Its -10 in NW Ohio

For the first time in my 45 years, I am living in a region with double digit, negative temperatures. Outside my door at this moment is a wide open span of world that, should one care to, could freeze an egg on the sidewalk in ten minutes.

My little frame house, snug and warm, seems like the entire world right now. Outside is a vast, dangerous white sea of cold, inside snug and warm my daughter is engrossed in a vampire novel, a candle burns on my mantle ( nevermind the fireplace plays DVDs and has cable) and a rich noodle soup is in the crockpot, waiting for the master of this little domain to return home to warm him and nourish his overworked soul.

It occurs to me that this is the center of American life. The little pink houses for you and me ( ok mine's yellow) the little boxes on the hillside, the ramshackle nearly condemed farmsteads where a woodstove heats the main floor, and the palatial McMansions and their deceptive false brick exteriors. Home.

Home doesn't have to be owned. It doesn't have to be a house. It doesn't have to be really anything except a space and a group of people that are family. Family is fluid... we go from 1 person apartments to 2 marrieds to babies and then maybe our kids friends become a fixture. We can be a group of 4 friends or college mates, we can be a few old women who'd rather have a house than seperate apartments. But we are people intereconnected by blood or love, by friendship or by profession.

No matter who is in office... as long as we have our few rooms where we can stay warm and fed, where we can come back to them and be with someone we care for, even if someone is a cat, the world is not too bad a place.