A Late Spring

The spring hadn't really come on yet though it was April. The houses were still winterized and the temperatures were still in the 40s as a high.

That's the Midwest for you. Winter can last almost til May sometimes. But we didn't mind. We only stayed in town half the year. My father owned a business in Illinois and owned another one in Florida.

Back and forth from one state to the other, my father would spend one week out of every month "visiting" whichever place we weren't living in at the time. Usually we did the obvious and stayed in Florida from October to March. Then we'd pack up and move back to Illinois for the spring and summer.

We had a house in both places.

When we weren't in Illinois, we hired a family friend to look after our house on Van Buren Street. She was a part-time house wife without any children who wanted more than just dinners and family success. She wanted something personal out of life.

I was a kid then but I know that she wanted something personal out of life because she said it all the time. Whenever we would talk about her or talk about Illinois when we were away, we'd repeat the phrase too, as a refrain: I don't want a lot, but I won't be happy if I don't get something personal out of life.

She wanted something of her own. A desire that was easy even for me to understand.

Coming back with all our luggage and gear in the station wagon, we'd find her waiting for us at the house, ready to open it up for us. This year she looked very sharp and had a look on her face that told us she had news, big news.

She waited until we had hustled inside out of the dry April chill of that year. She kept waiting and putting it off by volunteering to fix us all some soup and heat up some bread while we got ourselves stretched out. She kept waiting after the soup and bread were eaten and we were sitting there just looking at her, mother, father, and me, watching her face with its secret news.

After a while my parents sent me upstairs to unpack my things. I went, wondering if this was the moment something personal would happen. I discovered that I didn't want to see it. If this was the moment I was glad to be outside of it, in my own room.

*

For years, she kept doing what she had been doing and I never knew what the news was that she was saving up as we settled into our house again. The sharpness of her dress, which seemed so special that day, became standard. The sense that there was something to tell, some bubbling up inside her or some effort to stop the bubbling - that became standard too.

My parents stopped saying, "I just want something personal out of life," when they talked about her. I tried to avoid saying it too but one day it slipped out. My father, who had just returned from a week-long trip to Illinois, looked at my mother as if to gauge the new meaning of the phrase as it existed now.

Then they both laughed and said it too. The phrase had once been a sort of tongue-in-cheek characterization of a person's pining and desire. Now it was a celebration. Of what exactly I can't be sure. But it was ok to say it again and whatever kind of foolishness may have been attached to it before was replaced with admiration.