I am standing on wet ground outside my childhood home, under mid-morning tropical sun. The air smells of earth and newly banished rain. Adults speak indoors; their everyday worries are abstract, distant.

I wake up to a snowy Chicago morning, work on a weekend, and infant needing to be fed.

Priya Balasubramanian is a writer and physician. She’s written a novel, and no longer wakes up to snow.