Pretend

Winter is creaking out of my bones. It's been in the 50's and 60's. There are tiny leaves on my rose bush, the tips on the swollen buds of the lilac show their inner green, tulip, iris, and yes, pansies are out basking in the warmth. Maple season is over. We heard a single frog sing out in the sugar bush a week ago. A migration of Tundra Swans gave us a fly by this morning. The Sandhill cranes are nearby - their ethereal sheet metal song drifts on the wind. And today, Easter, my beloved Bluebirds returned with their heartbreakingly tender call.

It seems like spring. 

I raked my flower beds. We put up two more Bluebird houses. Yesterday we went for a bike ride at Lake Bemidji State Park. It was the maiden run on my new ride. We made a short loop out of the park, over to the bike trail and back into the park. I stopped suddenly to look at some bird poop on the pavement and then to look up in the big white pine to see who had made the deposit. Mike stopped too, though, not as gracefully. His toe caught in the basket on his pedal. There was a thud, an "Oooffff" and then there he was in a pile on the asphalt with his bike. No worse for the wear we laughed it off and continued on. He claims I pushed him over.

We loaded the bikes into the van and headed toward the lake. Great piles of ice rimmed the shoreline. Sheets of candle ice veined with open water stretched out onto the lake. Pools of water on the ice turned salmon with the setting sun. Mike played with chunks of ice, dropping them one onto another and listened to their musical ring. We walked the beach, feet sinking into the soft sand reminding us of summer when the beach would be full of local kids and tourists but now, in this ice time, it was ours.

Mike spotted the playground and then the swings and made a bee line for them. We each grabbed a seat and set to pumping our legs for all they were worth. Soon we  were giggling and making graceful arcs. Our bellies tingled when we went high enough and felt that split second of slack in the chains before gravity caught and sent us hurtling back the other way. I leaned back and swung. Mike followed my lead and soon had the woozies.

We were slowly swinging to a halt and I was lamenting on how "the problem with today's playgrounds is that there is a severe lack of things that spin and make kids puke," when something on the ginormous jungle gym caught my eye. Oval shaped with bars and tilted at a 60 degree angle was a contraption that looked like it could spin. I baled off the swings and headed straight for it. Just big enough for me to stand in was the PUKEATRON. I let Mike spin me until I couldn't tell if I was stopped or still spinning. My belly fluttered and did flip-flops. I asked Mike,  "Do you get motion sick? Get on you gotta try it!" And he did. For about a minute and that was enough for him. He's apparently not the carnival ride kinda guy. I took one turn at the slide before we left. Mike took a pass.

Tonight my body aches, winter leaving my bones, and while it looks like spring, it acts like spring and it smells like spring...I'm suspicious. I'm going on public record here as saying we are gonna get one last blast of winter on or around April 10. I  can't say why...I'm just saying. Until then, like the rest of you here in the Great Frozen North, I'm gonna pretend it's spring. Just like yesterday at the park I pretended I was a kid again.

Peace and Delusions

Karen