My sleep’s been a little off-kilter the past week or two. I am not sure why this is – I am clearly not under any major stress, other than a little bit of the holiday blues. I am also eating regular meals, taking my vitamins, and feeding my brain with the delicious zombie-killing enjoyment of Left 4 Dead 2 almost any evening I can manage to gather at least 4 friends online on XBoxLive.

A piece of my stubborn soul still craves more seasonal change than the last few years have given me. I am used to the layer method of survival – thick black tights under long underwear under slacks, with thick socks and double t-shirts, sweaters, winter coats, doofy hats.

That’s one of the things I loved best about Chicago, by the by: the sincere lack of fashion requirement in the sub-zero of the period between November and March. Dress like a dork! Revel in the crazy knitted things that are not only made out of love, but out of scientifically-proven insulating construction. Pile the hats on with the earmuffs, the balaclavas, the snap-tight cuffs and boxing glove-sized woolen mittens. Screw the sleek silhouette of a well-turned flare coat: this quilted snowbeast is going to arrive home with a minimum of salted slush in her shoes, a mismatched flurry of practicality.

Ah.

It was the best. The one time of year that the weather beat us down and required that we place our sanity and our poor extremities above our very human vanities.

This morning, I walked outside with slacks, the normal amount of pairs of socks on my feet, and nothing but a zip-up fleece over my t-shirt. It was 28 degrees F out there, and it was bracing, and it was good.

The homesickness that followed didn’t leave me with regrets, either. A memory aid it was, pushing up all the winters past, of lights in windows, snowdrifts as high as my waist, the sound of tires crunching and squeaking through newly-fallen snow, a unique sound that is as joyous as it is ubiquitous – do you know that sound? I miss and love the sight of that new snow, smushed and patterned into tire tracks, the snow looking exactly as if it had the consistency of mashed potatoes. Well, uh, dirty mashed potatoes, I guess.

For the first time in months, I felt today like I was able to reach back to Diversey Avenue, to the Ukrainian Village, to the way an entire city could be hushed and humbled by its first snowfall.

There was no snowfall here, but it was cold enough for one, and I could feel it whipping right into my limbs, right into the cartilage of my nose, making my toes cold even as I pad around my temperate apartment. This weather connects chapters of my life together, daisy chains them so that I can, for a little while, navigate the labyrinth.

Rimed in frost, in salt, in icy snowmelt in glittering noontime sun, I am running, I am building snowmen, I am throwing with a warmed-up arm a gigantic packed snowball, I am digging out the car, I am feeling my cheeks go red with the very edge of frostbite, and then the blush of exertion.

It’s all there, even though it’s not here. I am here. I am feeling the cold and it’s soaking in and it’s, dare I say it, good.