It’s snowing in Fort Wayne, on and off since yesterday afternoon. It’s not a heavy snow; I can see the road outside and the grass is still a greenish gold, but it’s been flurrying for long enough that I know a bigger snow is coming.
Even I accept, now, that it’s too cold to take the baby for a walk in his buggy, although I did try, one day after Thanksgiving. I bundled him up in his hat and his gloves and his padded jacket and I bundled myself up, too, and off we went to take in the fresh air and feel a cool breeze on our faces.
We turned back within five minutes. The housing estate we live in is new, any trees that were planted, barely six feet tall now and bare – there is no protection from the wind that comes from all sides of this very flat land.
It used to be marshland, which I’ve been told is why it’s so hard to get anything to grow here – my hydrangea never bloomed; the red maple I transplanted from my sister’s back garden withered and died within weeks.
Still, the crabapple I bought in the supermarket has survived one winter. I have great hope that it will live to see another, and another, until it’s full and lush, with delicate pink flowers that remind me of the cherry blossoms in Mountjoy Square Park, where I used to walk Coileán in all seasons, safe in the knowledge that it would never be too cold for a jaunt around the block.
This will mark my third winter in Fort Wayne, my third Christmas as a resident. It’s my second as mother and stepmother to our three boys. It feels like I’ve both been here longer and, weirdly, just arrived – I still don’t know where anything is. I consult Google Maps at least three times a day.
I’m not sure where’s the best place to buy fresh fruit, or who I’d go to if I needed to have something tailored. I haven’t been to the zoo, or to the Botanical Conservatory, except on a day I worked on behalf of a gallery I volunteered for and sat at a table inside the front door, selling puzzles and cards and wishing women, there with their children, a happy Mother’s Day.
Every day, I am surprised by something, and it’s usually something which, I have a sneaking suspicion, is very typical of Indiana.
Today, I was surprised when I saw a physical therapy company I went to before giving birth to Atlas – I’d read that there were exercises you could do to “prepare” your body for the “natural” birth I very much wanted, and here was a place that facilitated them – share some information on the Holy Family, in anticipation of Christmas.
Why is that necessary? I thought to myself. What has religion got to do with physical therapy, anyway?!
But religion has something to do with everything in Indiana. There is an insurance company just off the highway that has a massive, illuminated sign over its door that says, “CHRIST THE SAVIOUR IS BORN”.
“Is that a religious company?” I asked Brandin one day. “IS IT A CULT?!” (I secretly wish everything was a cult so that I could then go down a rabbit-hole of cult investigation, reading everything I could about that cult and learning to recognise its followers around town.)
“It’s an insurance company,” he said, as if he simply couldn’t see the illuminated sign.
“But it says, ‘Christ the saviour is born’ over the door,” I told him, giving him the benefit of the doubt – he was driving, after all. “It’s clearly a religious company.”
“Welcome to the Midwest,” he said drily, and turned up the radio.
I follow a flower farm on Facebook that frequently thanks the lord for the blessings bestowed upon them on any given day, usually in the form of good weather or beautiful flowers, or both.
My dentist even said, “thank the lord” one day, when I remarked upon how my tooth was no longer paining me, and I thought, with a pang, about how, when an Irish person says that, you know it’s just a turn of phrase. Here, it feels like they mean it.
And honestly? I felt aggrieved. God had nothing to do with my teeth; it was all down to my improved flossing regimen and adherence to my periodontal maintenance checklist.
I told Brandin one day – after that fateful trip to the optometrist where he used the N word and I was too cowardly to say anything – that I wanted to try not to give my money to people and businesses whose beliefs and values didn’t align with mine.
“Good luck finding much of anything to support in Fort Wayne then,” he said.
The weird thing is, I would describe Brandin, personality-wise, as an optimist. He is generally in a good mood; he laughs easily; he is a positive person to be around, unless he is hungry, or it’s what he considers his bedtime (9pm or so) and you’re trying to have any kind of decent conversation or change the bedsheets.
But in reality, behind his smiles, he is always looking for the worst-case scenario. Each and every suggestion I make, whether it’s about something to cook for dinner; a gift to buy one of the boys for Christmas; something new I’m considering trying, he will have a counterpoint. You’d better check that chicken’s not gone off; are you sure he’s going to like that?; I’m not sure you’re going to keep that up. (On the last point, he is always correct.)
So I was tempted to consider this kind of pessimism, on his part, as just being a quirk of his personality.
But the longer I live here, the more I get used to the cold in winter and the warmth in summer and the fact that the weather only really matters if you’re going to be spending time outdoors – inside, whatever the season, it’s a balmy 70 degrees anywhere you go – the more I realise that there are some things I maybe won’t ever truly understand, even if I grow to accept them.
Like the fact that it’s legal to ride a motorbike without a helmet in Indiana, and, worse, that a lot of people do just that, speeding along busy four-lane roads, their bare skulls open to the wind and the metal of oncoming cars.
Or the ungodly hour at which Midwesterners seem to want to wake up – 6am, almost every day, with breakfast plans frequently being made for 9am ON A SUNDAY.
Or the way they don’t care that things have disgusting names, and don’t seem to find those disgusting names off-putting: the “garbage skillet”, an egg scramble with, essentially, every meat they have in the kitchen and Shigs in Pit, an actually very delicious barbecue restaurant, being two great examples.
That elementary, and middle, and high schools all start at different times, so that if you have children who attend all three you need to do three separate school drop-offs; that most of the shops downtown don’t open until 11am on weekdays, and a lot of them are closed altogether on Mondays; that it’s impossible to get a decent pastry, even from a bakery, that is even remotely flaky, thanks to its having been sweating in cling film for God knows how long; that, in 2020, the majority of Hoosiers voted for Donald Trump (that people from Indiana are referred to as Hoosiers).
Like I said, I don’t think I’ll ever understand it – but maybe, like the snow that falls, on and off, from November to April (or even May), I might just get used to it all the same.