The Odes of March

It’s the first of March, when a woman’s fancy turns toward thoughts of spring. 

You remember what that is, right?  For those of you south of the Mason/Dixon line or west of the Mississippi, you might want to go file your nails or take out the trash or walk the dog or something for a bit.  Those of us who live in areas that actually have all four seasons are going to get a little misty-eyed and sentimental for just a moment here.

Spring – when stepping out the front door doesn’t automatically elicit mild profanity and/or The Dance of the Idiot because of A) falling ice or dripping ice down the back of one’s neck, B) sheets of ice or melting ice under now airborne feet, C) proof that the plow guy really does have it in for you, or D) just plain more of the darn white stuff.

Remember?  Spring – when the trash can lid isn’t permanently frozen to the top of the can.

Spring – when salt and sand aren’t on the bottom of every shoe and boot in the county, all of which are collectively piled aesthetically by my front door in their own miniature Dead Sea brine, now dried and white and ruining the finish on the floor.

It’s that wondrous season when color makes a comeback.  You remember color – Fall’s fireworks weren’t that long ago.  The new buds on the trees will start to make the branches look fatter, less spindly and brittle.   As patches of something resembling lawn begin to sprout in the lowlands of the drifting dross, the grass scoffs “y’ain’t so bad!” at the melting mountains and greens up a little itself.

In spring, you never have to pull up your windshield wipers and leave them aloft when you park your car for the day. You’re not going to return to the car to find them frozen solid or buried under eight inches of slush and ice.  It’s March, right?  It’s spring!  The floormats in the car go from sandy and salty to just plain wet.  That’s not a happy thought, but it is a sign of the change.  I can live with that.

Gathering storm clouds don’t send everyone in town to the grocery store to stock up for a week.  Umbrellas make their quaint return, and the wooly caps get washed and stored away with the mittens until it’s time to build another Frosty.  Christmas seems so very far away . . .

Spring means birds vying for slimy breakfasts in what I was sure was my front lawn before it temporarily became a glacier.  Their presence reminds me that I will soon be digging up bulbs and dividing the Hosta and giving away more of that Siberian Iris that just will not be contained.

Spring.  Hope.  Softer breezes.  Warm patches of sunlight on the living room rug.  No more shoveling.  Well, at least not until the garden needs turning.  Funny how one backache can seem so evil and the other so healthy.  No more spreading eco-friendly salt-like pellets on the front walk to ward off lawsuits from the mailman – maybe that old superstition about tossing salt over your shoulder has its roots in Winter’s treachery.

Rats.  I wasn’t going to mention her name.  This is about Spring!

There’s only one problem.  I don’t live in Missouri anymore.  All of this is so true.  In Missouri.  In March.

Sigh.

So, my own reality involves more boots by the door, buying yet one more pair of warm gloves to replace the ones I swore I wasn’t going to lose, and wearing my ugly but very warm and waterproof boots to work with my dress pants for at least another four to six weeks.  More shoveling.  More scraping, more slipping and sliding.  More white.  Less color.

Normally, I love living in New England.  Eleven months out of the year, it's a delight.  Even the cold and the frostbite and the blizzards of January and February have their place – they offer a necessary opposition-in-all-things kind of balance – a yin to Summer’s yang, as it were.

Except for March.  This is the cockroach of months.  The black fly of seasons.  It is the mosquito’s buzz in my annual ear.  It’s the mumps.  And measles.  And scurvy.

I am not distracted nor impressed by the rude little pretend holiday mid-way through this mockery.  Pinching non-green wearers and getting plastered enough to actually enjoy eating corned beef and cabbage is not something to celebrate, my friends.

So, pardon me if you notice I’m turning blue.  If I pass out, just nudge me under the table and cover me with a warm blanket.  I’m going to hold my breath and see if I can survive this month.  April is only 31 days away.

The thirty-one longest days of the year.