that frog girl

Some five years ago, Scott and I came to Chicago in our shiny green Saturn with a futon, a ton of books, yards and yards of rolled up canvases and a computer. A kindly rental agent showed us around and helped us find a perfectly adequate apartment in an up-and-coming but still mildly sketchy neighborhood, situated halfway between Scott’s grad school in the suburbs and my intended place of employment, downtown Chicago. We’d been together for less than a year and Scott had decimated his tiny investment portfolio to buy me an engagement ring. I had no job, no plan. Scott was still excited about grad school. In a word, we were clueless.

Next week, we head out in the same green Saturn, a little worse for wear but recently repainted to hide all the scuffles of big city parallel parking (there are small advantages to getting rear-ended in one’s last month of living in a city like this). We will bring with us even more books, two computers and two laptops, a belligerent stuffed frog, a bed, an increasingly flattened and creaky futon and that same roll of old canvases, none of which have been unfurled in all that time. A kindly real estate agent helped us find a beautiful townhouse in a well-to-do neighborhood on the southern edge of Charlotte, North Carolina, still conveniently situated a half hour’s drive from where Scott will work in the suburbs and where I will on the city’s poorer northwest side. And we’re still clueless.

We leave with just shy of three years of marriage under our belts, one Ph.D. and one Master’s Degree. Scott goes on to build metal alloys for aircraft engines at a boutique metals company, while I steel myself (ha ha) to begin my first year of teaching physics to high school students, excited and nervous and scared out of my wits.

We’ll be living off the grid for a couple of weeks, but should still be in touch at least occasionally via email. Or you can still call my cell phone. I might even answer. We’ll pass on the new snail mail address as soon as we have it.

Good luck and good journeys,
-Diane.