Happy March. Her tune is contagious. Her lyrics hopeful. Her sun, not so eager to set now, pulls ever more brilliant hues to the horizon as it dips below. And the twilight lingers and lingers still.
Recent heavy snows are retreating. My hens explode out their door each morning. Mud makes walking to their house a game of watch your step. So much of the property between our house and theirs is bare ground due to fall's building excavation. We walk on planks and scraps of wood but the chicken yard, too, is mud because we dug a trench to their door to lay an electric line one very mild day last December.
For me, turning the calendar to March has a power like no other. I'm instantly back in 1976 when I turned the calendar to March and realized the next time I turned a page my life would be altered forever. This morning, 45 years later, it comes to me so clearly: that optimistic, eager, innocent and ridiculously happy girl I was then. My due date was March 26. Anne arrived 4 days early.
Earth's population has had a year like no other since last March. In my wee space deconstruction, renovation and reconstruction have brought lack of privacy to Covid isolation and constant chaos where a safe retreat into our private nest should have brought balm. Nearing the end of these there is a very real feeling of moving out of the darkness into this season of light. Soon we "spring forward" and greet the vernal equinox. Sap is already rising here and it feels like something similar is rising within me.
It feels good. It feels alive. It feels like a blessing.
