Cherry blossom festival, Washington, D.C.

This took WAY the fuck longer than it should have to post… I may end up back on Xanga after all (who knew it would turn out to be the logical blogging format?)

 

    
  

    


 
 
   

   
 
   
 
 

April, come she will…

In particularly self-centered moments (23 hours of the day, give or take) I like to imagine that March was created just for me – the universe’s annual lesson in patience and flexibility.  March, and its orbital counterpart, September, have always been my least-favorite months, challenging my anticipation of the new season, the new weather.  March does it to me particularly, and year after year I have found myself feeling out of place, trying to hurry through it.

Last Wednesday it was beautiful winter:  it was in the twenties and snowed all day – fluffy, ridiculously fake department store-looking snowflakes that flashed like diamonds as they fell, even as the sun set in the distance.  Two days ago, I sweated as I hunched over the beehive, the sun bright and the temperature pushing toward eighty, the yard smelling of spring mud.  Today, the hive sits under an inch of snow, with more predicted to fall overnight.  Sunday will be in the fifties.

I’ve always felt some strange mental disconnect when faced with such changeability; it goes against my nature, which in many ways is a stubborn, plodding thing – goal in mind, path decided.  One step forward, two steps back (maybe a little spin off to the side and a backflip for good measure) feels like a waste of energy, and all too often I end up stomping my feet, screaming and pointing, insisting that we go this way, at this speed… and frustration builds on frustration, while March saunters along according to its own whim anyway.

This year, I find myself trying to stand less rigidly, and be led.  This is a month of abundant beauty, which I suddenly feel inclined to seek.   Maybe it’s a sign of growing older, or quieter; whatever the cause, today I met the crocuses poking through the snow with less of my usual exasperation, and something more like wonder.

Starting a new blog after five years at my old one has proven to be much more daunting a proposition than I’d expected, and not just because WordPress is only slightly easier to figure out than, say, the space shuttle.  I’ve been staring into the empty post editor for weeks now, trying to create some kind of segue to bridge the gap between my comfortable-but-worn blog, and this vast new empty space. 

I was telling a friend that I think there’s a tendency to get stuck in other people’s ideas of who we are, to play the roles assigned to us even if we’ve outgrown them, or if they never suited us to begin with.  People preferred the jagged, wildly discontented person I was when I started blogging, and they began to mistake my self-deprecation as an invitation to be overly familiar. 

There developed an expectation of ranting misery and bumbling awkward chaos, but my inclination to meet those expectations waned, owing partly to the fact that whatever truth exists in those things, it’s only a part of myself – and not a part I feel so much like focusing on these days – and partly to the fact that I have a few people who understood as much without being told, and without being disappointed or confused.  And the less they needed to be told, the more I wanted to tell them.

Trying to haul myself over the edge of my rut and express it to a wider audience has been somewhat of a challenge.  I’m rising to it slowly, I suppose, but there’s no rush, either, is there?

And it’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last

I have always enjoyed that song, despite not feeling any particular connection to it; December, regardless of circumstance, is a month of quiet or not-so-quiet joy and reminders of what’s important.

If there’s a long month – and there was this year - it’s January; after the decorations come down and the wrapping paper is carted away, What’s Important becomes paying the creditors – the reminders of which all seem to carry words like “overdue notice.”

January was the month when I emptied my piggy bank of its tattoo-and-language-course savings, and deposited it in the grownup bank, to pay for things like electricity.  It was the month when I transferred thousands of dollars from our ever-dwindling savings account just to cover the mortgage.  It saw my brave face, held in place for months by the sheer force of my desire to protect my already desperately-stressed husband from my own panic, finally crumble into hitching, nearly-frantic tears.

But things change, always by degrees, and February was not the same as January, and March is different yet.  In a fit of optimism I dipped into the pile of charity solicitations that have been languishing at the bottom of my bill pile for months now; What’s Important isn’t so hard to remember in March. 

Next month, we’re going to the cherry blossom festival.  It’s just a weekend away from home, but it’ll be the first vacation we’ve had in awhile, and two nights’ hotel accommodations represents a big change in the status quo.   Reason to believe, indeed.