snow

I didn't think it was possible for me to get this tired of snow. I grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, where snow was a rare and exotic treat, experienced a few times a year if we were lucky, usually with snow days and complete disruption of routine. I've always loved the landscape of fresh snow. Even as a tired and jaded grown-up, I'll go for a long walk in new snow, just to breathe in its brief and delicate loveliness.

But this year I am really, really, really tired of snow.

I learned to drive in a family with a VW bus, boats stacked on the roof, heavily loaded with camping equipment, gear galore. Bring on the stick shift, the mountain roads, the hard spring rains. But not the snow. Hey, we used chains in those days. My dad would put them on when we went to the Smokies, and he would drive us on gorgeous unplowed roads in the national parks at high elevations.

So I had never learned to drive in snow, knew nothing of potholes, black ice, any of that. And for many years I was married to a nice man who grew up in Chicago and really liked to drive, and since I could take a train to work in those years, I didn't have to drive much. However, when our marriage ended, he was naturally absolved of any responsibility to take me around in bad weather. And when I landed a great job that required car-commuting, it wasn't like I could turn it down, being a single mother all of a sudden.

Fast-forward five years. It's now the winter of 2007-08, with record-breaking snowfalls, and I don't have to tell you if you live here, you know all about it. It has been hard, but I am unfazed. I am tired, and cold, like all of you, but I am also triumphant. Me and my little red Saturn have made it through.

The capstone experience of my winter was this: I got a guy's car unstuck in my alley. He was a young guy with a Japanese accent, said he was from Oklahoma... anyway, for sure he was not from around here. His car was blocking the main route through the alley so I was stuck behind him. I watched him try to move it, but he didn't know how. In my own body, I could feel what to do. So I bullied him into letting me drive his car. In a matter of moments I had his car in his parking space, and he said, "Wow, how long have you lived here? How did you learn to do that?"

For just a moment, I felt like Wonder Woman.

reckless

I am a cyclist. Not very experienced, not competitive, but definitely enthusiastic. I belong to a club, I lead rides sometimes, I know some cycling routes and have created a few of my own. When I'm in shape, I can ride 50 miles and still walk normally when I get off the bike. I pay my dues to the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, and I feel like part of something as a cyclist.

However, the thing that on a good day I might call "the cycling community" is a little rattled right now because on Sunday morning a guy died. Matt was 29 years old and he was at the front of a pack of experienced riders in a sort of unofficial, unsponsored, underground bike race called Tour Da Chicago. The race course was on Chicago streets. Matt ran a red light at a complicated intersection. He got hit by a large vehicle, and he died.

Today Matt's family and friends are having to confront the recklessness that played such an enormous role in his death. Today the driver of that large vehicle is having to come to terms with her role in his death. Maybe she can avoid thinking "I killed that guy" -- and I honestly hope she can. Looks to me like he got himself killed, based on the accounts I have read so far.

The cycling community always has to take some heat from annoyed drivers who complain about the cyclists who run in front of them thru red lights, who ignore stop signs, who act like the rules of the road don't apply. And the truth is that many cyclists ARE casual about the rules of the road. I will, let's say, run a red light on my bike if there is no traffic coming the other way, when I wouldn't do that in my car. These are usually fairly well-considered moments. I usually don't have to make split-second, life-and-death decisions on my bike, although I acknowledge here and now that at any time I could make a mistake and take my life in my hands.

What distinguishes Matt's death in my mind is that Tour Da Chicago seems like a set-up to press cyclists into making numerous split-second critical judgment calls -- on city streets and in city traffic, where the lives in their hands are more than their own. It seems like this outcome was nearly inevitable, the proverbial accident waiting to happen, like how could it not happen eventually. It seems to me that Tour Da Chicago's organizers should be called to account for that. Calls for that accountability will probably cause rifts in "the cycling community" -- but as far as I'm concerned, the increase in safety for everyone and the reduction of friction between cyclists and disturbed drivers would be worth it.

