March is the Month Expectation./ The things we do not know -/ The Persons of prognostication/ Are coming now -/ We try to show becoming firmness – But Pompous Joy/ Betrays us, as his first Betrothal/ Betrays a Boy.

Emily Dickinson

March gets a lot of hype. More sunlight. More green. A more perfect breeze begins to blow. The ground begins to warm. Perhaps we smile more because we have gotten some rest in the winter. Flower faces turn toward the sun. Last year’s cold snap is forgotten. We don’t mind those coming disappointments, of tempting warmth and sun, because that is part of March’s thing. Gently inching us toward summer. Dusting off winter. Moving us toward imagination. Toward creating. From seed to bloom.

Last March seems like it has been happening all year. It feels like we have been in a perpetual March. By perpetual March, I am thinking about grieving of last year’s deaths — the remembering that happens throughout winter. I am thinking about March’s youthful innocence and naïveté that feels a bit lost right now. I am thinking about the not knowing what joy looks like in the face of suffering. I am thinking about the anticipation of warmth and summer, and the slow realization that what was before will not be again. (It can be better, but it will not be again.)

Maybe we can let March be March? Filled with hope and expectation as the birthplace of new life and possibility. Like a new year. I like that idea. It feels like a choice at a time when everything is a bit too big to choose anything, and I just want to sit down and eat a grilled cheese sandwich. It is comforting to think we are in the month when irises bloom through snow.