Wisconsin: Home Away from Home
I can’t even remember the last time I visited Kuala Lumpur, much less celebrated a birthday. This year, however, I was invited by my sister and her family to spend some time together, as her children were preparing to leave for the United States to further their studies. My grand-nephew, Adam, will be attending the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and I was asked to share some tips on how to survive the cold winters and the friendly but curious Wisconsin folks.
I told him that Wisconsin is a very beautiful place, full of down-to-earth people. All it takes is to win their hearts, and everything will fall into place. I recommended he visit the Wisconsin Dells, a lovely spot this time of year to enjoy some of the most breathtaking fall colors in the Midwest. I also suggested Door County near Sturgeon Bay—a perfect family road trip destination. It’s cherry-picking season too, especially for the famous Bing Cherries of the region.
Wisconsin will always be my home away from home. I spent eight years of my adult life there. I worked at a meat-packing plant and studied at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay, where I earned my degree in Fine Arts. I built a close relationship with the local community and was generally well accepted by most I came in contact with. Of course, there were some whom I may have offended or clashed with—that, too, was part and parcel of living life in balance.
Green Bay was my first destination when I left Malaysia in 1973. It was there that I experienced a spiritual awakening, one that prepared me for the 21 years I would eventually spend in the United States. It was in Green Bay that I went through a divorce and separation from my first wife and my son. But it was also there that I began the path to redemption, putting myself through school and emerging stronger, with a deeper sense of self. It was in Wisconsin that I first realized I was destined to live like a rolling stone—that life is impermanent, that change is inevitable, and that letting go, while never easy, is essential if one wishes to keep moving forward.
One of the things I noticed in Wisconsin was how people lived very steady, sometimes unchanging lives. The farmers, the tavern owners, the teachers and lecturers—they all seemed to follow the same rhythm day after day, year after year. I admired this sense of stability, even as I felt that such predictability might lead to a kind of stagnancy. The same homes, same cars, same golf clubs and boats—they all aged alongside their owners, often ending up stored away in garages, relics of lives lived in repetition. The younger generation, on the other hand, seemed eager to leave at the first opportunity, escaping what felt like the slow-motion of small-town life, where beer drinking and deer hunting are among the highlights of the week. For the parents, school sports—basketball, baseball, and football—offered their main source of excitement and pride.
The four seasons left a deep imprint on my soul. Winters, especially, dictated how and where I lived. The cold could be brutal, with wind chill factors dipping far below zero. Without proper clothing, being caught outdoors could be dangerous. Summers brought their own challenges; I suffered from severe sinus infections due to ragweed pollen carried by the wind. But despite this, winter could also be the most beautiful time of the year—the landscape blanketed in pristine snow, still and silent, calming the spirit like nothing else. Summer, in contrast, was a season of celebration. Parks came alive, lakefronts buzzed with activity, and the whole state seemed to explode with joy. Baseball and football dominated evenings. Nights were filled with BBQs and toga parties.
And of course, there were the Green Bay Packers, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Wisconsin Badgers, and all the high school and college teams that kept the community alive and united. Lake Michigan never lacked for fishing boats, sailboats, windsurfers, and kayakers. And in the summer, the women of Wisconsin came alive like nowhere else—sun-kissed and radiant in halter tops and sandals, a true Midwestern smorgasbord of life and color.
I will always cherish my time in Wisconsin. It was a chapter in my life filled with insight, trials, spiritual awakenings, and lessons learned. It was a time of discovering both who I was and who I wasn’t. A time of both nourishment and numbing, of food for thought, and enough liquor to drown in.
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