Jen + Minneapolis=true love???

Or an abusive relationship?

Minneapolis has been flirting with me. No, scratch that, Minneapolis has been straight up- all out hitting on me, and begging for me to come back. I don't know how she heard I was leaving, but she knows. I haven't even fully gone yet and she wants me back.

After months of the kind of cold and snow and ice that has you slipping and falling and freezing and questioning your will to live, and the kind of inhumane nights that have your teeth chattering like a lover pounding on the door to the bedroom, begging you to let them come back in and forget about whatever abhorrent thing they've done to get themselves kicked out in the first place, the sort of temperatures that makes the rest of the nation justifiably question our sanity (and look at us sort of cautiously, with those side eyed sneaky glances where you can just TELL they're thinking Minnesota nice??? what DOES that mean?? These people live in a meat locker most of the year for God's sake) as Minnesotans, the unthinkable happened, and it happened on Monday.

Spring came.

As Minnesotans, we've come to know and live by that annoying red headed freak Annie 's credo, joining in with her obnoxious, earnest singing of "the sun'll come out tomorrow," and jumping right on her delusional bandwagon that if we're just happy enough, and clap your hands if you believe in fairies enough (oh wait, that's Peter Pan, another crazy weirdo ...) and surely after winter will come spring. We are so hard up for the warm weather and the onset of summer that we will jump at any chance to call any sort of weakening in the armor that is winter's character "spring"- (I just did it after a few days of 40 degrees!) Each year we dread and deny that the winter is a bad thing, and some of the real crazies even look forward to the pending snowfalls and outdoor activities- the snowshoeing, the ice skating, the sledding, snowmobiling and cross country skiing. The snowmen, the Winter Carnival, the hot chocolate and cider, the wonderful fluffy snowflakes gently falling from the heavens like drunken fairies softly drifting to the ground. Perhaps a polar plunge or two here and there.

It started Monday with the kind of amazing weather that people from Hawaii and Florida get out their blankets and electric heaters for, and the kind and sends Minnesotans out in droves inappropriately underdressed. Being born and raised, I laced up my sneaks and went for the run around Lake of the Isles that I have been craving since late January, when the snow (and ICE) became too much for me. the sun was moving toward setting and shown over the frozen lake as purty as a picture, not unlike the gorgeous postcard your friend sends you from Hawaii in the dead and winter that you rush without even reading to put up in your office at work, both to show off that you have friends cool and rich enough to get to Hawaii in the winter and to subtly brag that they love you enough to send you a postcard from their exotic vacation locale.

Monday I smiled at Minneapolis, politely thanked her for the day and steeled myself for the inevitable onslaught of freezing rain that was sure to follow. I knew I was making the right decision to live in the desert, and I wouldn't be missing Minnesota one bit, thankyouverymuch.

Tuesday I was at work, another day of unseasonably warm weather (the kind that makes you have complete amnesia as to why global warming is a BAD thing if it brings this kind of heat in March -sidebar I am talking 40 degrees - just for perspective) when I began reading the local paper. The articles in the Star Tribune and the City pages were good. Really good. It reminded me how forward thinking and open the residents of Minneapolis are, or at least the people we allow to write in our newspapers without tarring and feathering them. People in Minneapolis in particular seem to really care about things and Minneapolis is generally known as a place that is open to growth and change. Perhaps we accept change because we have been shaped by it's inevitability. The seasons will come and go and try as we might to stop them, they are going to change. And as we have no other options we accept the change and learn to embrace the beautiful possibilities and complete contrasts and activities that each new season brings.

On that day's walk, I was out around the Isles with my friend and her dog, everyone enjoying the nice weather and everyone's dogs saying hello and people smiling at each other and I thought "hmm....." Minneapolis people are kind of nice. These can't be the same people that block the entrances to every bar, restaurant and really building in Minneapolis smoking and bitching about the weather, stealing your cabs and your parking spots.

Tuesday I smiled at Minneapolis, thanked her for the on time bus, pleasant bus driver, and seat on the bus, and thought about the next day's inevitable freezing rain, the increased probability of falling, and return of the asshole person taking my parking spot at the Wedge. (Now those of you who know me have found me out! I never park at the Wedge, I live insanely close and should always be walking there...- that last sentence was purely for dramatic effect. Did it work?)

