Next week we finish up our second-to-last challenge and slowly, the color is returning to Brush Park. The wind is still cold and strong, but more times than not, I get off my bike and feel warm. I still carry my gloves in my bag,  but I haven’t had to use them in a few weeks. If that’s not a sign of spring, I’m not sure what is.

Last week I put in my 30-days-notice to leave my apartment. My year-long lease is up June 1st, and I’ve begun to think about new neighborhood and apartments. It’s been a year since I moved to Detroit, optimistic and scared, energetic and lonely. I remember being so excited to meet one of my neighbors in stairwell and I made him go with me to walk through Brush Park one sunny afternoon because I was too afraid to go alone. It wasn’t really a Detroit-specific fear I had (although my suburban co-workers’ frequent warnings and scary stories from the 1970′s didn’t help), but it was a fear of being alone. Nothing looked welcoming; it took me months to build up the courage to truly explore Detroit and not plan every trip obsessively on Google. When driving up Woodward, or walking across the street to Great Lakes Coffee, I would make a mental list of who I knew in Detroit. That June, it was four, the parents of a college friend, Julie, who I met at Challenge Detroit interviews, and a fellow fellow, Cody. Slowly over the summer, my list grew, containing coworkers, neighbors, friends of neighbors, the occasional random acquaintance, and finally my fellow fellows. I began to realize how friendly Detroit was, despite it’s very un-friendly appearance.

My first summer here had seemed to drag on and on, as I awaited the Fellowship to start. But looking back, it was so short, just a few months, most of my time spent inside my sweltering apartment, moving the standing fan to whichever room I happened to be in. I was basically satisfied with my position as a graphic designer, and was obsessed with buying all my groceries at Eastern Market. But mostly I was lonely.

A year later, I feel similarly obsessed with Eastern Market and how friendly Detroit really looks (not very) and feels (very!). But I am certainly not satisfied with graphic design, and I am never lonely.

My boyfriend and I filled this weekend with performances. On Friday, we saw Bottin play at The Shelter to a tiny crowd of 15 people, Saturday, we heard Chopin, Debussy and Berlioz at the Detroit Symphony, and on Sunday night, saw Meagan play Eponine in Grosse Pointe Community Theater’s production of Le Mis. Each performance was emotive and thoughtful, and I spent a lot of time in each of those dark theaters, thinking. I’ve always felt so lucky to be in Detroit (where else could you make a random friend at a pie shop and learn about summer architecture programs?), but this May, I feel especially lucky. As my apartment begins to smell like spring and the courtyard looks like it did when I first saw it, it seems more apparent about how things have changed. My neighborhood has more shops and restaurants (and more on the way), some buildings are gone, some have sprouted over night. I know about a myriad of non-profits, and tiny write-ups about Detroit in magazines amuse me instead of convince me (nice try Monocle, but I know the real story of what’s happening in Detroit). I can list off my favorite restaurants with a stubborn opinion to go along with it. Every event I find myself at, I seem to recognize someone. Trying to count all the people I know in Michigan seems incredibly impossible.

I feel safe when I bike through Brush Park now, although there aren’t any wildflowers to pick yet. Driving through Detroit with Ben still makes me teary– all those skeleton houses, dilapidating factories, and empty, spooky signs leading no where. And although Detroit still looks empty, but it certainly doesn’t feel empty to me. Cities are nothing but people, really, and the patterns and marks we leave, living in space. Despite the cold wind and the less than summery weather, it feels warm here.