I belonged to a writer's group when I lived in Germany. I was lucky enough to be a part of the first meeting. We were just starting off, getting the group going, and, because we'd just welcomed in the first few days of March, we decided we'd flex our creative muscles and write something about the third month of the year.
I'm a very descriptive writer. So many different things came to mind when I thought about this topic. My birthday is in March, so I have kind of a fondness for this month to begin with. Spring is happening, the sun is shining a bit brighter, there are flowers and - where I come from - snow. I realized there was so much I could write about, but it would be easy to go overboard.
Then I thought, why not go overboard? It's a writing exercise, right? And who better to go overboard than an adolescent girl? Oh ... I'd just found the voice for my piece ... and I began to get excited about this assignment. Yes, I could have some fun with this one. I slid back into the past. A long, long way into the past, and I became thirteen years old again. The result is deliciously over done. I hope you enjoy.
Happy March, everyone!
In the Pursuit
of Spring
©2017
Jennifer C. Wing
The
young woman’s arm, outstretched and hanging over the shiny red metal of the car
in which she rode, bucked gently in the wind. Her fingers were flat, held
together loosely in a lazy mock salute and her hand rode the air currents that
rushed past the open window. Clouds were forming in the sky looking like
swollen, dirty cotton balls as they rolled in and began spitting a thin, cold
rain that dotted the pale protruding limb. The only color she could see was the
bright neon pink polish she’d picked up on sale a few days ago at the mall that
covered her short oval nails like enthusiastic little flags moving in the
chilly wind. March comes in like a lion so the old saying goes, and that was
the truth of it. What used to be the beginning of a ten month year many, many
years ago in ancient Rome was arriving quickly on the coat tails of winter,
full of boisterous bluster much like the growling and grumbling in the back of
a big African cat’s throat. The winter days following the Roman Decembris and those
leading up to Martius, or this time of heralding spring, were so dreary and
forgettable that at one time they were not even counted or assigned to any
specific month. The girl quirked her mouth and watched the expanse of the cold
and colorless sky hovering high above her dotted window and did not even think
to wonder why this had been the case.
Round,
brown eyes squinted against the oncoming rain while the clouds above her began
to fold and shift as if they’d heard her silent, unkind thoughts and were unnerved
by them. Slowly they transformed and began to resemble thick plumes of smoke
rising from the ruins of a city demolished in heated, dusty battle. From within
the amorphous swirls of darkening silver and gray the girl almost believed she
could see the figure of a man, tall and broad shouldered, carrying a spear in
one meaty fist, the weapon wrapped in a thick vine of long-leafed laurel. Mars,
the god of war and ultimate pastoral guardian, looked to be treading upon an
unstable ground of moving soot with a pair of large feet clad in roughly laced,
flat-soled sandals. His hairy, unclothed legs beneath a short and flared skirt
looked strong and undeniably masculine as he motioned time itself to move
forward with a wave of his powerful arm. The thirty-one days of this
unpredictable month boasted the name of this esteemed mythological deity who
was said to have used his military power to secure peace, and each minute
ticked by like an attentive and patient soldier in his army as the water
continued to fall from the sky and slowly erased from view the swirling clouds
that moved above the speeding car.
With
a turn of the head accompanied by a pair of raised eyebrows from the front
passenger seat, the girl grudgingly acquiesced to the wordless maternal
request, first tossing a temperamental roll of her eyes before moving her wet
arm into the warmth of the vehicle as the window whirred silently upward and
locked itself back into the frame. Almost instantly the glass was covered in a
countless array of dots of cool rain, each one a round, wet orb that splintered
and multiplied her view of the outside world. If there had been a question of
the god of war’s existence just moments before it was all but obliterated now
as the sleek lines of the car moved quickly above wet pavement, throwing up a
pair of plumes the color of rotting and filthy ice behind the rear tires. The
clouds above continued to roll and churn as the chill in the interior of the
car was chased away by the warm, stale air spewing from the vents in the dash board.
The change in temperature and the weather outside stubbornly limited her view
with a mist of milky fog on one side of the glass and a kaleidoscope of
raindrops on the other. With a hushed and defeated sigh the teen relaxed in her
seat, her carefully coiffed blond head pressed against the soft pliable leather
as the film of limitless road and soft-edged scenery clicked past in a watery
and colorless blur.
While
she listened to the rhythmic beat of windshield wipers as they cleared the
driver’s view in the front seat, the story of the conspiracy and brutal
assassination of Julius Caesar, believed by many to be one of the greatest
military commanders in history, marched quietly and unbidden into her head.
