the geranium

My mom bought me a pale pink geranium last summer, and I kept it in the window of my three season porch, the only pretty thing in the space I used as storage for moving boxes and everything else I didn’t know what to do with. By November it still had flowers, so I took that as a sign to overwinter it in my south-facing kitchen. Not that I knew what overwintering meant or entailed, just that I could keep it forever.

Of course, I overestimated my ability to keep something going on my own, because by the spring one of the offshoots of the plant had rotted through, and I had to pare the whole thing back, leaving very little of the original foliage and growth. I repotted it, mixed in new soil and gave the plant a sunny perch on the cleaned up porch, and waited. 

The remaining leaves wilted. The plant looked so sad and beleaguered, I truly thought it was finished. But after a few extra days of sunshine, the leaves began to perk up and reach towards the light. After a week there was a new bright green offshoot, and I knew then it would be okay.

I still don’t have any blooms on my geranium. And I know I could have tossed the old plant, bought a new one full of flowers, already beautiful and perfect. But I needed this–giving something time and attention and tenderness, but also the space to grow and thrive.

I needed to remember what love is.

living, etc

I’m in my new place.

From my second floor window I can watch the goings-on of the park, and from the back porch I can spy into my neighbor’s formal garden, with its rose arch and bubbling fountain. Down in my own yard, the one I share with people whose names I know and whose daily routines I’ve already committed to memory, I can watch robins fight over the croissant crumbs I leave dusted on the brick path. 

And everywhere I go smells like flowers.

I used to come to this neighborhood a lot. I used to wait by a gate for a man and feel my heart burst a tiny bit when he would walk up and smile at me. Now my heart bursts for different reasons, like when I turn the corner onto my street and see the gas lamps flicker and the birds dart in and out of the trees and hear the sound of rustling leaves. 

I have a few modest hopes here. I hope the air will smell like roses all summer long. I hope the only things that make me cry are Phoebe Bridgers songs. And I hope I can remember this feeling, because it’s the first time I’ve felt this way in a long time.

Please enjoy the sonic stylings of babygirl, my happy to be sad playlist.

a stoop of my own

When I moved here, the goal was finding a foothold in the city with a move-in date that aligned with my house’s closing date. I didn’t have the mental or emotional capacity to invest in an apartment search that incorporated my aspirations for living—I was selling a house and tasked with moving a marriage worth of stuff by myself—I just wanted in-unit laundry and somewhere to park my car. Plus it was winter; inventory was low and uninspiring, except for one dreamy apartment I lost out on. 

But the daze in which I moved here subsided. A few months ago I started the search again. I’ll confess, I love the kind of anxiety apartment searching induces, because it’s the productive kind of anxiety, not the pointless spirals of despair I’m accustomed to. And then the constellation of tasks that follow a move–I love spending months shopping for a single table, debating between two shades of pink paint, or rearranging a room multiple times.

I found an ancient (for Chicago) and beautiful apartment on a tree-lined street, big enough for me and a couple of my burgeoning interests. I somehow beat out six other people for the apartment; when my new landlord told the others she had picked me, it incited a bidding war. Fortunately, I was left out of it–she had her heart set on a divorced nurse with zero romantic prospects and no pets. She knows I’ll stick around like moss.

After I signed the lease, we stood outside the building talking about gardening, my job, and who I knew in the neighborhood. We discussed the neighbors, how everyone buys pizza on Tuesdays in the summer and parks themselves on the stoop. She mentioned a garden club. As we talked she said hello to no less than five people. And that’s when I decided if my landlady wanted to take me under her wing and transform me into the block’s doyenne in waiting, I would not stop her.

The apartment itself is plenty compelling, of course. I can’t wait for the big fireplace that begs for an arrangement of quince in the spring and a fresh garland in the winter. An enclosed back porch that will be good for naps, watercolors, and potting plants. A living room with western exposures, so I can read there in the afternoons, sharing a sunbeam with a cat I don’t have yet. And the flower bed I’ve been promised in the garden—what to plant? I don’t know yet. That’s the fun part.