March, I do hope you will leave soon. I know you think you’re pretty damn popular sporting the first day of Spring – that priceless accessory that we all so ardently pray and long for. But you, March, might as well know how I really feel about you. I’ve held back way too long. To begin with you are not popular. I disdain the sight of you and so do most of my friends.
You think history has ingratiated you with glory of id, and ides, and odes, but that is a bunch of malarky. You have been too ugly, too often, for any of us to ever again see any appeal in your nature and manner.
Too often we’ve been bewitched by the mirages you flutter on the distant landscape of crocus buds and silky green fronds, only to find it nothing more than a false display. Yet, believing it might be true, when we rush to your sunny and shimmering display, you whip about and wield another incoming surf of winter horrors upon us compacted fifty-fold.
I try to make room, excuses as it were, for those who have your kind of deficiency. But there have been too many Marches like this in my lifetime to continue to be so forgiving. For me you have crossed the line. I’m ripping you right out of the calendar and I don’t want to ever see you again.
If you are so popular as you think, how come there is so little prose or poetry dedicated to your honor? No odes or eulogies glorifying your kindness or charitable nature. No March-Day trees, no 1st of March parades, no March balloon and fireworks celebrations, and no March 21st carols or hymns of joy. But then, I guess the truth is, March gets what March deserves.
You are mad, mad, totally mad. The pre-cursor of one figurative individual – The March Hare. Even he was a nice sophisticated little fellow with a gold watch and distinguished manners until you showed up at Alice and Company’s tea party and drove him and all the other guests to such distraction that they were soon speaking utter nonsense. And amusing themselves by trying to shove a helpless little dormouse into a tea-pot. If it had been me I’d have tarred you in the treacle pot, rolled you in feathers, and sent you on your way.
And on top of that you pretend that if you come in like a lion, you will leave as a lamb. That’s just more of your bloody nonsense. The antithesis of the lion and the lamb has nothing to your entry and departure. It has only to do with your inconsistency, willful confusion, and utter madness for the entire month, from start to finish. You do the lion and lamb thing every day for the 31 days of March with even the first day of Spring treated in that same sacrilegious manner.
This year you rained down sadness and grief that was way beyond reason. When your plans failed – the plans you made to spear individuals from overhead with those sharp silvery daggers that you precariously hung from every suspended-over-head plane, you still remained bent on causing the extreme of heartache and confusion and madness that you take such delight in.
When Shakespeare said, “Beware the Ides of March”, I’m quite certain he would have said more, but you are too ugly to fit into sophisticated prose or poetry or pentameter. ‘Ides’ is pluralized, while one day – the 15th, is singular. So seems something has been lost in the translation. Knowing you as I do, ‘Ides’ refers to more than one day. It refers to any March day, hour, minute, or any other fuzzy or foggy prospect of time between midnight on the last day of February and midnight on March 31st.
Weeks of your craziness have come and gone, but you are not done yet. I still hear in the barren branches outside my window, the evil cackling craziness of your wind song. Funereal with pitchy, screaming, notes that drive me to cover my head with blankets to muffle the sound.
Physically, you are a drag. No, not just a drag, a true hardship. And mentally, you are a lethal dose to counteract the gentlest of positive emotions. You grind optimism into icy patches under drain pipes, and buffet good cheer with gales of chilly rejection.
I cannot say it enough.
“Be off with you, March before I kick your id, and ides, and odes, and callus a-- into the middle of the next century!”
10 comments:
Whilst you are kicking, I would delight to lend a large, heavy boot if only in hopes to kick this sorry excuse of calendar space back to a dark age when March's fickle flashes of false sunlight may indeed have been welcome.
Well, you told that sorry-ass month where to get off, didn't you Roberta? I'll be surprised if it can show it's head again next year with all the flash and flurry it infuriated us with this year....and it is still not quite done in these parts.
The only saving grace for mean old March...at least in my eyes...is that my son's birthday falls in it's days..and my late husband's birthday was today...the 28th. But now even he has abandoned that brutal beast....
hi WheelDancer, thank you so much for your brave assistance in dispensing this unwanted guest. You have described the beast very adequately, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Hi Joy. Thanks for visiting. Sometimes, in our family, with work schedules, we have to shuffle Christmas around. Honestly, I think if we send March packing, we can probably find some nicer days to celebrate birthdays as well.
I didn't think I'd ever get to this point of no return with March, but this year has been the final straw. Have you heard the old saying that 'frustration is anger with no place to go'. Well after this rant, at least I'm no longer so frustrated.
March is like a visit to the dentist - necessary but dreaded. Still, I like March's bluster and bravado. I like the teaser days and the inherent anticipation of April carried in the fluctuating temperatures. I like the ever increasing daylight and the fitful returns to winter followed by glorious sunshine. I like the roller coaster ride, never knowing for sure if the morning sun will be obscured by afternoon snowflakes or the opposite, when morning snow gives way to afternoon sunshine. I even like the grey, rainy days when the cold sinks into your bones making the comfort of home even more comfortable. There are days when, like you, I despair that March will ever end but look! In the center of the closed fist of dark despair is the light of hope. You have just 3 days left, Roberta - hang in there!
Pauline, forever the optimist. Hi, I do smile at your poetic way of expressing your tolerance and easy-going nature even in such seasonal bad company. And I chuckle too, while I stuff all the 'Marches' carefully cut from my planning calendar up to 2022 into an envelope to go directly to your house.
And I am gleeful when I read your kind well wishes, and the encouragement in the reminder that in a few days it will ALL be over (for this year, anyhoo).
Ah, Roberta, too bad you weren't here in Colorado. March was a baby. We had several good snows, but more 60 degree weather days, even some 70 degrees. Sunshine! But if bad old March inspires such poetics, it can't be all bad. Pauline's, too.
hi Nora, thanks for letting me know the scourge of March is limited. I know you meant to provide encouragement, and I was encouraged for one brief moment. But then my Dough-Gee-Dog jumped out of bed, came to the kitchen, stuck his head out the dog-door, and took one brief cursory glance at the flurry of snowflakes coming down. That's when he pulled his head back inside with a low-pitched curse. 'Fido that!' he growled and headed straight back to bed.
Aunt Roberta,
I really do love reading your stories, and yes, I as well am glad that March is over with. Unfortunately, March took my beloved husband with it.
Now, I just got to figure out why things happen the way they do, and what am I suppose to learn from this beside heartache, and misery.
Ruth
Dearest Ruth,
My heart goes out to you. Truth is I have no space or room to complain about March after all you have been through.
I only complain to try to find some kind of silliest that might have a light-hearted vein.
I do pray you will find comfort and the courage to carry on.
Roberta
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