By Wednesday I was a wreck. Over the weather. It was still warm. With Minneapolis it seems I had settled into my familiar pattern with relationships of breaking up with someone and then wanting them back, even though the bigger part of me knows I should keep walking. Could it be that I have been overreacting all these years? Look at this balmy warmth! 45 degrees! In March! (in the sun, at the brightest part of the afternoon). Have I been delusional and overreacting (not me! no!)? Were Minnesota winters not really that bad? The memories of how bone chillingly cold it had been all winter and every winter previous were becoming foggier, as I conveniently forgot the hot chocolate and hot cider scalds on the hands as a kid, the feeling of a shower of snow freezing off your face or that little area of the back of your neck where the scarf didn't quite cover, the sting of a properly packed snowball (or really ice chunk disguised as a snowball) skillfully and cunningly thrown cracking against the well aimed target that is your skull. I revised the memories of the multiple (-cut me a break, I lived in Duluth!) car accidents caused by slippery roadways (and the shitty driving on the part of Minnesotans across the board, to say nothing of the driving done by other people in other states who "just don't know how to deal with these types of conditions"-as if we're much better) cars not starting due to freezing cold temps, the preemptive need for HEET, and how dirty and salty and nasty everything is all winter other than when it is actively snowing. And really even then it's a bitch because there's plows and shoveling and sand and salt and slipping. I imagined that all those days of ice fishing on the frozen lakes (with the gaps between my sleeves and my mittens burning with cold and the wetness of my gloves as I inevitably got them wet and they refroze, we won't even start on the wet, smelly boots) as a child were either a dream or something I watched on TV, or that there was an ice house to stay in. These memories were forgotten, and the memories I was grasping on to seemed so pleasant and lovely.


Having conveniently rewritten the history (reality?) of the harshness of a Minnesota winter, I began to feel as if I would be completely and totally missing something essential to my DNA were I to leave and live in the dessert for 2.25 years. I don't remember EVER having this early of a spring. Have I been a big baby all this time? How can I leave this place with the amazing springs? The springs that make me think of the summers and how fun and warm (OK sometimes unpleasantly hot, and humid- which is another blog completely- but still) and all the fun warm weather things we get to enjoy as Minnesotans- the boating, the beaches, the fishing, the cabins and outdoor concerts and Farmer's Markets and softball games and walks around the lakes, the State Fair, the Aquatennial, all the little cities and small town's county fairs and carnivals, the fireworks, the sparklers ,the sprinklers, the fresh fruit and sweet corn, the mosquitoes that give you something besides the weather to bitch about.


And how could I want to leave Minnesota? The perfect, caring, kind lover that gives you such good things and only wants the best for you. What was possibly wrong with me? I was in a panic, not that the Peace Corps was the wrong decision for me, but that Minneapolis would miss me and I would be abandoning her. (None of this was at all was influenced by all the other emotional upheavals I was experiencing, of course. )

In the midst of all this waffling and emotional angst about leaving the city and state that raised me, and loved me, and has fought with me and for me and has frozen me and put me at my wit's end, Thursday came. I was rushing around uptown on foot, running errands, paying no attention to what was going on around me as I was plotting and planning in my head and organizing and running late, balancing two boxes of strawberries that were of course extremely overpriced. And suddenly something shiny caught my eye in the melting snow and mud. Thinking it was a quarter for the laundry machines I grabbed it and shoved it in my pocket. Later that night, as I was emptying my pockets and reveling in the lovely, relaxing, healing space that all that rushing around earlier had evolved into at dinner with friends, I looked at the coin I had snatched off the street. It was a token. For the light rail. The last Minneapolis experience I will have before going to California and then onto the Peace Corps will be taking the light rail across the city to the airport. I realized then that Minnesota and Minneapolis are still my loves and my home, through good and bad, and ugly and beautiful, she has the truest kind of love for me. The kind that wants what's best for you even if it means leaving her. She's OK with me leaving and is joyful about it, and rather than conniving and tricking me to get me to stay, she has given me beautiful, sunny, unseasonably warm and gorgeous days as a parting gift, and something beautiful to remember her by. She has given me a token by which to leave her. She knows that in leaving, I will come to know and love her more thoroughly, and come to represent the adaptability, acceptance and appreciation she instills in her people. I will miss her and I will long for her, but that doesn't mean that I shouldn't be moving forward.

To Minneapolis, to Minnesota, and to all of her people, thank you. Thank you for all you have given me, all that you have taught me and how you've helped me prepare for this journey and for life. I love you, I hate you, and I'll be back.