 |
| Milwaukee Central Library, formerly the public museum |
[originally published in 2001]
It was a little
world, and it was all blue. I pressed my nose against glass to gaze at it, to
become part of it, at least in my imagination. It was a small diorama at the
old Milwaukee museum downtown, a classic marble building (now the Central
Library) that had a totem pole out front. The diorama housed a village of tiny
people at work and play, Eskimo people as I called them then. Their houses were
made of snow, not of wood like the white Cape Cod I lived in. Their
transportation was sled and dog, not a red 1953 Ford like our family used.
In the diorama,
the people seemed to live in an atmosphere of blue, dark blue. Either the sun
didn’t shine at all that day, or the land simply took on a blue cast from so
much snow and ice and so many clouds. I didn’t care then about the explanation.
It was my favorite place in the museum.
During the month
of December 2000, I felt like I was living in that little diorama. It snowed
almost every day. When it snowed, it usually snowed all day long. I’ve never
seen a succession of days where such light, fluffy snow fell. There were no
driving blizzards, no wet, heavy flakes.
Nearly every
weekday morning before work during the past year and a half, my husband and I
have spent about forty-five minutes outside. In summer we go biking, in spring
and fall we walk, and in winter we go snowshoeing.
I’ve discovered
that my antidepressant is my time outdoors. The hardest part is getting out of
bed; when we bundle up, we’re not cold (at least not after the first five
minutes). The trick is to keep our coats, hats and scarves on a hook so we can
put them on with our eyes half-closed.
It’s like we’re
living in that blue diorama now, especially at 5:30 a.m. when we begin our
trek. Sometimes I think about those Inuit people who live in that dark blue
land. As we snowshoe along before dawn, it’s incredibly mysterious and
beautiful.
Sometimes, as I’m
tugging my snowshoe out of deep powder, I wonder to myself, “What am I doing?” Then I look out at the tree
silhouettes on the snowy landscape. Or I look at my husband’s sweet form in
that snowmobile suit, with the earflap hat on top.
And I know that
the blue world is okay. I can do this, at least for a time.
[This essay will be part of my new book
Dessert First, out soon on Amazon.com]