The Impatient Month

I have a memory from when I was in the fourth grade and a reporter for the local weekly newspaper was on the campus of my elementary school.  He encouraged a group of girls to make a pile from the leaves which had fallen from the trees that surrounded the playground field.  We made piles and threw the leaves; the reporter made our picture and it was printed in the newspaper.

It is my first memory of seasonal change as a thing of beauty.  That’s not to say that I missed the loveliness around me growing up in California, just that I mostly assumed it would always be there.  In California, weather was rarely an inconvenience  and I took that ease for granted.  My first year of four distinct seasons came when I moved to Tennessee.  There, I learned that rainstorms could last for more than a couple of hours and I needed an actual Winter coat.  I vividly remember the splendor of both the autumn leaves in the woods that first Fall and a few months later, the beauty of yellow daffodils in that first southern Spring.  In the five years that I lived in Nashville, I became a convert to the splendor of seasons.  I learned that Spring is that much sweeter when it follows Winter.

I’ve been thinking of that this month especially.  March in New Jersey has a tendency to try my patience.  I see the stark beauty of Winter and enjoy the first month or two of cold weather.  But there comes a point, usually toward the end of February, when I grow weary of the struggle that is the Winter season.  In Winter’s cold, there’s no popping outside without a plan.  Some mornings, wrangling a coat, gloves, scarf, and hat is just tiresome.  It makes me feel burdened and weary.  When that happens, I long for the ease of warmer days.

In this, March taunts me.  I am ready for sunlight and warmth.  The lengthening days are a tease; I want daffodils-a-plenty. Over the weekend, T and I went on a Saturday adventure.  There were subtle signs of Spring everywhere, or at least the sunlight made it seem that this was the case.  At home, I wait for the last of the snow to melt, sure that daffodil, tulip, and hosta bulbs lie waiting to bloom underneath the snow.  

I know my patience will be rewarded and that Spring will soon show itself in this flower bed.  In the meantime, I wait for the beauty to arrive.  That’s happy!