Welcome to installment two of the Hope Chest.
If you want to catch up with the first installment/explanation, check out this post:
Today I give you a post from April 2007. My baby boy was almost four months old. My husband at the time was halfway through dental school. Nobody was getting much sleep. I was working part-time reading student essays and wiping spit up the rest of the time.
04/07/2007 | published at 9:49 p.m. | cleveland, ohio
farenheit
when my husband told me this afternoon that there might be a job for us in small town nevada, i put on my coat and boots and took a walk in the spring blizzard. i got to the corner of mayfield and murray hill and stood pretending to wait for the 9X express.
i faced the wind and let the snow hit my cheeks, let it make my nose run, let it tickle my fingertips. i smelled the warm burst of hot dogs, the sizzle of garlic roasting in every italian restaurant up and down the street, the sweet warmth of cassata cake puffing in an industrial oven.
i watched a woman walk into la barberia di laura holding a pack of smokes and a bar of chocolate and walk out again a few seconds later holding only one smoldering cigarette. i watched students wearing sweats and scarves hurry to mama santa’s and duck inside the double wooden doors, shivering.
would all of this smell the same, look the same if cleveland scorched in a bath of sun year round? would i be as relieved to pull open the door of corbo’s bakery and hide myself in a white paper bag of cannoli and butter cookies if it was always warm enough to wade in lake erie? if a rose could bloom at 122 degrees farenheit, would it smell as sweet as the first taste of spring and mud and rain after months of deep icy clouds?
Can you imagine snow in April? It sounds lovely, honestly. We’re in thedriest, hottest, longest, largest drought in 1,200 years in Utah right now — I would give anything for days and days and weeks and months of snow.
But back to Cleveland me — we never did move to Nevada: the promised job evaporated, like so many things do. But I remember being so worried that it would work out and there I would be: the heat, the dust, the casinos. It seemed so bleak — so utterly not what I wanted. But I guess twenty-eight year old me had no idea how sideways everything could really get.
At least a good cannoli is always good, no matter the weather.
The question about whether a rose blooming at 122 degrees would smell as sweet as the first spring after months of ice stayed with me. It captures how much beauty depends on contrast, waiting, and the seasons we endure before it arrives. And that final return to the cannoli made the memory feel wonderfully human rather than overly polished.