It’s Spring Fever here in my lovely state of Maryland. The birds are chirping, the sun is oozing like warm syrup through the clouds, and I’m walking outside without a jacket. The first glean of spring and it can produce nothing but a smile. Days like this always bring back the best memories of my childhood and remind me that anything is still possible. Sunshine is happiness to me. And I love it but it makes me homesick. I miss Indiana like an ache, my family I crave, and a childhood that’s impossible to return to, I think on like crazy. Here’s what I think of on days like today:

I grew up on the fiery-leaved outskirts of Bloomington, Indiana University's small town reservoir for knowledge. I spent my time galloping barefoot through uncut, amber fields of weeds, traipsing down patchy roads of damp and dusty soil towards horse barns and forgotten, grave yards grown golden with dandelion snares. My sisters and I sucked down Yoo Hoos while mom braided our hair and in the winter we dripped out of a spotless porcelin tub onto cream-colored linoleum floors to dry, towel-wrapped at the foot of a roaring, old-fashioned woodstove. Dad was Merle Haggard's "Working Man", steel-toed boots crunching out the door before dawn and home, tar-filthy and fingernail-gritty, in the evening after a combatant day atop rooftops scorching his freckly arms to a leathery toast.

It was small town living despite the large, looming university mere minutes away. Sure, we watched IU basketball religiously, sported crimson t-shirts with cream inscriptions, and rallied around that beloved, controversial coach Bobbie Knight. But we were always waiting for those sweet summer days of students long gone and roads unclogged. Basketball made Indiana, a faded backboard and rusty hoop were trademarks of any Midwestern driveway. Adolescent boys sweat and grunt that crux of each dusky day until somebody's parent said to come in.

I'm often asked, what's in Indiana? To so many, it is one of the nameless, shapeless states, from which they know no one and envision nothing but bored cornfields and peeling red farmhouses. But Indiana charms me, an old friend, always resilient and waiting to tuck me into its familiar lands. Smokey firewood on the eve of autumn, swirling gray residue dancing, the husky sweetness of the fire's flaming aroma, brightening our faces and glistening runny noses, warming fingertips with the crackle of the embers turned by walking sticks. This is Indiana, the hollow echoes of an empty, uncut field, hugged by soggy evergreens, happy squirrels scampering the mulchy daytime forest floor, and feathery owls prowling for intruders at night. This is my Indiana, where I drank a hundred cherry slurpees at 7-Eleven, swung across steel monkey bars, and played on cooled tar kettles, half-finished wood porches, and ate nachos in the stands of local baseball games.

High school was classic, as we piled into rusty, pick-up trucks, hitching rides to parties around crackling bonfires so far up foresty hillsides and socked away ravines on lake shores, it was hard to get there or get back. We drank whatever alcohol someone could get their hands on, usually warm cans of Miller light and the cheapest, hangover-inducing vodka ever created, and relished in driving, unaccounted for, down deserted roads blazing thick with cricket dialogue and lightening bug borders. We blasted Skynard and Mellencamp alongside Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre., combining far off lives and authentically ignoring that these 18 years weren't invincibly eternal.

It's nice to remember all the good when writing—deleting the pauses of struggle. A semicolon might counter the best times, and a comma might offset the euphoria of this apple pie life. But focusing on something negative only dims the brightness of the positive. It steals the significance of incredible blessing. So in the temptation of self-pity, I try to step back. I think on this pretty golden childhood, and picture my dad. He is unquestionably a father to be emulated. He owns a simple t-shirt in three different colors. In simple, scrawled handwriting, they say, "This is the good life." And he always smiles. And he always works hard. And he truly believes that shirt. He's given me the insight to believe it too. A lot of people find definition in their misfortune, adorning their futures with ugly ornaments from the past. But that's the wrong way to live. Life in this America is your choice. And my life is the good life. I hope you choose the same.