to enjoy winter.  Enjoying winter is not at all synonymous with enjoying cold.  Anyone who has seen me curled up against the heater with a sweater and a heavy blanket knows that I passionately hate being cold.  Luckily, because I was born and raised in this frosty clime, I’m well aware of how to evade the shivers and enjoy the season.

I took a walk this evening in the sparkling dark.  I wasn’t wearing my glasses (they make your face cold, doncha know?) so the Christmas lights were large, fuzzy blurs of color and light against the lumpish black silhouettes of houses.  With several layers under my coat, dry wool socks in my boots, and a chunky hat, scarf, and mittens, the only skin that could feel the cold was my face from the eyes down to the lips.  Those few inches were seared with enough burning chill to remind me I was alive, but the rest of me was toasty and content.  It was quiet for a Friday night–two cars and a rattling flagpole were the only intrusions upon my silence.  I wandered through the snow when the sidewalks trailed off into nothingness (as is their habit in Morris).  Eventually I found my way home, purged of the lethargy and excess of the day by the crackling chill and voluntary solitude.

And if I weren’t from Minnesota, either I would have been too afraid to brave the winter climate at all, or I would have dressed foolishly and been distracted by discomfort throughout the entire walk.  Bummer for you, you Virginians and Floridians, Texans and New Mexicans.  You don’t know what you’re missing.

Home and Family

I have two homes now, one in Woodbury with my parents and one in my Morris apartment with Anne.  It gets a little semantically confusing as I instinctively refer to both of them as “home,” but I figure it’s a small price to pay for reaching a state of being that, four years ago, I considered impossible.  The reason Morris is home to me now is not because I have spent almost four years here–time is immaterial.  Home is where you live with family, and I do that both in Woodbury and in Morris.

Most people have biological family, you know, the people who are obligated to love you.  My biological family is (in my opinion) pretty much the best ever, and I’ve always known I was lucky in that department.  But acquired family is luck on an entirely separate level.  These people are beyond friends–they truly are family–yet they aren’t obligated to love you; they love you by choice.  I think some people go through life largely without these people, and if I were the sort of person who used the word blessed, I would say I am truly blessed to have several in my life.  Just like family, I know they won’t leave me when times get tough, and just like family, where they are is home.

When I was a miserable freshman four Decembers ago, I decorated my half of the dorm room with tinsel and snowflakes and red bows and had never felt so far away from Christmas and from home.  Today I baked cookies and sang  songs and took pictures in front of the Christmas tree with Anne in one of my two fabulous homes.  I’m a rags to riches story, I guess…the lonliest girl in the world to the luckiest in four quick twists of a big, blue-green ball.

Moving On

One of the odd things about college is the sense of impermanence.  Every three to four months you pack up your life and move into new temporary quarters.  Early on, the psychological effects of said impermanence were the most painful part of the deal.  The transience of my residence coincided with my undetermined place in life in a particularly unsettling way.  That’s the deal with college, in my opinion–childhood is stripped away, and until you find your way into young adulthood you’re left naked.  Once you figure out the young adulthood gig, the constant residential shuffle shifts from emotionally traumatic to merely annoying and a shit-ton of work (what is a shit-ton?  more than a normal ton?).

Obnoxious, sweaty, and inconvenient as moving undoubtedly is, I and my peers seem to have reached a consensus that being out of the house has become necessary.  I love my family more than anything, and of course it’s great to have the chance to spend so much time with them.  However, I’ve noticed that living at home under the active parenting of mom and dad brings out the child in me in horrible, embarrassing ways.  I’m sarcastic, snappish, moody, and occasionally downright unkind, and I watch myself react that way with horror because of course that’s not how I want to treat my family.  My parents are just doing what they’ve always done–making suggestions, issuing reminders, offering opinions–but I can’t accept it anymore because I’m used to functioning in a world where I’m boss.  I don’t think parents can help parenting when their children are present, but no adult wants to parented and thus arises the conflict.  When I talk to my parents on the phone and spend time with them without living together, I get to enjoy the interesting, fun, intelligent people they are and they (hopefully) get to enjoy a less hostile, more loving and pleasant daughter.

