A Closing Meditation on the Month That Never Makes Up Its Mind
March in Alabama has always struck me as a month with one foot in the grave and the other foot kickin’ up wildflowers. It arrives with the personality of a stray dog. Unpredictable. Affectionate when it wants to be. Mean as a snake on days when the wind has got its feelings hurt. March wakes up each morning unsure whether it ought to bring frost, tornadoes, pollen, sunshine, or all four before lunchtime.
If months were people, January would be a cranky old uncle. February a shy child. But March? March would be the teenage cousin who shows up unannounced, tracks mud through the kitchen, raids the refrigerator, apologizes with a bunch of daffodils stolen from Myrtle McAbee’s yard, then runs off to flirt with April before the sun sets.
The whole world seems restless in March.
Birds quarrel over twigs.
The ground trembles with seeds tryin’ their best to become somethin’.
Even the creeks get noisy, like they are tired of bein’ polite in winter.
And people are no better.
Men wander out to their porches for reasons they don’t fully understand. They sit there squintin’ at the sky as if expectin’ a personal invitation from spring. Women pull weeds with unnecessary vigor, claimin’ they are just tidyin’ up the yard when in truth they are clearin’ room for whatever hope might bloom next.
Children feel it too.
They run barefoot before anybody gives them permission.
They taste the air and swear it tastes green.
They know the world is wakin’ up again.
The thing about March is that it’s a promise wrapped in uncertainty. Winter ain’t quite gone, but spring ain’t quite here. The days get longer, but the nights still make you fetch that old quilt from the closet. You step outside in a short-sleeved shirt and come back in a coat. Or the other way around.
March is a month forever caught in the act of becomin’.
And maybe that’s why it tugs at the heart so. Because the truth is that most of us spend our lives in a kind of March. Halfway between who we were and who we’re tryin’ to be. Half sure of the next step, half frightened of it. Half frozen by yesterday, half warmed by tomorrow.
The world teaches us to long for certainty.
But the soul learns more from seasons that haven’t settled yet.
So, I sit with March, year after year, like an old friend who won’t answer a straight question. I listen to the wind fussin’ in the pines. I watch thunderheads form and collapse without warnin’. I wait to see if the peach trees will risk blossoms again.
And I remember that life is made not in the settled seasons, but in the tremblin’ ones. The in-between ones. The ones where winter and spring argue over ownership of the same day.
March has never made up its mind.
And thank the Lord for that.
It reminds us that change don’t arrive tidy.
It arrives bold and confused and beautiful.
A little bit like us.
So, here’s to March.
Half winter.
Half spring.
Full of restless hearts ready for whatever comes next.
olbigjim 