A Manitoban?

I am watching the arrival of spring, and remembering my childhood.

When we moved here last summer, I was often a wee bit annoyed when my husband would tell people that for me, it was coming home.  I left as a fifteen-year-old and came back as a grandmother.  It didn't feel much like 'coming home.'  Our old house in Kleefeld belongs to someone else, and my closest siblings live over an hour from where I grew up - on the other side of the river.  ("Yant Zied" or 'other side' was a derogatory term in my growing up years.) 

But there were a few things that felt like 'home' and I'm discovering more of those all the time.  I grew up in a Mennonite community so the terms, accents, Low German phrases, etc, all seemed strangely familiar, if you know what I mean. 

Our move, when I was fifteen, took us far from all of our friends and relatives.  Suddenly I'm back in an area where I can actually run into aunts, uncles and cousins in the coffee shops and stores.  What fun!  I'm sure I run into many more than I know... I don't know nearly all of my cousins.   (Those things happen when your grandmother had 21 children and your mother had 13.)  I have had the chance to get reacquainted with some of the few cousins that were my age. 

I have reconnected with one of my childhood friends.  We may have changed and grown - and even grown somewhat in different directions, but we still have so much to talk about, and are slowly catching up. 

But I think what prompted this blog entry was weather.  Yes, the weather.  Manitoba spring.  So different from the springs we experienced both in BC and in Alberta.  Here it starts to melt and then continues to melt.  Even when the temperature doesn't get past 0.  As I was walking to an appointment the other day, there was a chill in the air, but the smell of spring.  It brings me right back to my childhood.  We may not get the chinooks, and regular thaws in the winter... but when it starts, it continues.  We know spring is just around the corner, and eventually the snow will be gone, and summer will come. And I love this about Manitoba.