“I feel like a melting snowman,” I told my husband en route from my parents’ house in Morton Grove to my sister’s in Evanston, as we made the rounds on the day after Christmas, saying our final goodbyes before heading back east.
That was my best attempt to explain to him why I’d spent pretty much the entire trip crying, triggered by everything from the refugee snakes in “Zootopia 2,” to the beautifully “woke” sermon at Christmas Eve service in my childhood church, to the tiny Cinderella onesie and baby Yankees beanie in my sister’s pile of gifts (new niece due in March; her dad’s from New York 😉), to lamenting current events with my mom, our family’s OG “radical left scum,” to random sentimental songs on Holly, or Jolly, satellite radio stations, to the usual memories of Christmases past and loved ones lost…
J-P and I have been married 18 years, so he’s used to my high sensitivity and seeing me “emote,” as he puts it, but this was…extra. I couldn’t hope to make him understand when I didn’t totally get it myself, but now that we’re back in Bucks County — as the calendar turns to 2026, I’ve now lived in Pennsylvania longer than I did in Illinois 😳 — my whole “thawing out” analogy makes much more sense.
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Jen Wielgus Journalism 