The art museum is good for your skin

There has been a hole in my coat pocket for at least three months. It's on the right-hand side and is as big as my fist. At first I ignored this puncture caused by my janitorial sized keys. Then I poked until it grew and now, unless I plug it with my knit hat, it swallows my phone and credit cards whole. I'm reminded as stray item start knocking my knees, fallen to the hem, that I ought to fix it. 

I know how. 

Even if I don't do it neatly or well, a row of zigzag stitching would stop it. But the task of taking out and threading the sewing machine for that one task seems too great. Of course I could pay the dry cleaner to do it, but that seems like a waste. So for now I just plug the hole with my hat and remember to pocket left. 

If I can hold out another two months, it might finally get too warm for this nylon sleeping bag of a coat and I can capitulate to the cleaners. Or just worry about it next year.

February in Chicago is a cruel place. And it hasn't even been that bad, we tell each other.

I miss foliage. There's a conservatory by the train stop and its windows are steamy like a teenager's parked car, plants pressing against the glass.

I miss humidity. I go to the Art Institute at lunch mostly to look at art but also for the balmy climate-controlled air, just enough moisture to keep the art from crumbling and I swear my pores start guzzling it. Sweating in my coat, I look for paintings of green forests and fields and imagine climbing inside.

I have plotted an escape.

Vincent van Gogh, "The Poet's Garden" 1888

Well, a three-day escape. We are going to New Orleans in a couple of weeks. My husband has never been there and I haven't been back in 8 years. I want to eat a lot of gumbo. And maybe have some pink slushy drinks, and tiptoe through cemeteries, and get covered in beignet powdered sugar and maybe watch Mike gamble and pause under all those hanging vines and beads and feel my skin re-hydrate.


Then maybe I'll come home and fix that hole in my pocket.