March Madness

Another Sunday morning, the house quiet except for the echo of the ticking clock, the heartbeat of the house keeping score of the moments.  The sunlight is pouring through the east and south windows this morning, still low in the sky thanks to it being March, but the intensity of the light is both a blessing and a curse.  It’s been a strange winter for us this year, mild temperatures, little snow – except for that 3 or 4 inches we got a few weeks back, seemingly out of spite – but the past week has seen all that disappear, the grass greening up nicely now, the birds singing happily overhead, those red squirrels busier than ever.

It’s the middle of March! Much too soon for highs in the 80’s, but that’s what we’re heading for today, decks and patios are being cleaned and tidied and the gas grills are getting a good workout, I swear I hear a lawnmower out there in the distance – we know this is an illusion of early Summer, but we’re enjoying it all the same – t-shirts and shorts feel so liberating after all these months, but the boots and heavier jackets still wait patiently in the front closet, just in case.

We had good friends over last evening for some great food and drinks and even better company, a spur of the moment decision thanks to the beautiful weather, something we never would have done on a normal March day, but we’ve learned to take advantage of opportunities that way. Something about making hay while the sun shines.

picture by Marco Langbroek

That low bright sun and I are having our annual fight right now, the Spring may bring April showers and May flowers, but for me it also brings the reality of a migraine at some point, and usually one that arrives and sits and stays with me a while, like an old friend who stops by for a visit to catch up on things.  I like my old friends just fine, though this one could use a refresher course on how to treat the host.  I can’t really argue though, as the severity of the headaches has diminished with the help of a preventative course of a low dose anti-depressant.  Too low a dose to be called Happy Pills, but enough it seems to keep things manageable, but still there have been times the last few days where nothing I do seems to help, my head feeling like it weighs 300 pounds and might fall to the floor if I move the wrong way – and I fully understand the ancients who drilled holes in the skulls of sufferers to try and release the pressure – if only it were that simple…

The meds have knocked things down just enough so I don’t have any aura warnings, well, not the visual ones I truthfully sort of enjoy – at least I knew what was coming next – now I wake one day with a stiff neck that is trying to pull my tailbone through my shoulders, and my shoulders together through my ears.  Stretching helps, but only so much and I know its only a matter of time until the headache will arrive to keep me company.

It’s March, and another season of hockey has come and gone, sad on one hand to see it go, happy on the other to have all that time back, though we don’t quite know what to do with that much freedom all at once.  Like a healed animal returned to the wild, when that cage door opens we bolt for cover, quickly away from our captors, into whatever hiding spot we can find.  Then at some point we stop and look around, getting our bearings, adjusting to the real light, looking with new eyes at the reality surrounding us…

Good Lord the house is a mess!  When’s the last time we seriously cleaned up around here? And why are the Christmas lights still coming on at 4:30 in the afternoon?  And wasn’t yesterday St Patrick’s Day? I don’t think the Santa Welcome Mat at the front door really works with all the emerald green shamrocks… Hey, when’s the last time these widows were washed? I can barely see across the street – I just thought those were flurries we always saw through the front windows!

And so it begins.  Spring cleaning.  Again, or still, I can’t decide which anymore, but its healthy to open up the windows and doors after the winter and let the fresh air back inside, mopping and dusting and going through the piles of stuff that have grown larger bit by bit, that closet you cringe at every time you open its door, the corner of the laundry room where the dust bunnies continue to congregate, now ready to hold general meetings about the state of their environment, ready to petition and march you out of office.

It’s a chance to take stock of what you have, what you need, and what you just plain want to keep in your life – the rest can be set aside for Goodwill or the summer yard sale, or the curb for trash day. It’s the beginnings of change, the kind that we all need in our lives, the constant change of renewal and rebirth, of new beginnings and moving forward again with all things important and dear to us.  We should do all this more often of course, but now’s as good a time as any to start again.

It’s Spring, so let’s use the freedom we’ve been given to make some positive changes this time around.  Be ruthless when you clean, making the tough choices and hard decisions about your ’stuff’ until you’ve arrived with the true essence of what you need.  Some old friends stay with you no matter what, others stop by every now and then for a much needed visit, and some you discover again even though you knew they were there all along. It’s been a good week for me and my friends; I think I’ll leave them all in the keep pile.

Now about that closet…