So I’m looking forward to moving tomorrow, despite the inevitable disorder, exhaustion, and back-ache.  I’m looking forward to being in charge of myself and my actions, but more than that I’m looking forward to putting myself in a place where I can be a better person.  I know I’ve not been at my best these past few months, and I hate how I’ve been behaving toward my most-loved ones.  After this year, my residence will hopefully be somewhat more permanent–and I’m hoping my lapses into childishness will become proportionally less frequent and intense.

Boundary Waters

Heading back up to the Boundary Waters with my dad, Kathleeny, and her dad has a nostalgic sense of deja vous about it.  Our last trip, just before freshman year of college, was the paradoxical combination of a jolt of pure energy and a blanket of perfect peace.  My nerves were taut and humming with worry and excitement about the changes coming up in my life, but all that nervous energy was sucking dry my deeper reserves of strength.  Those few days of water and sky and pine needles–when worry was clouds building in the distance and perfection was stretching on a rock next to my daddy watching the sky for shooting stars–loosened the bowstring of my emotions and left me with the sense that things would be ok.  Well, not so much that things related to the upcoming transition to college would be ok–that, after all, would have made north woods a false prophet and cheapened the feeling of tranquility into a shabby lie.  It was the feeling that things would be ok–that all of my worries might come to pass and still, the world and my life would endure.  Ultimately, the world is so much bigger than our biggest, most life-altering moments that to lose yourself in it is to lose the pressing urgency of your fears.  I came home from that trip at peace with whatever happened, with reservoirs of vitality deep enough to see me through its happening.

Of course, hell happened.  The worst year of my life.  There’s nothing that can mitigate the awfulness of that experience, the unhappiness I brought on my family, or the way I shut down and let it happen.  However, it did prove to me the truth in two old sayings: “adversity builds character” and “this, too, shall pass”.  I did what I had to do to survive that year, and I made it.  I didn’t collapse at the finish line gasping “never again” with my last breath, either.  I came back, I improved, and I made it to the point at which I can’t wait to get back to my independent life in Morris.

I’m a senior now, and I need that peace and deep inner energy to plan another set of life changes for the years ahead.  I need to remember that the world is bigger than my struggles.  I need to remember how far I’ve come since last time.  I need to remember that when I’m crying over my life’s imperfections, the loons are still laughing on their silver moonpaths in the quiet of our north woods.

Blood, Guts, and the Consumption of Literature

The road trip back to Morris to acquire my academic bling and remove large pieces of furniture from my apartment afforded me plenty of time to work on Othello. Reading Shakespeare in the car is less enjoyable than one might at first believe…early modern English is more apt to lead to carsickness than contemporary modern English. However, I am happily ready to move on to a book that I can actually hold up while I read it. Othello was good, but I was a little disappointed in the half-assed bloodbath at the end. Two of the principle characters–Iago and Cassio–fail to die on stage. Roderigo, Desdemona, Emilia, and Othello himself all come through with acceptably dramatic death scenes, some including the classic “I am slain!” but after reading Hamlet, in which Horatio is truly the only survivor, this ending seemed just a little light on the blood. It is a tragedy, after all.

On to more exciting things; I opened the first shipment of new books for this summer today. I must say, I’m getting pretty good at selecting pretty editions from online booksellers without being able to touch or see the books myself in advance. All of the editions in this shipment were extremely aesthetically pleasing. My favorites are the Modern Library Classics and the Vintage edition of Song of Solomon that matches my well-loved copy of Beloved. Modern Library Classics, like Barns and Noble Classics, are scrumptious trade paperback editions featuring tasteful art and beautifully textured softcover bindings that sell for extremely affordable prices. For the moment I’m enjoying just touching and smelling them, but I can’t wait to devour their innards as well. If books were people, I’d be a cannibalistic serial killer who preys on the good looking/smelling/feeling. Ew.