Just like the wipers soothed her now, so had the tale, or perhaps more the
telling of the tale in the flowing and somewhat lyrical style of Shakespeare’s
iambic pentameter, the words rolling and almost musical coming from the throat
of her teacher as she’d read it aloud in school months before. English, not one
of her favorite subjects if she was honest, was situated tortuously before the
forty minutes of freedom that was lunch break, and was normally a span of time
she put up with only because she had no other choice in the matter. However,
and she was at least mature enough to admit this, but only to those who were
closest to her and who would not dare repeat it, she’d found the steady,
confident lift and fall of the aforementioned teacher’s voice surprisingly
pleasant as she’d recited the dying words of the infamous Roman general,
uttered while the man is being brutally murdered by a group of ruthless men at
the Senate. “Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar,” the dying man whispers as he
pulls the white fabric of a toga over his face and dramatically falls dead and
bleeding from numerous swipes and stabs of malicious blades upon the ground on
that ill-fated day now remembered as the Ides of March.
The
girl was relatively certain that it mattered little if nothing at all to her
whether or not Caesar had actually been militarily brilliant, and it had been
consistently pointed out to her by her teacher that Shakespeare’s telling of
the story was a bit historically askew so it was the fictitious facts of that
long ago day she’d been interested in, if only long enough to pass the quarter
final. She was pretty certain that she’d gotten the most important parts of the
story down, although some of the details had been less than clear with too many
characters to keep track of and all of them speaking a language that was far
too frilly and nearly undecipherable to her teen ears. During the course of the
nine weeks her class had studied the literary piece she oftentimes found
herself thinking that Shakespeare was highly over rated, and had decided
halfway through the first act of the play that a writer as praised as the
famous old Brit was should be a little easier to understand. As the girl slowly
drifted to that hazy place that lingers just before sleep, a thoughtful and
perhaps mischievous smile played along the line of her carefully painted lips.
A soothsayer’s warning and an adoring wife’s bloody premonition be damned.
Sometimes, and the occasion was rare she was certain, it just didn’t pay to be
stubborn.
Behind
her now closed eyes a vision began to take shape, one of many a teen girl’s
dreams in the shape of a handsome hulking vampire with a very unsexy moniker
that hardly matched the body seen beneath the Calvin Klein underwear he was
known to model in the glossy and perfumed pages of countless fashion magazines.
The fifteenth day of March had not been so lucky for old Caesar, the girl
thought, but that was way back in 44 BC. It was so hard to mourn the death of
someone she never even knew when more than 2,000 years later, God saw fit to
bring a being like Kellan Lutz into the world on that very same day. “Friends,
Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears,” she mused as her smile widened just for
a moment with the thought that the Ides of March was not entirely bad before
she allowed the thump of the wipers and the movement of the car to lull her
even closer into the land of dreams. “Kellan Lutz is born!” the anonymous
announcer in her head continued to shout enthusiastically. “And pre-adolescent
girls worldwide rejoice!”
It
felt as though winter had shown up, liked the surroundings and settled itself
for an interminable amount of time with its sharp claws embedded firmly into
the very fabric of the young woman’s being. The grayness and bitter
temperatures seemed more like a pair of permanent residents instead of short
term seasonal visitors, and the twitch beneath her skin that felt a lot like
spring time had grown into an uncontrollable itch that no amount of scratching
could diminish.
This
girl was definitely no snow bunny and the bleak white canvas filled with
nothing but shadows of screeching dark-winged birds and tall scraggly arms of
bare trees reaching eerily up into the dense milky sky had her inner beach bum
screaming to be heard. The girl longed for March’s lions, their honey colored
coats warm and soft, their eyes dark green with spots of red the color of
bloodstones, to stalk across the sky on big padded paws and pull from behind
their muscled backs the wide, warm banners of crisp aquamarine like bright Mardi
Gras flags brightening up the bleak sky to usher in the first day of spring.
Nothing could bring out the drama queen in this sun worshipping female more
than winter’s colorless and never ending cold and snow, and no doubt the Old
Bard himself would have happily awarded her over enthusiastic mental ramblings
a well-deserved round of applause.
She
barely heard the noise at first, so immersed in her silent and subconscious
diatribe against the cheerlessness of the first two months of the year that it
took her mind a handful of minutes to register the incessant tapping somewhere
near the vicinity of her right elbow. She slit one brown eye partially open and
slowly focused on the culprit; one small but chubby and rather dirty looking
troll strapped tightly into a heavy-duty car seat which rested snugly beside
her. There were small square shaped books with hard, unbendable pages and a cup
with a supposedly spill proof lid leaking a suspicious honey colored liquid
that smelled like sweet, white grapes lying across a pair of rather round and
denim-clad legs. On the ends of those legs were two kicking feet in stained
white sneakers keeping time with the almost lyrical gibberish flowing out of
the toddler’s graham cracker encrusted mouth, the untied laces flapping and
moving about like restless and uncoordinated snakes around his ankles. The
boy’s hair was several shades darker than that of his older sister with shiny curls
that stuck out at wild angles around his face that gave him the look of a very
young but energetic rock star. The girl wanted to be annoyed by the
interruption of her nap, but upon resting her eyes on her baby brother’s plump,
pink tinted cheeks, she found herself smiling at him instead. Okay, so he wasn’t
really a troll she silently conceded. A pixie, maybe, or perhaps a leprechaun.
