Ode to the Ides of March

Today had Springtime written all over it!

The sky was so deep and blue it looked like you could dive right into it, the air was fresh and warm, and the birds were out of their minds screeching and hollering like they were in some nature show about wild toucans in the Amazon, chirping wildly back and forth as if to exclaim SON OF A MARRIED COUPLE SPRING IS FINALLY HERE!!!!

I didn't have the heart break it to them that it's supposed to snow this weekend.

Fall is the season of my soul, but boy do I love spring. Everybody loves spring. Such wonderful things happen in spring! Lilies and daisies and other flora which make good names for girls start appearing, chicks hatch I think, Walgreens starts carrying Cadbury Creme Eggs, there are April showers, and don't even get me started on May flowers!

But spring also has its frustrating moments. After a few days of sweet sunny relief from the dark bleak winter, the sky will turn from cerulean to murky lavender and the chill will set back in. The rain creates tiny floods and serious mud, and the once pure snow now looks like a mess of dirt and slush, death and not-quite life.

Lately I find myself in a different emotional state every day, sort of like a crazy person if you want to know the truth. Some days I feel inexplicably angry, resentful, or really quite sad. The next day I will feel outrageously happy and hopeful. Remember when Liesel confides to Frauline Maria that some days she feels like the world's about to end, and the next she'll feel like it's only beginning? I know exactly what she's talking about.

In other words, I've felt very spring-like.

A couple weeks ago I woke up on a grey day to see a land I love exposed and vulnerable like an open wound, on the internet for all the world to see. I had purposefully not looked at pictures of its marvels for a year in fear of the pain of nostalgia, only to be shown these awful images of elegant memories turned into dusty, crumbled concrete.

First, I mourned, crying for two days straight.

Then, after I was all done with my tears, I experienced a week of soaring hope and elation, a sort of resurrection from grief's depths.

I didn't realize until then that I had just gone through a year-long personal winter. Winter has a less-than-positive reputation for being the most quiet, still, and fruitless of seasons, but let me gently remind you that winter's silence and bareness are only a cover-up for what is happening beneath.

There is plenty of life growing during winter; plants are stirring under the naked ground and little leaves are learning how to push through empty branches which will soon be spangled in young green buds. Baby bunnies and chicks and other animals portrayed in pink Peeps marshmallow shapes are growing inside their mothers, ready to re-populate the earth come April.

I didn't realize how much was happening inside of me that I didn't acknowledge this entire year: growth, formation, learning. It was only until my cathartic grief period that it all came to the surface. An entire crop of new feelings and ideas had, unbeknown to me, been maturing in my mind and heart and soul: feelings and ideas that had to wait for a proper amount of sunshine and rainfall in order to emerge.

It is as easy to ignore and suppress our feelings as it is to ignore and suppress the persistent winter-like weather that insists on continuing into early spring. Unexplained sadness and inexplicable anger seem as negative as a snowfall in the weekend forecast after a week of gorgeous deep blue skies and silky-warm afternoons.

But, I have learned, time and time again, that feelings can hardly be helped, nor should they be. Sadness is not a bad thing to feel, unless you nurse it by drinking whiskey at 9am and watching My Super Sweet 16 marathons for weeks at a time. I mean, you could at least choose to watch a Golden Girls marathon.

Sadness can be healthy, even constructive, when given proper treatment and care. Sadness is a good time to watch pretty movies and eat hearty breakfasts and buy new music, to draw and journal and take long naps. Any feeling, with proper care, can be a learning experience, a lesson in compassion, and can even turn into something joy-giving.

My beautiful friend named Karima used to have this problem of always passing a displeasing person named Ben on the staircase of her apartment building. It would frustrate her so much, that, no matter what the time of day, she would always see this character, so irritating with his hair and his glasses and his stupid outfits.

She could not explain her frustration (which is how frustration works most of the time), but she knew she had to do something about it, because it was causing her excessive stress during the day.

I'm not making this up.

So, she made a tally of the number of times she saw Ben on the staircase during the week, and put it on her refrigerator. Each week she hoped to improve her score. And lo and behold, it improved her mood! Now the sight of Ben did not make her repulsed, but instead made her secretly laugh, and she even started enjoying the whole ridiculous thing.

I'm remembering Karima's wisdom during lingering days of sleet and snow. When you look outside to see it is raining, the sky might look annoying, even threatening. But take a raincoat and umbrella and go for a walk to your nearest bakery and you will find that not only is it not so bad, but it is actually quite pleasant.

Spring is spectacular for its days which welcome laziness, its moments which require bravery, and its weeks which provide a welcome spoiler alert for the long stretches of sunny days ahead.

So, I encourage your minds to be kind to your souls--to allow yourself to feel but not let your feelings get in the way of your pleasure. And I promise that, even during March snowfalls, something grand is stirring under the soil, perhaps even under your soul, ready to emerge at any moment in full, abundant force.

I leave you with a benediction from Isaiah. I have no idea what it means but I think it's lovely.

You shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands (Isaiah 55:12).