The people you knew years and years ago...are they still in your life? Are there people who know stories about you that you wish no one ever knew? And can you just reach over and steal a bite of their food, even if you haven't been in the same room for months and months? Old friends. Good friends.
Now, the winter where I live is dreary. The clouds hang on for weeks. It rains. We all get a little gloomy, no one wants to go for a walk in the rain. No one wants to just hang around outside. But really? We're all crazy. The flowers are blooming! It's in the 40s! And in February we start to get real spring planting moving, and the sun comes out for days and days! So what did we do?? My family made the brilliant decision to come to Minnesota for our mid-winter break. It's 11 below, the actual temperature, with a 25 below windchill. It hurts to breathe and anything exposed freezes. But we came here to see those old friends.
In fact, Suz even came from Florida because there was a chance that all five of us girls would be in one room for a day or so. Well, maybe it was more than that, but she came to cold weather so cold it's dangerous; willingly, even bought a plane ticket. We just fly standby.
So there we were, staying in downtown Minneapolis for an overnight, the five girls who share a brain. Now we're all 40--the baby of the group just climbing that milestone this month. And it was cold. The skyways were closed. But it didn't matter. We shopped--at Target. We ate at a nice restaurant, we went to a niche pub. We laughed over nothing and drank a bottle of champagne.
And then as we each leave, one by one, to go back to our lives, a little piece of me rips off again. It's like that really strong velcro that holds super tight, but when it rips apart it makes that huge noise.....rrrriiiiiiiip. And in a couple of days I'll leave too. Rrrriiiip. It makes me think that maybe, it would almost be worth it to move back here to live in the super cold to be nearer to some of these pieces of myself. But of course, when you live close together you hardly ever take a whole week to hang out with your friends. And now we have those friends that only know the stupid stories about us from the last five years who live by our new home, and that's a piece we'd have to rip off. And it's really, really cold in Minnesota. I don't want to live someplace where the very air you breathe is dangerous. Volcanoes, earthquakes...now that's a reason for danger. Air, not so much. So I'll wear goofy wool socks, and be cold inside buildings and out for a while. It's OK. I'm happy to do it--but, really, I'm not moving back.
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