Real winter

We went on vacation and brought home two boys with the flu. At least, we assume it's the flu, since that's what their cousin had. The good news is, it didn't really hit until after we were done with all the fun stuff we had planned. The trade-off is the two miserable boys, fighting over who was the sickest, we just tucked into bed.

Wisconsin is extremely cold right now; by comparison the Pacific Northwest is positively balmy. You forget, over the years away, how the ice doesn't melt on the sidewalks for days. How the parking lots become obstacle courses with parking spots surrounded by piled-up snow. How the bitter cold makes you less and less inclined to venture outside for anything minor like, say, sightseeing...dinner...getting things out of the car. You forget how, if you leave a water bottle or an electronic device in the car overnight they'll freeze solid by morning.

I don't miss Wisconsin winters. Not even a little.

But I'm glad my boys had the chance to experience Real Winter for a week. (Though, with 3 nights spent at a resort complex where you could go from hotel room to several indoor water parks without ever stepping foot outdoors, it was hardly the walk-a-mile-through-the-snow-to-school character-building experience I grew up with).

Ever have dreams where none of the rooms of your house look like they're supposed to but you still know it's your house? Going back to my hometown is like that. Sometimes I wake up from one of those dreams (which often take place in the house I grew up in, evolved) and it takes a moment before I can find my mental map of my current house. When I get it reconstructed, it's always a relief to find my rightful place in time and space.

Being in Madison expands that disorienting moment into full days. There's my old house, but it's blue now and the deck and bushes are gone and I'm not allowed inside because strangers live there now. Here's my old campus, but I'm not a student here anymore, nor will I ever be. Nor will my children be, in all likelihood. Here's this bitter cold on my face, and salt on my boots, familiar but foreign.

Stepping off the plane tonight, I caught a whiff of cool, moist Northwest air and I knew right where I was. Home.