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I love weather.
I LEARNED ABOUT WEATHER FROM MY FIRST MOMENTS OF LIFE, BORN into Chicago. I love Chicago. I love its style, its heart, its dark underbelly. But I do not live there, or in its weather.
Weather meant forsythia, its tiny yellow blossoms bursting on winter's hard branches, whispering of spring. Soon, weather meant lilies of the valley, their bells held to my child's ears, listening for a faint ring I was sure would be there; hollyhocks, their stems pushed into slits hidden under green caps of unfurled buds, to dance in a water bowl on the dining room table; spring birds, whose every name was known by my grandmother, umbrella plants in the forest preserves where she told me the fairies nestled, protected from the rain. Sixty years later, I can find umbrella plants in those same forest preserves, and I believe her still,