Must be the March windsmy mind air on the fritz, air exploded, gallavanting without reason, method, or a wristwatch. My new nickname is Fits-And-Starts. Not, Gaps-In-Hair-Weave, or even, Gaps-In-Mind-Weave, but Fits-And-Starts. Or maybe: Fits-And-Starts-And-Fits-And-Starts…
O March! You’ve usurped May’s darling buds and July’s thuddy heat. You’ve also cleared the air with your winds—scoured the sky—revealing the sort of clarity that makes Southern Californians famous for wearing sunglasses. We protect our eyes from your telescopic quality, your unnerving, dazzling zoom. We avoid mirrors, perhaps work out more, have extra glasses of wine with dinner. We plant poppies and sweet brooms and star jasmine, both giddy and migraine-ish from color-exposure and pervasive scents. We plant lavender and cover our ears when the bees arrive for they, too, are loud and clear, loud and clear. March? Your monster-scope is so bright we become addled, perhaps a little afraid, and wander inside with our sunglasses still on, stepping on cats’ tails, rebounding into chairbacks, shoulder-crashing into refrigerators, scaring or delighting our ever-watchful toddlers. Or we are still—so still—so perfectly, utterly, exquisitely unmoving—sitting well into the patio chairs with their dubiously stuffed, bird crap spattered cushions, staring numbly through our sunglasses at exposed world, our back yards transformed into little March Edens because of all the rain and all of your light on all of that rain’s workings. O March! Your light-abundance numbs, though not unfavorably. Such clarity—the hummingbird a foot from my face, it’s ruby feathers flashing, its angst-hum, its eyes—so not for the fainthearted.
This March I have discovered that despite having no energy around each day’s 3:00p.m. due to T’s consistent 5:00a.m. wakings and ever-shortening naps, despite watching my energy drain from my body and shuffle lethargically and unromantically down the hall and into my bedroom and into my bed without me, I discovered I can still Windex off mud and outdoor gunk from the living room floor, flip the living room rug by myself (revealing a vaguely un-battered/un-mud-stained, other-side-of-rug, who cares?), bake a red velvet cake, frost it heavily, remove fingerprints from quite tall windows and clean/plunge the toilet, finishing just in time to ponder prepping the toddler’s dinner. All this I can do while my energy snores on as if I’ve never existed.
This March, I’ve discovered it’s amazing what I can accomplish in fits and starts. My husband says I should take it easier, maybe bake a cake one day, was a dish the next—but I like how the light comes through the unfingerprinted windows and kisses the spotless floor, creating a birch-gleam I deem attractive and then I glance up, see the freshly planted sweet broom and lavender in the garden, and I notice the aroma of just-baked red velvet cake—and I’ll be damned if I (despite my energy’s god-snores from the bedroom) don’t feel like writing. And just as I sit down at my computer, remove my sunglasses and pull up Word, just as the incredibly pervasive March light penetrates the very bones of my psyche, just as I type “Fits-And-Starts” and tap the return key while uttering a merry, “Ah hah!”, the UPS guy bangs on the screen door, the giant picture falls off the living room wall and both the toddler—and my energy—awaken, with disparate moods.
