March Again

It starts as thick, wet snow overnight. It changes to sleet, the trees and power lines soon coated in a layer of ice. I watch them nervously as they droop lower and lower. Later, it changes back to snow, heavy flakes falling in sheets. My daughter says it feels like we’re living in a snow globe. That night, the skies are gray, the snow lightening the darkness. It does not look like evening, feels too bright to go to bed.

In the morning the trees are coated in white. Power outages are reported throughout the area but we are lucky. My daffodils had buds but now they are buried under a pile of snow. The crocuses were here earlier than ever, their purple, orange, white, and yellow blooms disappearing under a thick layer of white.

The neighbor kids come over and play with my children. My husband gives them each five dollars for helping clear off the cars and driveway. The last time we had this much snow so late in the season, my daughter was a toddler. She wore her St. Patrick’s Day pants and insisted on helping my husband, taking the nicer shovel and leaving him with the broken one. 

This is March, I tell myself. It’s the month where my energy levels rise and fall with the weather. I embrace the warm days and muddle through the cold. Onions and herbs have been started in the basement and I peer at the soil, looking for the first sprouts.

My back garden, now white, was brown and gray a few days ago, pops of green from the allium hidden by the snow. The trellis for my climbing rose is crooked, battered by the winter winds.

Normally, I would resent this snow so late in the season, but this year we have seen so little and I’m okay experiencing a little more white. I am ready for the flowers, for warm fresh air, for walks around the neighborhood, time at the park. But in the evening the almost full moon illuminates our tree, the branches dripping crystals in the moonlight. My daughter gazes out her window before bed. “This isn’t a time to take a picture,” she says. “This is a time to enjoy nature.”

She’s right, and the two of us look out at the snow and ice, the beauty that a cold night can bring, and I’m content to stay inside a little longer.