I keep trying to figure out March. It’s not a powerful month for me. It teases you with its sunlight and then destroys your good spirits with a freak snowstorm that makes you wish you hadn’t optimistically stored your winter hat.
When I think of March, it’s more or less a blank slate. I can’t identify any hotspots on my emotional calendar. Not a warm patch. Nothing.
I had to rack my brain before I realized what I used to associate March with: spring break.
Unlike other, enviable schools, Cornell only had one week off for spring break. Most years, I visited my friend at Yale and went to her classes. Not the rabblerousing spring break one might expect. On the other hand, this yearly tradition led to the discovery that I could understand basic Portuguese. And, in fact, these interludes with a wonderful friend were exactly what I needed after the stress of my own semester.
Then came senior year. Senior year was it—the last hurrah. Time to go big or go home. I chose to go to Idaho.
Well, let me be more specific. I chose to go to Sun Valley, Idaho to stay with one of my best friends (let’s call her Becks) from Cornell and her family. I had it all planned—while everyone in Cancun tanned and Snookified themselves (let’s pretend everyone knew who Snooki was in 2007), I would learn to ski and spend the evenings relaxing with a glass of wine, deep in discussion with Becks and her family.
On Day 1, after mastering the bunny slope under the tutelage of Becks’s father, a former ski ranger, I decided to try my luck on a larger slope. The ski lift deposited me at the top of the hill and I started making my way down the mountain. Unfortunately, while watching a pack of four-year-olds zoom past me, I hit a patch of ice, fell forward, and heard a pop. Fortunately, that pop was my binding releasing—not my knee self-destructing. But based on the searing pain that followed, I wasn’t sure. So I ungracefully righted myself once color returned to my face, skied down the slope on wobbly legs, and decided I could hang in there for another run. Bad move. Run number 2 also ended in a fall, which only exacerbated my previously sprained knee. That put an end to my dreams of downhill skiing. I spent the rest of spring break hobbling around Sun Valley, which, on the upside, led to many more conversations with Becks and her family, and far more cheese plates than one could imagine.
But I still find it odd that this memory sits in its own separate compartment, seemingly detached from March. Instead, it marks the transition from winter to spring, regardless of the month—hence the melting and refreezing of snow that shattered my plans…and almost my knee.
Weather: Sunny with blue skies. 41 degrees.
Moods:
Anna – 6.5 out of 10 on the “so miserable I can’t get out of bed” to “jumping for joy” scale.
Hannah – 4 out of 10. Too much to do.
Ditch the Umbrella 
Love it!