Rest in peace, Matt, and may good come from your sad demise.

condos

I am looking for a new home, and my current condo is for sale. This means I get a lot of mail from people who want to be my new friend. Thanks, but I already have a realtor, a mortgage broker, insurance, a mover, an attorney... and lots of stress. What I don't have is a cleaning lady, but I've decided it would just add more stress for me to figure out how and when to get her into our tiny place, so we (me and my daughter, almost 14) had better just suck it up and clean it ourselves. (My daughter still does not fully understand that cleaning actually involves effort. Apparently she thinks that holding a spray bottle in one hand and a rag in the other for a few seconds, making wiping motions at random, is cleaning.)

Earlier this week I made an offer on Pricey Condo, an elegant place that was really way out of my price range, but I loved the location. I didn't think I could find anything cheaper in such an ideal spot. Somewhat to my amazement, in this slow month in a slow market, I was outbid by someone else who offered for the same property on the same day. I felt strangely relieved by this. I really liked the apartment, and I could have afforded it if I made some changes, not really terribly painful ones, but as I said to my realtor, "I love having disposable income." And I do. I am not extravagant, but I buy any CD I happen to want. If I find something nice at the consignment shop or the J.Jill outlet, I don't think twice. I buy organic food, good coffee, brown eggs fortified with omega-3's, and environmentally friendly dishwasher detergent that actually works as well as Cascade. These things satisfy me, they are not cheap, and I don't want to give them up.

So yesterday I went to see Thrifty Condo. Afterwards I told my daughter that this condo is sort of like going to the art supply store and buying the blank canvas. Aesthetically it offers nothing -- other than potential. Ironically, it's in the same neighborhood as Pricey Condo. Walk to everything, including the train station I most need access to in order to make real improvements in my heavily car-dependent commuting habits. Surrounded by historic homes on quiet blocks. Enough one-way streets and dead ends nearby to really keep the traffic down. But seriously, it's the homeliest damn condo... crummy wall-to-wall carpeting, original bathroom fixtures from the late 60's, a cheap kitchen update that's now 20 years old including the ugliest microwave oven I have ever seen. Even the air conditioners are ugly (but there's one in every room!).

On the other hand, the building has both a management company and a maintenance man. Living as I currently do in a self-managed building with no on-call repair services, this sounds like heaven to me. In fact, I can honestly report that when I heard the magic words "maintenance man," my heart leapt for joy.

So I am looking into estimates for wood flooring, and I'm going to take my daughter, who's an aspiring chef, to consult with me on what might be done about the kitchen. I suspect we will put our money in those two spots for now and live with the bathrooms as they are. In another 20 years perhaps those plumbing fixtures will be vintage... or even chic.

doxology

I grew up in a Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the 1960s and 70s. That church made me who I am, along with my prep school and my oddly displaced, partly-mixed-in, non-southern family, and my friend Bettina. Last week my brother, who still belongs to that church, sent me a notice of someone who died, someone I knew in my teens, but someone who died an old man. This seems strange to me. I know it has been 30 years since I left Knoxville, but I often do not remember that everyone else is 30 years older too.

In those days the doxology we sang started with the words, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." I'm not sure of the rest of the words anymore, just that first line. Today I am a member of Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation, and the doxology we sing now begins "From all that dwell below the skies, let songs of love and peace arise." Even as I write this, I struggle to remember the right set of words. On Sunday mornings at Unity Temple I have to look in the order of service to find the right words to get me started, even though I know the new doxology all the way through once I get going.

For the past few weeks, sitting in services at Unity Temple, I have had the urge to get up to the microphone during "Joys and Sorrows" and say something about this, this problem of not remembering the words to the new doxology, the problem of having the old words stuck in my head, the problem of not knowing why this is a problem. The problem is I don't really know what I want to say. Maybe I am nostalgic for my childhood, the aching gorgeousness of my teen years, my old church (the building I knew in childhood was sold to the Baptists quite a while ago, and there is a beautiful new church). I know that I miss my mother deeply, but she has been dead for 20 years, and there is nothing new to say about that, and sometimes it seems like I can connect anything to missing my mother, and that's just too easy.

It must have something to do with the singing, I am thinking now. I love to sing, I love to know the words, to make up some harmony, to feel my heart lift along with my voice. I felt that as a young person in that church in Knoxville and it was probably one of the things that kept me alive when the aching was more miserable than gorgeous. I want the doxology to connect me to myself through the singing... and I suppose I have been feeling the different words as something that disconnects my present and my past.