So here we are again, gorgeous and perspiring, bobbing against each other in the crowded flow of the concrete concourses of Target Field.
Children on shoulders, arms hooked with parents and grandparents, ballpark lifers carrying today's scorecard through the crowd with steely-eyed purpose, and the never subsiding, rapturous return to the alfresco joy of friends gathering at the Budweiser Roof Deck, Minnie & Paul's and the Gray Duck Deck.
The Twins have nine games in a row in downtown Minneapolis, starting Monday. After attending a week of games during their most recent homestand in late July, the collective beauty of all these souls being squeezed together again was more than enough to make your heart break at everything we have lost and make your heart swell at what a gift it is to have it all back.
How much we all need this.
How hungry we are for each other.
And also, just how hungry we are.
Take your fine dining and proper etiquette and go talk to a wall. We are celebrating. We are stopping mid-step amid hundreds of bodies to extend tacos into each other's mouths in the bottom of the first inning. We are standing in the sliver of light next to the left-field foul pole on the third deck to just absorb ice cream. We are striding away from the 35-deep line at Red Cow to devour tiny burgers. And we are grabbing weird paper cups of French fries and, forgoing all rationale, tossing ketchup on top of them like dollops of paint.
We are alive.