March

I grew up in North Dakota, where the month of March is still tightly gripped in Winter. And yet it's not the same as January or February; the days are getting longer and there's a certain quality on the wind. It's almost like a kiss. A soft, gentle, kiss from Spring even as Winter continues to rule over the northern plains.

I took the kiss on the wind as a promise, that something was about to change, and I began to love March.

So all through high school, which others around me continued as in the midst of winter, I had a secret friendship with the wind and the air and the sun in March. I would read favorite authors and re-read favorite books. I would take long walks in the growing evenings. I liked celebrating the little holidays of the First Day of Spring and St. Patrick's Day. March became my favorite month.

In college, I began to celebrate Lent, and as Ash Wednesday almost always falls in February, and Easter almost always in April, March was almost always caught completely in Lent. And I was caught up in legalistically denying myself. I also missed the so-slow, ever-so-slow turning over of winter to spring. The change was quicker, somehow, in Chicago, and tulips were sometimes already peaking the beginnings of their green leaves through by the end of March.

Now I've moved to Mexico, where there is no early spring and where March is completely buried under Lenten rituals in this Catholic country.

So I find that for the last few years, I miss early Spring. I miss the awakening joy. I miss home.

Wake up

I woke up three times this morning.
At six, Shanna's radio alarm went off. My eyes were heavy, and I couldn't keep them open for long, but the tree outside my window was radiant, showing off its yellow-green leaves and reflecting the blazing east, which was obscured by the turn of the house.

Later, at eight, my phone alarm went off. I woke up, contemplated my life, the sorry state of my messy room, and what I plan to do today. I dozed a little more.

I got up at 8:10, however. Because the dog, who wanted to be let out of the room, kept bounding up on my back then scooting around my head, sticking her nose right into my face. She dropped a tick on the bed, and I felt it tickling my arm. When I decided that the tickle wasn't imaginary, I got up, found it to be parasite, and ground it to death between a rock and a shelf.

Then I got up.

My own personal time-machine.

Driving home from Illinois is like going back in time. Well, actually, maybe it's more like pressing the rewind button on a video tape. The leaves on the trees move backward, getting smaller, disappearing back into the branches. The tulips pull their petals in and scoot back toward the earth. Going north in the spring time is friendly, not menacing, because it means I get to experience the blossoming of spring all over again. Going north in the fall, however, is sad and lonely. It's pressing the fast forward button. The leaves have fallen already and you lose the experience.

I drove home yesterday and today, and while noticing the changes in the trees, I spent a solid three and half hours of the time listening to a dramatization of Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I didn't leave early enough to drive the dawn, plus I was going north and west, not east, but it was still a voyage nonetheless. Eustace makes me laugh, and at times I slapped my knee (yes, I will acknowledge this. I laugh aloud to myself when I'm driving alone.) I can't get over how ridiculous he is. He is on such an amazing adventure and he can't see it! He just wants to find a British Consulate, as if you could find one of those in Narnia. The transformation he undergoes, though, metamorphizing into a dragon, is rather potent. When I heard the lonely dragon cry of Eustace when he realizes what has happened to him, I felt sad with him. Later, when Aslan tells him that he needs help undressing his dragon skin, I heard the growl of the lion as he sunk his teeth deep into the scales and skin enclosing Eustace. I could imagine the terror and the hope Eustace felt, for though the teeth of a lion hurt, he could not rid himself of the dragon skin he so desperately desired gone, and needed someone stronger.

Quite amazing

If I am ever in charge of a large group of children, or probably any size group, I will not let them loose in a shrub maze. On Friday my roommate Sarah Davis took Natasha and me to the Morton Arboretum, a huge plant park southeast of here. They had a maze garden and we walked through it while dozens of elementary aged kids skirted by us. Most were enjoying themselves, but after running around for a while, I began to see disconcerted looks or even tinges of fear as the kids said "you go that way and I'll go this way," looking for a way out. I don't know which of the leaders had this brilliant idea but I'm sure they enjoyed the arduous process of disentangling the children from the verdant web.

Doppler

One of the purposes of this blog is to attempt creative writing.
Attempt is the operative word. I'm learning.
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A drive down the highway reveals the change. When the spaces between trees are compressed by the speed, a Doppler effect of color results. The grey branches are quite visibly crayoned in by Spring. The green buds raise their eyebrows suggestively, saying, aren't you glad you waited? Aren't we worth it?
It was at this time last year that the snows came in and said in high piercing laughter, "Just kidding!"
Oh, the leaves came, but it was hard to wait. After the first tantalizing smiles and wake-up yawns, to be slammed back into sleep was almost cruel. For it was a sleep trying to remember a dream and the brow was furrowed by its mental labor.

Here at the end of all things

I'm celebrating a fake holiday today.
It's March 25, and the Ring has been destroyed.

What a great day! An emblem and embodiment of evil and power and control has been done away with, due to the tremendous efforts and sacrifice.

I'd rather we celebrate our New Year on a day like this, when the seasons are actually changing, and the March wind blows a change, than a cold, bitter day in the midst of winter. This day has meaning.

"...the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach." (The Return of the King pg. 199)

"They stood now; and Sam still holding his master's hand caressed it. He sighed. 'What a tale we have been in, Mr. Frodo, haven't we?' he said. ...But even as he spoke so, to keep fear away until the very last, his eyes still strayed north, north into the eye of the wind, to where the sky far off was clear, as the cold blast, rising to a gale, drove back the darkness and the ruin of the clouds." (Ibid, 229).

Cardinal

This morning as I walked from my townhouse through the secret passage I heard a bird rapidly spewing "tew tew tew tew tew." I hadn't heard that in a while but it sounded like a cardinal. I scanned the trees for the flash of red, and was rewarded with a vision of a tiny red paint stroke in a naked tree across the parking lot. Would I have been able to see it if the tree had been lush and blooming?

I guess there's not much really exciting about this post. I was happy to see that the cardinals are returning. I am also, as always, glad that it is March. The turning of seasons has always been a fun time for me, and especially the beginnings of spring. It's also Shanna's birthday tomorrow. Sixteen years old. I'm so glad to know you.