snowy minnesota home

As I write from my parents' porch in Austin, new snow is falling on the already drifted in backyard. It's so good to be in cold Minnesota, even the snow and windchill (-15 yesterday) lend a sense of adventure to the everyday. We should be on our way to Iowa to visit Ryan's folks, but the anticipated 7 inches today combined with the still icy highways from this weekend's blizzard are keeping us in Austin for an extra day. It's been a whirlwind visit here--we got to see some but not all friends in Minneapolis, visited a couple old haunts and had enough together time for Ellie and Della got their fill of each other (cabin fever that extra day being snowed-in in St. Paul). But the visit has had less leisure than we'd anticipated as we started working on house hunting in the event that this spring we're suddenly back on a plane to Minneapolis. My folks, Emily and Dan have graciously provided all the comforts of home away from home and childcare, and I am so thankful.

It's good to be in the States. Being home, it's just easy here, there's not much guilt associated with speaking English, it's more diverse than Maastricht (at least in the Cities), there's a real spirit of optimism (perhaps coinciding with the excitement around the promise of newness in an election year) and after you ease your way through snow drifts and ice you begin to gain a new appreciation for the American emphasis on convenience (drive through coffee shops!). Minneapolis felt like a small town as I bumped into former students, had a sweet clerk at our old co-op ask me where I've been and marvel at how big Ellie has gotten, etc. Ellie has been very frustrated with the car culture, asking if we can walk or take a bike to wherever we're going. As we think about a possible move home and especially where we may live, we're hoping to combine the best of European living (walking, biking, having less stuff but of higher quality, slowing down, eating great food, enjoying art routinely rather than a rare trip to a museum, etc.) with the best of American living. I've been scrutinizing neighborhoods to find the place that affords that kind of living and is still affordable. We'll see what happens.

So even as I say that it's so good to be home, I have to admit that like everywhere there are those things with which you must make peace. It's one thing to make peace with a quirk in another culture, but quite another when it's your own culture. As I was poking down Interstate 35 at 40 miles an hour yesterday (ice patches everywhere south of Owatonna) in my mother's Corolla with "Peace be with you", "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind" and "More trees, less Bush" bumper stickers, a jacked-up, half monster truck roared by me, it's 20-something inhabitants decked out in camouflage. They braked, rolled down the window, and gave me the bird and then tried to moon me. The funny thing was that the cold was just too nasty on exposed skin and so after they retreated behind their now rolled up ultra-tinted windows, I didn't have to see the full view. I laughed at the botched mooning but then sobered up when I thought about how even with so much beauty and goodness in this country, many people in the world now have an impression that Americans are a lot like those arrogant, reckless monster truck driving kids with the world as our highway. There are reasons for that impression, my little encounter reminded me, but the reality is much more complex and, I believe, more hopeful.
Love--and peace!--and hope to you all.