under the weather

yesterday i think i had a fever. (i think i had a fever because i was all hot and cold, but when i got home i just went to sleep...and was too tired to rummage around for the thermometer.) anyway, after sleeping the afternoon away and spending the night tossing and turning, i feel better. not "i'm Wonder Woman!" better. but better.

as far as the title goes--aren't we ALL under the weather? it's it kind of...above us? around us? out of our immediate control?

easter in minnesota is usually warmer; it's when you see kids running around in their easter clothes. this year it's sunny, the skys are a washed-out blue, and it's freezing cold; so over the lacy yellow dresses and little sailor outfits, i'm sure that parents will be zipping up coats and squashing hats onto heads.

ah, the frigid north. i love it. (:

april is always a touchy month, a weird time. it's a month of memory and some silent times, and also a lot of laughter. to paraphrase khalil gibran, the same thing that makes you cry, makes you smile.

april is when i remember dan's brother, corey--his birthday and his death. it's when i celebrate dan's birthday--on earth day--even though he's never been much into it, and since it's only 4 days off from when corey passed, it's hard to celebrate. i celebrate because his mom decided to have him, and raised him into the guy who made sure i ate dinner last night, when i was still feverish.

april is also the month that my uncle, jed, suffered his last stroke, the one that has incapacitated him. he clings to life with a tenacity that i cannot help but admire, even two years later.

a year ago this month, dan got his job.

happy and sad; sweet and sour.

***
i drive using things to navigate. by things, i mean points of interest--a gas station, a church spire, a strange house. my dad long ago gave up writing down directions in terms of milage, since my mom drives the same way i do. they say that it's a female tic, to navigate this way.

when i think back on my life, i have a hard time remembering what year something occurred. i have to think about what was going on at that time--where did we live, for whom did we cook dinner, what happened that year. even then, it gets blurred. memory is faulty; the memory of traumatic times, even worse.

it is strange how clear your mind can be, when remembering certain parts--but then other parts are a dream-memory, slipping out of your fingers. i remember corey's sly smile; i remember driving back to bemidji with all the leftover after-funeral cake, a box sliding around the back seat, bumping into a rubbermaid container of cold lasagna. but i cannot remember the sound of his voice.

in duluth you live under the thumb of the weather--you get lake effect snow, strange twists of temperature, and fog, thick and soft. that is what i picture, overlaid on my own mind--that heavy, touchable mist, coalesced into clouds, drifting over the ground.

***

two years ago on easter my sister and i took my grandmother to church. at the time, her meds made her lose most of her hair. beth and i found a very cute denim cap for her to wear, one that went with her outfit and brought out the blue in her eyes, so vivid. she was terrified that it would fall off during mass; we kept reassuring her that it would not. she argued that she had no hair to pin the hat down; we replied that it fit just right, she did not need pins.

all through mass i watched the dome of her head, watched her long, slender fingers fiddle with the brim. she had trouble moving it; her joints were knobby with arthritis. the church was cold and warm at the same time--the heat of bodies pressed into pews, and the breeze on ankles of a door, opened somewhere to alleviate the heat.

i remember walking outside after mass that day, and the sun beating down, hot on my skin. i remember grandma saying that she was glad for the hat, all of a sudden.

grandma didn't pass away until thanksgiving, that same year. her hair had grown back in by then, shining silver and white. but i remember her in april, when i remember all things that have lived and passed, when the weather reminds me that i am small and insignificant, and my memories, ephemeral as time.