Snow is falling on my hometown

Snow is falling on my hometown.

I don't tell you this to be profound or "artsy" or "fucking annoying." I tell you this, my cynical hipster (or not-so-hipster) friends because of one simple thing: It's beautiful.

Snow falls differently here. It's not a sign of defeat or surrender like it became in my adopted town a little over a week ago. It comes as what it is...something that just happens.

I spent the evening with some of my longest-time, nearest (at one point) and dearest (always) friends in Minneapolis. These are boys (mostly) whom I've known for a good portion of my life. Some I met as early as age 5 (they went to Kindergarten with my brother Jeff, a whole 16 months older than me). These are the guys who are the stuff of legends; guys I have drank with, cried with and pretty much seen at one point in their lives throw up. All of them. I know it sounds like college-aged bullshit, but there's a certain bond that comes from seeing someone vomit and still loving them. Think about it.

I learned long ago, there's usually a reason I get the feeling I should write. It's because something has compelled me to do it. I'm not motivated by fear (or deadlines, usually) and I think this time, I was overwhelmed at the simplicity of many, many things tonight.

I realized something totally unremarkable: Things happen in the world that I just don't have to figure out.

I know! Crazy, right? But I swear (and it's not because I've smoked a huge joint) a few hours with some great people showed me important things. 1. That our lives never turn out exactly as we planned. 2. That you can have friends who turn out the complete polar opposite as you (REPUBLICANS, even! The horror...) and still love them. And 3. That you can plan, save, plot, protect, defend, prevent and guard against all bad things in the whole big wide world, and they happen anyway.

Shocking, sheltered little girl, you're saying? Yeah, maybe. But it's my revelation so you can go to hell.

Maybe those cheesy 80s Spring Break T-shirts really had it all figured out. Shit happens. You move. You lose a parent. You break up. You have a crisis of confidence (or several hundred), you fall back in love with the same people (sometimes in different uniforms, though not always), you rinse and you repeat. Sometimes even when you're positively a grown-up and you just don't want to.

And, it never really stops. Like now. Like my Mom's impending liver transplant that has me so scared I'm suffocating. Or like my need to make yet another huge life decision. Or that I still wonder on a daily basis what I'm going to be when I'm grown up. Wonder if that one will ever go away?

Things honestly just happen. Not because of something, or to certain people because they "deserve" some karmic payback. They all just happen. And all we can really do is sit back, appreciate people we love, and choose to be happy.

And watch it snow. Even when we don't want it to.