Revolutionary Road and Wind Chill
Before my trip to Omaha at Christmas, I gathered internet wisdom on how to dress for cold weather runs. I packed vests and gloves and long layers and wool socks. I told all my Californian friends I was off to brave winter-proper. My family and I landed in Nebraska a day before the storms arrived. I managed to sneak in a single run before the news blasted warnings about staying inside. A couple of miles into my run, the wind rose and the temperature dropped and the ground slicked over in thin ice. I gave up and took slow, slippery steps back to our rental house. That was my last time outside, barring gloved fumbles with the car seat straps, for a week. Windchill in the negative-thirties kept us all housebound. Being inside for days in a row left me in a strange daze, afloat in a soup of catatonia and panic. This separation from a sense of corporeality primed me to appreciate Revolutionary Road . Richard Yates ' characters, filled with desire to connect, cannot reach each other
