Hello? God? Could you please induce Chicago?

It’s the end of April – May starts this week – and I’m still walking around with my poofy North Face jacket on. I still lean into the 30mph wind gusts and try to ignore the biting 40 degree weather, telling myself that I’ve made it through worse weather in this city. I tell myself that I only need to hang on for another few days, and surely things will warm up then. Except that I’ve been telling myself this for the last month – a month where the rest of the world long ago decided to usher in Spring. While elsewhere flowers bloom, birds sing, babies laugh, and people sing Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” to each other – in Chicago I still wipe away my tears of frustration and soldier on.

What makes things worse is Chicago’s schizophrenic insistence on sprinkling balmy warm days between the regular arctic blasts. This continues until one day it will be summer and 90 degrees out. Chicago plays sick mind games with its population, and for the longest time I struggled to find the proper analogy for what the city goes through, until it finally hit me – every year Chicago gets pregnant in September, and tries to give birth to Summer nine months later.

Think about it – the city starts out happy and giddy with possibilities in September. The first trimester is not too bad – sure there is morning sickness here and there as the mercury drops occasionally, but there’s the bigger picture to keep in mind. The second trimester the hormones go out of whack, and things get dicey. You can’t do anything to please the city, and even if you take one wrong step you get hit with freezing -20 weather, with snowstorms that make you wonder about this whole global warming nonsense. You eventually round the corner into the third trimester, which is when you begin praying for the pregnancy to conclude. This is the most frustrating part, especially the last few weeks.

Here is where the false contractions begin. One day it’ll be cold and blustery, and then suddenly it’ll be 65 and perfect. Is this it? Do you rush to pack away your winter clothes and bust out the flip-flops? Haha – no. Just kidding. False contraction – the next day it’s back to 30 degrees and depressing. Then the contractions start coming closer and closer together – two warm days here and there separated by only four or five cold ones. But your patience is being tested, because it is May now, and you really, really want to feel the sun on your face.

Now the contractions are close enough together that Chicago has to be taken to the hospital, where you as the useless significant other wait around, twiddling your thumbs, leafing through old magazines and drinking bad coffee from the cafeteria. And you wait. And wait. And then suddenly it begins. The city is ready to give birth! You rush to its side and hold its hand and ice its brow while it flings obscenities at you that make you blush. “C’mon honey, c’mon, you can do it” you gently encourage.

Suddenly Summer starts to crown, and the city tries to push, and you hold your breath in anticipation, and time slows down. And then it’s there – with a wet plop Summer arrives into the world. Temperatures immediately soar into the 90s, you are dazed and confused, but weirdly happy. You’re a new person now, with new responsibilities. You have to wear lighter clothes now, and purchase things like running shoes and bikes and roller blades. You wonder what life was like before Summer, but can’t quite remember, and anyway you don’t really care anymore. The city has blessed you with warm weather, and that’s all that matters.

Personally, I’d rather we just induce pregnancy or have a C-section every year and get Summer here on time in April – so what if Chicago thinks that’ll result in a premature baby? I don’t care. It saves me from the agonizing depression that I’m currently going through. Unfortunately I know I’m not in control. It’ll be warm when Chicago is ready to let it be warm. Until then, I’ll have to suck it up, and continue to wear my poofy North Face jacket.