On a cold, blustery February day, I found myself back in my hometown, broke, broken, alone and confused. In a daring escape, like something out of an old war movie, my mother came to Phoenix and liberated me from my husband. In the dead of night, we packed up ten boxes and two suitcases, slipping away quiet as death, to board a plane early the next morning.
     In Phoenix, where I had lived for three years, it was warm. Warm enough, that just the day before, I went swimming in the pool outside our apartment with my two sons. Stepping off the plane in the Midwest, it was cold, snowing and miserable. My boys had never seen snow in their young lives, and they were not impressed, loudly crying their objections to the entire situation. Shivering and blue, my mother hustle...

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