Spring is here, nearly. The forecast for this week in St. Paul projects every day to reach the 30s. The Thirties! Every morning there are streaks of water crossing the parking lot as I walk to class. At night they turn into viciously dangerous ice slicks, but it’s all worth it to get rid of the determined piles of snow-ice that line every parking lot on campus. It probably doesn’t hurt that I know this is my last month of battling winter water until late 2009/2010 since my family and I will be on internship in Corpus Christi, TX next year. I’ll miss the mild fall up here but come January and February I’m confident many emails will be sent from the Texas coast to fellow interns left behind in the Cities.

Until then we Luther students only have to hold on for another four weeks max. The corner has been turned, the boxcar is resting at the top of the hill and about to pick up speed, the leaf has turned over, the monkey has been put back in his evening holding cage, the clutch has finally given out and mama’s about to get a new Saturn.

These metaphors have surely helped encourage my state of good cheer and hopeful expectation. None have been more helpful, however, than that given to me by an undergraduate friend who would often employ the metaphor as he took an important test or finished a term paper: I am the bigger prison inmate! If I wanted to I could trade [winter] for cigarettes. Since late October I have felt like fresh fish but today the tables turned.