LITMIR.BIZ

      Those who dwell in northern climates share a measure of pride in our bravado toward winter. Like many who live where the audacity of winter throws blockades before spring, I come from sturdy stock—farmers, hard workers, and football fans who drink cold beer at outdoor stadiums during frigid January playoff games. I’m not a woman who ties a sequined cardigan over my shoulders lest a draft should offend me. My dad always told my sister Julie and me, “You girls are tough.” We believed him.

      When I was single, a divorced mom, I shoveled deep snow from a long driveway with a bundled baby on my back, changed a tire in an ice storm, and repaired my furnace with a wrench in one hand and a home repair manual in the other while a wind-up swing tinked out a melody as it comforted my snow-suit clad Andrea. Today, life is softer for me. When the snow falls Paul, my husband of over 16 years, rises early to snow blow our drive before he heads off to work. I still shovel the light stuff. I’m not a wimp. Sometimes I clean my snow-covered windshield with my bare hands and wait until the temperature drops below twenty before I consider wearing a winter hat. I eagerly head outside in December to take pictures of tall grasses and trees when snow and ice decorate their dormancy. My Milwaukee neighbors and I bake apple and cherry pies from frozen fruit bought during summer jaunts to Wisconsin’s Door County peninsula. When the snow cleanly blankets our hills and trees, the white slate provides a reprieve from outdoor chores, as it covers broken fences and the weeds we never got around to pulling. Wisconsin’s beauty and opportunity for recreation draws scads of folks from Illinois, trailing snowmobiles instead of the boats they pulled in summer. They join us when winter woolies, sleds, and skis claim a prominence in our lives. We watch the crimson red of the cardinal deepen its shade against the stark snow and appreciate the junco’s flash of black and white tail stripes as he excitedly migrates to share our winters. January’s and February’s nip both sting, but we accept it. In the middle of winter, we make peace with boots, gloves, and Polartec gear. We live in a community that expects the cold and knows how to dress for sledding parties followed by hot cocoa with marshmallows for the kids and the optional shot of peppermint schnapps for the grownups. We enjoy our fireplaces, hand-crocheted afghans, and baked chicken dinners, and as long as the oven’s heated, we whip up batches of chocolate chip cookies and banana bread.

      We enjoy winter, but about the middle of March, when the dirty snow matches the color of the sky, we pine for a lasting spring. When the tides of spring are segregated by sloppy gray days, I’m not the only one who feels a sluggish depression. Throughout the Midwest, April often gives us heavy clouds that seal out the sun and send cold, rough rains and hail. The rise in barometric pressure presses our heads down and curls our spines into giant commas as we wait for the warmth and sunshine we believe we deserve by virtue of having endured over five months of winter. Last April, the season carried more asperity than most of us could stand up to. Our sun-deprived complexions and furnace-dried skin weathered within the gloom of a cabin fever that followed us outdoors when we stepped under the low ceiling of gray clouds. We don’t usually like to admit any resentment toward Wisconsin, and we roll our eyes at our Arizona and Florida relatives when they call from their lanais with sunny weather reports and sickening good cheer about not missing the snow and ice. Beneath the tone of their happy voices, I hear a judgment that we who dwell in Wisconsin are moronic or underprivileged. Every other month, we brag about our state and don’t tolerate any denigration cast upon our cherished heartland. In April, we stand down.

      When the evening weather report called for sun and warmth, I realized that although Paul had to work, DJ and I had the day off. I leaned on the doorframe of our family room and told him, “Find your hiking boots and go to bed early. Tomorrow we’re getting up at sunrise to search for something green or spring-like.”

      DJ looked up from his videogame, accepting my declaration with a cheery “Okay” that made me hyper-aware of my negative thoughts.

      The sun didn’t shine the next morning, but the haze carried more warmth than we’d felt for months. The temperature was expected to hit sixty-five degrees. A slight smile curled DJ’s mouth as I gripped his shoulders while he feigned a walking sleep. I steered him toward the front passenger seat. Sitting next to the driver was still a novelty for him. Paul and I had made him wait until he weighed over ninety pounds before he could ride up front. He buckled his seatbelt, wadded his sweatshirt into a makeshift pillow, and leaned against the window.

      A ball of fuzzy daylight illuminated the horizon as we left our neighborhood of pulled curtains and empty streets. Horicon Marsh, the largest freshwater cattail marsh in the United States, covering more than 32,000 acres, was an hour’s drive away. In our migration there, we joined millions of birds. Over 60 percent of avian species in North America have a presence in this hot spot of the Mississippi flyway zone. Almost every type of waterfowl using the corridor rest, nest, or live at Horicon Marsh. The ancient flyway has been imbedded in birds’ and butterflies’ migration patterns since the glaciers began to recede, leaving behind ridged hills called drumlins, small hollows called kettles, and thousands of larger depressions we know as lakes and marshes. The flyway is so old that naturalists studying the migration of monarch butterflies over Lake Superior can only explain a consistent and distinct detour they make over a wide section of lake as the pathway developed when a glacial iceberg presented an obstacle to their travels.

      DJ’s mouth hung open, and his head bobbed as he slept. When the car veered toward Highway 45, his head rolled and jerked him awake. He looked around at the brown fields and gray skies. “The sun’s not out? Isn’t it supposed to be a nice spring day today?”

      Instead of offering him encouragement about how warm weather was right around the corner, I supplied an exaggeration of commiseration. I told him about how, in the eighties, before we had a roofed baseball stadium, the Brewers had to change the date of their home opener twice in one year because of April snow. And when I married my previous husband on April 2, the forecast called for a mild day. Hail, instead of rice, pelted the wedding party when we raced to our cars after the ceremony. About a third of the guests and one of the band members in the Lockwood Trio missed the reception on account of the ice storm. The duo lacked harmony, which was a harbinger of a dissonant marriage. I didn’t share information with DJ, but it was difficult not to recall the control, the slaps, and the desperate unhappiness of being married to a man who believed he loved me, yet sought to control me using multiple forms of intimidation. The hitting was kind of gift, as it awakened me to his desperate need to dominate. As soon as I recognized the violence hovering around Andrea, I left.

      DJ leaned away from me and pressed his head against his sweatshirt. He closed his eyes as if he were unwilling to add my wintry discontent to his own.

      I spoke softly, more as a reminder to myself than to my wisely disengaged son. “Sorry, DJ.”

      My son, my youngest child, sat in the passenger seat next to me reaching into his mouth, wiggling a loose incisor, and growing toward adolescence and manhood. Ever since he began to speak, he’s always been a chatterbox, blabbing in the car about his favorite Sponge Bob cartoon, sharing each unfiltered thought that came into his head, and recounting the details of all the moments we spent apart; but recently a more laconic side of his personality had emerged. Like his father, his default description of each day was “Fine.” He didn’t want to talk about the “health lecture” at school, but he listened in exasperated quietness as Paul and I reviewed the basics of sexual maturation. DJ avoided me the rest of that evening, hyper-aware of our differences. The subject of the distinctions between men and women had come up before.

      When DJ was about five, we read the book I’m Lost by Elizabeth Crary. The book instructs, “When lost, go to a police officer, a store clerk, or a woman with children—a mommy.” Shortly after reading the book, a school program gave DJ the same advice, and later

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