A lion and a lamb should know their place in March
For years we looked forward to March, confident that it would herald the end of winter’s desolation and usher in spring.
Alas, in recent years we’ve discovered that March usually is a false spring.
March now has a split personality and can’t decide whether it wants to be a lion or a lamb. It can toggle between the two with maddening fashion, causing people to break out in hives and refrain from dancing the Bulgarian polka.
Personally, I feel it’s an abomination if March serves up more Nor’easters than tulips.
Then again, I only love a deep freeze if I’m surrounded by frozen Snickers bars in a Frigidaire. I prefer my snow in cones and my ice in drinks.
That’s why I was heartened when I saw a longrange AccuWeather March forecast for Berks County that didn’t look like a doomsday apocalypse of snow and sleet straight out of Ice Station Zebra.
However, we all know only too well that weather predictions, especially those forecasting snow, are about as reliable as the warranty on that junker you purchased at Fast Eddie’s Very Used Cars.
And with The Weather Channel predicting that the eastern U.S. will likely experience below-average temperatures through March and with savage storms seemingly the new normal, I wouldn’t rule out us getting slammed with a Nor’easter bomb this March.
That would put a definite crimp in our tip-toeing through the tulips.
I’m nostalgic about the Marches of yore when it routinely came in like a lion and went out like a lamb. But in recent years the lion and the lamb keep exchanging roles. Even Cher doesn’t have these many costume changes at her concerts.
This Jekyll & Hyde nonsense has to go. We can’t have folks walking around in shorts and flip-flops and fertilizing their lawns one day and bundling up and operating snow blowers the next.
Nothing stays so straight at what is weak in a man, and bleeds him so pale, as an absence of consistency.
It’s enough to make our mental stability snap like a sapling in a hurricane. Such roller coaster weather changes can trigger mass confusion and nausea. St. Paddy’s Day now isn’t the only day in March when people are green.
I know it’s tough getting a plumber on weekends. But it shouldn’t be so tough to get a slice of serenity in March.
Then again, March wasn’t so kind to Julius Caesar. Now it’s stabbing all of us.
Et tu, Mother Nature? Mike Zielinski, a resident of Berks County, is a columnist, novelist, playwright and screenwriter.