When I was little, I remember the saying, “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.” The way I understood that was, March is stormy and awful at the beginning, and it’s spring’s early days at the end. Life experience tells me that’s sorta true, and this year has probably been the most lion/lamb March of the past decade, but really, this March has been bipolar — there have been 80 degree days (in Pennsyltucky!) and 20 degree days, and there was snow on the ground on St. Patrick’s Day. The last few days have been warm, then cold, and then warm again. As I write this now, it’s warm, and there’s a chance of thunderstorms this afternoon. This March is displaying real wave/particle duality — it is both lion and lamb, at the same time — and the final day of the month is no exception.
I was in Lynchburg for a week in the middle of the month. I thought, maybe because it was further south, that spring would be further advanced there, but it wasn’t. Even going through the mountains on my way home, things were still brown. My mom’s daffodils had begun to bloom on their own; she’s not here, and there’s no one to tend to them. (My dad isn’t physically capable of it right now.) Seeing them made me feel both happy and sad. Bipolar, not unlike March itself.
I had car trouble on the way home, a fuel pump leak. It did not leave me stranded, but I also came close to not making it to the mechanic after I got home. Joy.
Spring is running about two weeks late this year. The trees outside my apartment are finally showing green. Most of the grass seed I laid in the dead places in front of my apartment did not take, but there is some growth. Thanks for nothing, Pennington! I don’t think any of your grass seed took. Clearly, I should’ve stuck with the cheap stuff from Ollie’s.
The tree at the end of the sidewalk, the one with the ginormous hornet’s nest, is not showing green yet. The kids in that apartment are moving out this week.
I went to a baseball game downtown on Sunday. Two, actually. It was a doubleheader, Penn State York versus Penn State Schuylkill. I can’t say the baseball was good — so many base running blunders! so many fielding errors and misplayed balls! so many passed balls! — but it was free, and it was a nice afternoon (as long as I sat in the sun), and there are worse ways to spend a late March Sunday afternoon.
The stadium was close to empty, even from a distance I could hear people on the field talking (with was a surprising number of f-bombs).
The second game, I honestly stopped paying attention and spent some time scouring Project Gutenberg for research materials for a potential short story. I didn’t find exactly what I was hoping to, but I found things adjacent, and that actually may be better.
Leaving WellSpan Park, I walked around the plaza and took some photos of the banners outside. One such banner is for former Washington National, Ross Detwiler, whose game-used uniform I bought several years ago. (Curiously, Detwiler is a name you’ll find in Mt. Rose Cemetery on the east side of York, which I discovered five years ago. Seeing Detwiler graves made me wonder if Ross Detwiler, the pitcher, had cousins or family in the York area.)
I parked in the Market Street garage — top deck, level 11, because I’m weird — and before I left I took one last picture of the ballpark and, beyond it, Prospect Hill Cemetery, which I visited a week before St. Patrick’s Day.
That too was a nice day in this bipolar March, and I did not waste it.
What will April bring? Besides, hopefully, a new job…