March First

Every year, I look forward to March first.

Winter is my least favorite season, and spring is my favorite, so I can't help it.

Through the long, bleak winter weeks, I count down.  I give winter one hundred days, no more.  No matter when I start counting wintery days, when I get to March first, I feel I'm running the last lap, on home stretch, nearly to the finish line.

Yes, it still snows here in March, and snow is an ordeal, but snow in March is not likely to stick around long.  I can handle it.  We also see crocuses and violets struggling free from the earth and hear birds singing again.  It's a mixed bag, I admit, but at least it's mixed.

The worst winter weeks for me are when it snows heavily and often, when the temperature never even climbs up to freezing for days (or weeks) on end, or when some other trial presents itself.  Some weeks that I shudder to remember featured all three.

Even though we did have a couple of frozen wasteland weeks early on this year--as soon as December hit, actually, I am happy to report that this winter turned out to be not bad at all.  It's been raining.  Yes, raining.  In February.  Not something I ever remembering growing up with.  But who am I to complain?  I've never shoveled rain yet.  It's been weeks since I had to apply gargantuan force to ice sheets on my windshield in order to drive to the gym or shovel any amount of snow that tired my back.  Weeks!

Honestly, I confess that I thought I was due an easy winter--after the last one.  It snowed so much one night last year that it seemed I'd walked out onto another planet.  Everything was eerily still.  It was as if an ocean of white had come right up to my door, and nothing but white lay between me and the horizon.  The snow was over a foot tall everywhere, and it was still snowing.

Clearly, I would get a whole workout before I could even think of driving to the gym.  I'd grabbed the shovel and worked until my arms and legs were quaking, and I'd barely made it down the sidewalk.  Having seen my neighbor lying gray and still across his doorstep a couple of months before that, I just couldn't stop shoveling at the property line.  By the time I'd reached his driveway, two-and-a-half hours had passed.  Not only would there be no gym time, it was looking like I would be late for work.

I was a soaking wet mess by then--three parts snow, four parts sweat, and five parts tears.

I burst into the house with what felt like my last breath and apologized for waking my husband.  "I need your help, though," I sobbed at him.  I had not even begun to clear off the cars.  The snow on the cars reached up to heaven right along with my prayers, and I just didn't see how I could do anymore.

He stumbled out, my hero, to rescue me, and I pulled myself together to shower and dress.  Though he worked hard, too, I still got stuck in the driveway, yet another ordeal before getting to work.

And it kept snowing.  My husband shoveled another huge mess off the sidewalks that afternoon.  He got stuck going up the hill to take the kids to school.  Yes, in my city, we still have school, no matter how disastrous the snowfall.  The teachers are not going to give up the snow day that falls on Memorial Day weekend for anything.  He spent the day battling car problems with the "new" van we had just bought, and later had to abandon it (temporarily) in a left turn lane in the middle of the street when it died again.

That was the situation I came home to.  I found out about it after getting stuck in the driveway again, this time, going in.

It was the biggest natural disaster I had ever seen with my own eyes.

That snowstorm and its aftermath resulted in us having to do home repairs on the front of our house.  I  developed tendonitis from all that shoveling and the shoveling I had had to do later on that week.

And, thinking back, that was only the fourth worst winter of my life.

So, now you can see why I thought an easy winter would be nice.  And, fortunately, for me, at least, my prayers were answered.

Last year, I'd decided that there were way too many people praying for "moisture."  And I hope and guess they learned their lesson.

Now that I've thoroughly depressed all of us, let me get back to talking about March.

I don't only love spring because it's not winter.  Although, I admit, that is a lot of it.

I love the whole renewal thing.  Flowers, babies, rebirth, growth, warmth, sun, light, resurrection, lambs and bunnies, blue and green everywhere you look.  I love the message from nature that we get a do-over, because it seems that most all of us usually need one.  Here's a new year: try again. 

March is when I first agreed to be someone's wife.

March is when I got married.

March is when my long-lost friend reclaimed me.

March is when I once shrugged off my old life and started my life over, for reals.

March is when my grandparents got married.  And when my other grandparents got married.  So, it seems to me to have engendered my very beginnings.  

March is when I get out my spring green dress and try to wear it.  It's when I put away my brown, bulky sweaters that look so comforting in November but that I cannot stand to wear one more time by then.

March is often Easter. 

March is hope.  Faith.  Life.

Welcome, March.  Thank you for coming back.

Welcome, life.