I loved Brooklyn immediately, but a few years into living there, when our son was born, my wife, Emily, began pitching me on Minnesota. She's from here and wanted Augie to have family around. A backyard. A sandbox uninhabited by rats. One summer, she brought out the big guns. She took me to the State Fair, where I ate all manner of fried things on sticks. At one point, she pointed out a large, wobbly Hasidic man who appeared to be wearing a tractor tire threaded through his belt loops.
"You see," she said sweetly, "there are Jews in Minnesota!"
Things continued along. Emily looked at photos of houses online. And then she fell in love with one. A small enough place. Painted green. In the photo I could see a garden hose out front. The kind hobos drank from.
"I am not going to water the lawn," I said. "I hate those guys."
"Guys who water their lawns?" she asked.
"You know what I mean," I said. "Wearing shorts. Waving to passersby like they're in a David Lynch film."
And then we put in an offer. When I told my boss about my wife's plan, I prayed he'd put an end to it, forbidding it outright. All this plan was missing was a good forbidding. We'll make it work, he said.
We moved at the end of January, during the Polar Vortex. That first night in my new home, the rooms were bare and cold.
"I can't feel my feet," I said from under the blankets.
"Spring will be here soon," Emily said.
She'd been saying it all day. It was always about spring being here and oh how great that'll be. You've never smelled flowers so fresh. Never truly felt the sun on your cheek. Never tasted tater tot hot dish until you've had it warmed to perfection under the Minnesota sun.
The doors of our house were hollow so I couldn't even slam one without it catching wind. "How can I punctuate an important point with a slam this meager," I yelled, slamming the door in impotent wrath. It was like slamming the flap on a pup tent.
That first night was so quiet. The noise in my head so loud without Brooklyn to drown it out. At our bedroom window I looked out onto the street, desolate under the street lamps, everything covered in ice, glistening like knives. Quietly, I wept.
"Spring will be here soon," Emily said.
And sure enough, the ice began to thaw and things began to look up. We bought furniture. Joined a gym.
"Using an electric car opener might be the most satisfying thing I've ever done in my life," I told my friends in Brooklyn.
They had pizza, but with the simple click of a button, I could open a nexus in my alleyway.
Emily introduced me to Cecil's, a Jewish deli that was very good. And now that the sidewalks were visible, I discovered there were two movie theaters walking distance away. And a bookstore, too, with a coffee shop in the back. It was nice.
And then, another blizzard. In the aftermath, I lost track of which were my good going-out sweatpants and which were my bad sweatpants. I stopped shaving. What was the point? The beard would grow back, the snow continue to fall. Why fight it?
"Spring will be here soon," Emily says. Of course it will. And so will winter.
Jonathan Goldstein is host of the podcast Heavyweight. He lives in Minnesota with his wife, Emily, and their 3-year-old son.
