In March the weather tries out all the options on us.  I saw distant lightning create a glow in the sky, coming from way down the lake, and as it approached sheets of rain slid down the windows.  Then just for fun a bit of hail.  I expected to awake to a wet melty mess, but instead a new layer of soft snow.  This afternoon promises sun and 45 degrees. 

I was married in March on a 70-degree day. This weather appeared out of nowhere, and being completely unaware that I may need a coat on my wedding day, happily I did not.

My mom had clipped all the branches from the forsythia bush in a lovely plan to force the blooms and her words “there would be a riot of yellow” in vases around our house.  But instead there were vases of long sticks in all my wedding photos. It is actually a more true memory of life in our house.

The following March on our first wedding anniversary Kevin and I decided to stay in our same wedding night hotel in downtown Chicago.  We packed a few spring clothes and were greeted by an ice storm with dangerous clumps of snow falling off tall buildings.

St. Patrick’s Day in Chicago meant our girls Irish danced in the parade down State St. and were dressed in their wool costumes, tights and gloves.  Many years the sun shone and other years we all should have had our heads examined as the temperature was in the teens. 

Is a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere far away causing the hail to fall on our roof? The chaos of March is a sign, and something we celebrate as winter sputters to a halt and spring emerges from underneath the snow.  It is a madness we feel and this spring will provide a euphoria like one we have never known.

But in the immortal words of Sgt. Phil Esterhaus from Hill Street Blues

“Lets be careful out there”