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02.02.02…today is my father’s birthday. He was born on Ground Hog Day. What a strange thing to have tagged onto your day every single year. Yet in a way it was prophetic. He was a man that could read the clouds and he had eyes the color of Windex.
Today is also Winter Festival back in the land of my father, up at the lake. I wouldn’t miss it for anything, not even a Key West vacation, on the coast of the Caribbean.
I am hand-in-hand with a chocolate man wearing cashmere and scented with that citrusy Michael Jordan aroma. He is an ad exec discussing the promotional qualities and income generatives of an event like this. He is holding me very close as we cross the sidewalk in front of the lake. Fierce winds are piercing my red leather scuba jacket. A heavy parka or my black full-length lambswool coat would have been more sensible on a bright sunny winter day up here, but I live in a river valley south, in a windy-city state, and I am almost always surprised by the concoction of weather when I leave my nest. 50,000 people attended the Festival last year. The sidewalks are flooded again and I am thinking all of the bodies are generating heat. They are bundled in facemasks, Artic gloves, and subzero coats. They are smarter than my city man and me.
I spy the snow sculptures at the Riviera. Artists from Illinois, Wisconsin, Maine, Idaho, Alaska, Vermont, Oregon, and Montana created the ephemeral art in the last two days. They come in teams and are sponsored by the local businesses, all expenses paid.
They are vying for the cash prizes.
We queue up to view them closer. A man with a giant mouth, three spheres, a fireman helping a child (9.11 art), the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland, people are stopping, taking pictures, the group moves slowly.
He is talking about a jazz club called Jilly’s that we passed on the way here…Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Charlie “Bird” Parker.
I am closer to home.
I am thinking of my mother and brothers and ice-skating a few hundred yards from here, eighteen years ago. I am thinking of the time when I fell and my brother fell on me. My skate went right up his nose. My mother blamed me.
No skaters this year. The lake hasn’t frozen over. The sheer winds are still the same. I had forgotten about the continual earaches I had as a child.
I am dreaming of a future child, a boy. I will name him Wright. His father will pick the middle name. Or if we have a girl, then he picks the first name, and I pick the middle name.
We will have a dog.
Smashed in a gaggle of strangers I look up to the sky. The clouds are telling me stories and I am no longer here.
