March Mood (so far)
a response to Emma Copely Eisenberg
The mood is writing letters to voters in Wisconsin, and calling your reps (almost) every day. The mood is snow two days after it was seventy degrees. The mood is a heaviness in your head and heart so crushing that all you can do is take deep, slow breaths. The mood is throwing dinner in the crockpot and meeting a friend for tea anyway. The mood is finding a seven-year-old list of your youngest child’s first words in your notes app, and trying not to implode from the sweetness and longing and grief at the passage of time.
The mood is wearing a hat instead of washing your hair.
The mood is not buying anything from Amazon.
The mood is needing to sit down during your mammogram because you almost passed out. The mood is incessantly badgering your kids to work on their science fair projects. The mood is no school on Friday, and then no school next Thursday or Friday, and then no school the next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, but you aren’t going anywhere for spring break, so the mood is basically just no school. But the mood is also Book Fair and Science Fair and parent/teacher conferences, so the mood is also somehow all the school.
The mood is a million ideas for creative projects that you don’t have the time or the energy or the focus for.
The mood is buds on your crabapple tree, which you were worried was dead.
The mood is two days of sandhill crane migration, but even though that was a week ago, you still look/listen for them every time you go outside. The mood is juncos hopping around the tulip sprouts. The mood is chatty cardinals, and robins, and yes, even the house sparrows tearing out the corner of your gutter for their nest. The mood is bird heavy, as it always is and should be.
The mood is leaning into other writers, letting them clear the first few steps of a path for you, just to get you moving.
The mood is trying. Then resting. Then trying again.