Back To School

There they go again. Lunches and backpacks for their drop out of the mother ship. And there goes a daughter in a new dress and a son up before the dawn. The last one lines up with her new class. And we go about our daily routine. Another day but it does mark summers end doesn't it even though summer goes to the twenty first of September. And even on the bike ride you can hear the corn rustling now and the air has the dry feel of empty husks..the smell of harvest.

And we turn into another year while they greet new schoolmates and renew old friendships. The new teacher could be good or bad. The new desk is something to get used too and summer still yawns out that slit window open to the returning heat. Because summer does come back on the first day of school. It is part of the ritual. A cool summer then blazing heat for those first months of children stuck inside cinder block forts. If only the heat had come earlier.

And you think of all the things you wanted to do with your kids. You did some of them. Went to a ballgame. The pool. Vacation. But you worked a lot and you wonder if you should have spent more time with them while they were home. Because they are not now. They have left like the soon departing summer... and autumn is closing in.

The Pitcher...what a mom won't do for her sons dream

 

Spring Break

Maybe spring break is different for other people but in the Midwest it is truly SPRING BREAK. We are frozen. Stiff. Over worked. Tired. Beat up after a long winter. And of course March has been the coldest yet and so we take off warmer clime for a week. Florida. California. Hawaii. The Caribbean. Everyone just wants to get away from the cold dreary Midwest sky that seems to push down on you after four months of unrelenting weather. And it hasn't even been that hard of a winter but the grind of it all just wears you out and you start to get that Gulag pallor and those hollow eyes. All work and no play.

So for a week you disappear. You go to where people swim and bike and can actually go outside without freezing. Paradise right. I get it. I get why people come here when they retire. Sandals. Shorts. Yeah. And  work seems very far away. And those big Midwestern homes with their basements and their fireplaces and furnaces seem ridiculous. How could anybody live that way? Always huddled up inside eating massive amounts of red meat to stay warm. The bears hibernating away another five months of life.

And it goes fast. You just start to get used to it and then it's gone and you are back. Snow. Ice. Rain. Gloomy skies.Why Why do we live here? Then you go to work. Slit my throat now. Ah well. Only a few more months until summer. Right?

www.williamhazelgrove.com

Cabin Fever

I get it why Hemingway lived in Key West and then Cuba. I mean I really get it watching the snow swirling outside my window in the middle of April. Cabin Fever. This is when it is the worse. You have done your time. You have suffered through the sub zero days and the snow and you have trudged through gale force bone cracking wind and now it is April and you should be rewarded for living in the Midwest and going through weeks without sunshine and days so dark and cold you feel like slitting your wrist. But NOOOOO. It's snowing and its raining and the sun wont be back for a week. Cabin fever hits you like a dark night.

The real thing that gets you is going to Florida. You come back and your first question off the plane is: How stupid am I? And you answer it quickly. REALLY STUPID. Why would you live in a place where basically people spend seven to eight months indoors and then run outside like hysterical lepers at the first sign of sun only to get rained on or snowed on or blown away in a tornado. In Florida you get up and go for a run and sit on the beach and yeah it's full of retired people and everyone is transplants and the alligators and swamps are a little weird, but WHO CARES! It's beautiful man and you are not stuck in doors.

And yeah when you get older you come to realize that the Midwest is where all the coalminers live. People work in the Midwest. And then they work some more. And then they work some more. Then they get old and die. GREAT. It's not as bad as all that but it's close. Just ride the Metra in the dead of winter with all the commuters and it looks like something out Russia with everyone trudging toward the Gulag. And then you to this place where it is sunny every day. Nobody seems to work. Cars don't rust. You wear shorts and eat seafood. And the ocean is there just for you.

But that is not where you live. You live in the Chicago land area. Everyone does work including you. And you cannot figure out how to escape. So you wait. You wait with everyone else. You wait for the sun and grit it out until...June, maybe July...August?

www.billhazelgrove.com

Rocket Man will blast off in July

Spring Break for An Exhausted People

You fall out on the beach after a brutal winter that feels like something out of a Russian novel. You are amazed that somewhere there are people who sit on beaches and soak up this incredible sunshine and you immediately wonder what they know that you don't. Because it is not only the winte,r but an exhaustion from stress and work and stress and work. Chicago seems like something out of a Siberian winter and the people you remember from the trains and coffee houses going through their days seem more like coal miners than a thriving middle class. And then you realize you are a coal miner.

Why else would you spend your time in an area of the country that is frozen for eight months? Why would you live near industrial centers spewing toxins and God knows what else? Why else would you live in an area that is just for people to work and work and work. Because down here in the boot of the country in Naples Florida this is where people come to get some relief and it makes you wonder as you stare at the Gulf and hear the surf like someone who has just come back from a war because you have come back from a war for survival--if there is a different way to live.

And you hear all sorts of other languages: French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, and you  have to wonder if the whole world has been sold a bill of goods. That you are supposed to spend the majority of your life working in areas you take vacations from to see how life should be and then  go back. And of course the world doesn't wait or care. Your small hell will be waiting for you when your week ends. So you just stare at the water and feel the sun and hear the surf and then you just sit down in the sand and face that glorious sun and drink up your missing Vitamin D, muttering...I made it. 

www.billhazelgrove.com
Rocket Man is scheduled to blast off April 26th