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Why such a fascination with this month, of all months? March. March Hare. Ides of March. It is really not a pleasant month, after all. St. Patrick’s Day. Easter, perhaps. Passover, maybe. Spring.
March is all full of hope and symbols of renewal and whatnot, and still manages to disappoint, to frustrate, to dump inches, feet of wet snow, useless snow melting, radiating penetrating cold, with wind to add to it. What good does it bring us?
Spring promises so much. We embrace that fluke warm breeze, the shadow in the late afternoon. We want more. We want to shed our coats, walk, ride bikes, open the porch door. I want to. I want to be warm again. We have to wait. March makes us long for spring, as if it will never come.
And does it, really? Does spring really exist? Is the gradual warming in our imagination? Is spring anything more than occasional summer-like conditions thrown into the mix of winter itself, offering nothing more than a tease? A stick, a stone. Mud. Águas de Março.
Every time spring comes around, I think of Jobim’s famous song. “It’s the promise of spring. It’s the love in your heart.” And I had an image in these “Waters of March” of things budding in the woods, birds reappearing, snow melting. In that multitude of images (“It’s stick, it’s stone, it’s the end of the road. It’s ..), I always imagined winter ending. At least, I did, before I read the lyrics in Portuguese.
“São as águas de março
fechando o verão
É a promessa de vida
no teu coração.“
No, March is not always the spring it seems. Turn the world upside from where I sit, and March is September.
“They’re the waters of March
closing the summer.
It’s the promise of life
In your heart.”
Here in the northern hemisphere, I find myself mostly in a bad mood throughout March. All that “in like a lion” stuff wears thin as I keep looking for the lamb in the deal. I grump by, just wanting to be done with the month. Now, this is Massachusetts, though. March can be challenging in Missouri, where I grew up, as well. In Vermont, syrup runs, but I never let myself consider spring that early. But fall? It hardly entered my mind.
I remember once getting a letter, in June. It was cool there, grey. Not cold, but on that South American coast, winters were melancholy, but not so bad. Winter, in June… I knew, but never really thought it through, all those holidays that we think of for winter, flipped into summer holidays. Winter, quiet, with relatively few of them… perhaps as winter was meant to be.
And March, a rainy time, ending summer, Carnaval at the end of summer–not winter. And in all that, something seems just right.
Hello. It is evening, dark already by 8:00. School started today, the official end of summer as we know it.
Fall is by far my favorite season.
I was browsing through pieces from the past, and came upon this one, from last year. I remember the day, and it was indeed glorious. It makes me anticipate all the more the season we approach in September…
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In some unknown corner along rows of apartment buildings, I found the banks of the Charles River, coated in sunlight, dappled by the shadows of trees blowing in the wind. It was no longer the soft breeze of summer, but a crisper wind of cinnamon and crimson, of school days and football games, of sweaters and hot, milky coffee. Canoes lay overturned throughout the woody marshes, like the toys of distracted children. It was there that I sat, watching the walkers and wanderers, I myself meditating on the wonder of autumn and that symbolic repetition of the seasons. Now we were in the time of year when things begin to fade and die, and for years I had always rejoiced in that. Something in the leaves, the smell of it, the busy, musty beauty of it, always seduced my senses like nothing else, like a fire, like hands beneath my sweater, touching my skin and making me shiver, both from the cold and from the excitement of feeling bare skin so deliberately against mine. Summer revealed too much; spring was too new. But the maturity of fall, covered, but gloriously so, always felt right to me.
So I felt a sense, too, of remembering and renewal before winter’s cold settled in. As the trees turned to red and gold, I threw bread into the river—not a tradition I grew up with, but one that friends share. It seems to fit so well. There I thought about the last year’s amazing changes, the regrets and hardships that gave me so much wonder and mystery. It is from there that I look for new beginnings.
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Song of the day: “Sand River,” Beth Gibbons with Rustin Man
It’s the end of July. Hard to believe. I slept very little last night, thinking, and took a drive this afternoon so I could try not to. A tree on the north side of town had given in to the tinges of red and yellow, and the air had that feeling of letting go.
Right now, at 8:30, it is already dark. I hear my kids upstairs, reluctant to go to bed, but soon, they’ll give in to sleep, as well. It is still warm outside. The sun blazed through the day, leaving bronzed, happy campers for me. The air conditioning is still running a little. But summer is getting tired.
Crow’s feet and laugh lines mark my face, remembering joy, remembering more sweet than the joy itself, I do believe. It is bittersweet, thinking of spring’s promise, dreams, wonders. I love this, love this time when summer is quiet. The fireworks have dwindled, the swimsuits faded, the glories exhausted. It is time for August.
When I was younger, I used to swim laps. I still like to. I rode my bike every night to the pool, an hour before it closed at 8:00. In early summer, I always hit all sorts of younger kids dodging through the lap lane. By August, they were mostly gone. The pool was mostly empty, in fact, save another addicted swimmer or two and a lifeguard. Back and forth, I used to swim that hour before they blew the whistle. Back and forth, I hit the rhythm that took me to another world. Back and forth, summer slipped by. The whistle blew, and I used to pull off my goggles to see the orange sun low in the west. I got on my bike and rode the same streets home, through the football field parking lot, to the street that jogged before Chestnut, to Selma, then Florence, Edgar Road and up the hill to home. It was almost dark by then, and I used to have ice cream sometimes, read, write, dream. Nothing could bother me there, in the water-induced peace I had found, looking out the window at the stars, listening to the radio, and figuring out who I might become someday.
Tomorrow is August, the beginning of the end of summer. The best time. The time we remember our real lives, left hanging through the never-ending days of June and July. We remember, but we do not retrieve those lives completely… not quite yet. Farmers markets. The people we love. Practices, but no games yet. Coming home. Plans for the future, but the date book is hardly filled. Another dive off the deck, more cherished because it is nearly the last.
Tomorrow is August. Savor it.
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Now playing: Bebel Gilberto – August Day Song
via FoxyTunes
