Spring in the Midwest

I can't even describe the song that's in my heart.

Today was the second day over 50. My heart and mind are still bursting from the very inspiring work thing I went to on Tuesday and Wednesday. I had my first session with my trainer this morning and although I nearly passed out, I am on my way to being a stronger, fitter me. Everyone at work was still abuzz from the conference too, and meetings including light, cheery discussions of fun, completely non-work-related things.

I had my perfect Friday evening, plus. I went to Barnes & Noble (hardly anyone there when I got there, then the intellectuals and goth teenagers starting filling in). Had a tall soy chai latte and a bag of (really nasty but trans-fat-free) potato chips while reading the New Yorker. Made some progress on The Project (more on that later). Noticed that it was bright, bright sun at 6:20. Wrote some stuff for the blog (see next post). Wafted out as the shadows lengthened, listened to my new CD of The Shins, Oh, Inverted World. Drove up College Ave with everyone else in town.

Then drove by City Park, which was right where I thought it would be. I'd see photos of it in Appleton web sites before I moved here, and once while driving with Mom and Dad over Thanksgiving weekend when they were here I saw it fleetingly from a car window, with a glorious blue Christmas tree in the middle. But had never got out and walked around in it. I did, I parked and walked a block and walked to the Christmas tree and around the statue of the kids and the back. Saw two houses with For Sale signs (one "reduced") that have open houses on Sunday. Hm.

This town is full of people out doing Midwestern outdoor springtime warm-weather things, all just today. It's a Friday night and it's been above 50 degrees for two days in a row. Here are some things I saw:

- Kids riding home from school on bikes with t-shirts and cut off jeans
- Kids sitting on a park bench patting a little Husky puppy
- Three guys playing baseball in the road, and stopping when a car came by
- Couples walking in the park
- "I love Larissa" written on the concrete surround of the big tree in the park
- A big flock of crows in a tree, squawking
- Back yards without fences
- Kids playing on a swing set while the parents leaned against a bench and visited
- Couples and families walking dogs around my lake
- A robin singing away and bobbling along the ground
- A pink sunset

I went to get the mail and didn't even recognize the mailboxes or the houses over that way because last time I went to get my mail there was a 5-foot bank of snow beside the boxes. The landscape looks all different with different proportions now. The grass is greening up a bit.

This really is a different place. All summer I bet I will be walking around transported to scenes from my childhood - playing in the street, the sound of grown-ups talking, the light fading when it's time to come in from playing but still a warm glow in the concrete and on your skin. Ah, the Midwest.

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The place I moved to was a bleak, frozen, dark, silent place with no people moving around in it. But that was what I needed, right then. That was all I could handle.

The Project, the conference, the furniture, the new sense of direction, the grounded feeling, the swelling song in my heart - it is Spring. It really is.