Adjustments

Yesterday I bought three chick flicks. Aaaah! Why? Why?

Then I came to my senses and went to spend Valentine's Day at Club 23 with the fabulous MP and other (mostly) single grad students. Laughed our heads off. Toasted the day. Went home, slept late, came to work tired.

But when I left for work this morning everything smelled like the faintest beginning of spring, and the pale gray light of the overcast sky was somehow profoundly thrilling. I felt a stab of joy in the pit of my stomach and was so happy to be alive, here, in South Bend, in February, getting into my car alone.

Last week I realized I'm falling in love with South Bend. I couldn't tell you why. There are little things about it -- watching the snow drift like magic along charming Michigan Street in downtown South Bend, sitting in the funky Thyme of Grace cafe in downtown Mishawaka looking out the window on the old brick walls of the outdoor courtyard, driving home after work under a fiery, radiant, red-amber-gold Midwestern sunset where there is SO MUCH SKY and all the building tops of downtown glow like they've been set on fire -- that fill me with joy.

And that's what I've found here -- joy. A joy so fierce it stings my eyes. I love to love where I live, and it's been harder with South Bend than with Grove City -- Grove City was a basic extension of where I'd always lived, minus a Great Lake, while the lay of the Indiana landscape is nothing like where I'd lived before (although a Great Lake is half an hour's drive away -- not bad at all). So it's taken about a year and a half to adjust to the rolling flatness, the quick spurt of spring and autumn, the early sunsets, the extremes of temperature, and the endless slow winters.

I still feel something of an alien in regard to the people -- they're very different from my hardened, curt, abrupt Western Pennyslvania people whose tenderness and compassion are buried deep but all the stronger for the length of time it takes to reach them. Here, where a smile is a penny a hundred and inquiries of "How ARE you?" are more social niceties than actual questions (I'm figuring out that "How are you?" is roughly equivalent to "Hey"), I still feel like a stranger among the inhabitants, although I'm completely awed by their consciousness of and dedication to social need in the area. I'm privy to witness true philanthropy where I work, whereas most people in my birthplace tend to take care of their own, and only their own, and if you have no support system, you're pretty much screwed (but nearly everyone has a support system. The people I know are loyal to their blood family to the death or the last dime). So the people are still taking some getting used to, and I'm still figuring out where I fit in, who likes to smile at everyone but tends to eschew meaningless small talk wherever possible (I think I'm a blend of the places I've lived).

But the land I'm coming to love.

And thank God Valentine's Day is over. I didn't wear black, and I'm glad for my friends who have found someone to love who loves them in return, but it was rougher than I'd anticipated. And I don't like feeling weepy and lost; I like to feel positive and confident in God's provision and grace. And MP was there to laugh, and commiserate, and remind me of what I know to be true -- and of what I don't have to settle for. She's da bomb.

And it's clean, it's fresh, it's over -- the holidays that make me want to kill myself with loneliness are behind me, and spring is getting nearer. And I'm twenty-four. I knew twenty-four was going to be a good year. And it's been great.