Yes, she decided with an unenergetic dip of her pointed chin, that’s
what he is. He’s a leprechaun, though admittedly much cuter than most she’d
seen depicted in books or movies, but still as short and unruly.
The
stripes that trailed along the fabric of the young boy’s long sleeved shirt
were the bright green color of the three-leaved shamrocks that St. Patrick used
to teach the Trinity to the pagan Irish, each one representing God as the
Father, the Son and Holy Spirit, and the gap-toothed grin that brightened the
little imp’s face as he twisted in his chair to look at his sister made the
corners of her own mouth lift a bit higher. The only rainbow this little
leprechaun was liable to lead her to was perhaps a pilfered package of colorful
Skittles candy broken open and spilled on the pantry floor, or a bright array
of building blocks that hurt the tender insteps of her feet when she tried to
traverse the messy landscape of the child’s room in the dark. As for a pot of
gold, well, she quietly laughed. That was, without a doubt, completely out of
the question.
She
reached for the upended cup and felt the stickiness of the juice coat the pads
of her fingers. Score another point for false advertising, she mused. The lid
was decidedly not spill proof, but who in the world would notice after looking
at the mess her brother had become since he’d climbed into the car seat more
than an hour before?
“Be
like the Irish, little man,” she said quietly as she handed the cup over to
him. The little sprite reached over with a pudgy hand and gladly took it from
her. “Drink up.” When he wrapped his lips around the spout and took a pull from
it the girl laughed again. With that diaper of his bowing his short little
legs, he walked a bit like a drunkard much like any other toddler she’d ever
seen, and without a nap, he was nearly as surly and cantankerous as a few of
the drunks she’d encountered. Yes, a leprechaun made the most sense. She wondered
why she’d never come to the conclusion before.
With
a shake of her head she turned and peered out of her window once more to find
that the thick veil of clouds had finally begun to part. The rain was still
spitting at her window, but with much less intensity, and the drone of the
windshield wipers had slowed to a sluggish beat. She had to squint to see it
but she was sure that the tiny little triangle of sky she spied behind the gray
curtain was actually a faint shade of blue. Her eyes held fast to it as if they
were daring it to change while she remained ever hopeful that it wouldn’t.
Indeed, it was the pale, soft color of a robin’s egg nestled in a nest, and the
shell grew a little bit bigger as she focused on it, the cars and highway signs
a blur in her peripheral vision.
Gradually,
the rain let up altogether and what it left behind was a world now shiny and
clean if not still a bit chilled by the cool air. It looked reborn, almost
fragile in its new state, and as the clouds let go their grip on the threads of
their fabric and the weave became increasingly loose, more of the watery, blue
sky was revealed. The girl silently coaxed the sun out of its den like she
would a baby bird out of its shell. “Come on out,” she silently urged, the
voice in her head gentle and soothing. “Come out and meet this cold winter
world that needs your heat and light.” As if it had actually been listening to
her, the soft gleam of sun peeked through, it’s rays as warm and soft as thick,
creamy butter burned off more of the clouds, and ever so faintly there appeared
to be the smallest hint of a rainbow, the streams barely creating the merest
suggestion of pastel pink, yellow, blue and green reflected in the moisture
that still clung wetly to the cool air.
The
car slowed and veered right off the highway and the quiet clicking sound of
the blinker faintly filled the warm air inside the vehicle. Smoothly, the
girl’s father turned left and the scenery from the other side of the window
moved but not on high speed as before. The girl caught glimpses of shiny rain
washed windows glinting in the increasingly courageous rays of the sun above,
and the bare limbs of the trees were showing small, tightly folded buds dotted
along their wooden sleeves like little decorative buttons. Dirt as dark as coal
filled planters and roadside gardens, the brave, thick stalks buried beneath
pushing through with the bright color of emeralds and sporting long wrapped
hats the shade of downy feathers on a newly hatched chick.
A
smile floated across the teen’s glossy lips once more as she peered up and
watched the movement of the clouds, their shape rounded and snowy white now and
moving across the sky like a herd of lazily grazing sheep, their coats fluffy
clean and white. As she watched them she was convinced that these were March’s
lambs slowly and hesitantly following the thunderous noise of the rambunctious,
lean-bodied lions and she decided that she liked them just fine. Yes, she
thought with a self-satisfied smile as the reflection of the fat, white flock moved
against the wide brown of her upturned and unblinking eyes. She liked them very
much indeed.
