This week I am making a trip back to the area where I grew up.

For most people, this would be a fairly simple event. But for me? I over think everything. I don’t return home often. I live a few hundred miles away. My life has taken me down many different paths that didn’t include strong ties to “home”.

Michigan in January is pretty grim. Biting cold that seeps into your bones, along with a dampness. Overhead is a dull, steel gray sky. It feels like the world in sitting on your shoulders.

Team that with looking through 61 year old eyes rather than 18 year old.

Being only aware of driving with the windows down, the radio turned up, and friends in the car. That was what 18 was like. Seeing the houses that used to look so nice, now looking rundown, and shabby.

The structures go the way of the people you used to know. Some stay, some leave to be replaced by new. The landscape continually has changed, while the memories I carry are frozen in a particular time.

About as frozen as I was.

Don’t do that kind of cold weather any longer.

I remember hating that part of Michigan…the dreary, wet, cold Fall and Winter.