Lee County sheriffs: serving, protecting for 148 years

There is an old saying that says if March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb.
I say that means the opposite could also be true: in like a lamb and out like a lion. I think I will take the first choice.  Let’s get it over with and gentle ourselves into spring.
My first child, a daughter, was born in March and was always a free-spirited little girl.  Petite, smiling and loving life; she was the one doing a balancing act on top of the fence, while playmates stood firmly on terra firma, looking up at her in awe. I just realized it was because she was born in March.
Whenever someone mentions March in conversation, I quote Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar; as Caesar was warned by the soothsayer: “Beware the ides of March.” The soothsayer wasn’t very soothing, was he?
The ides was the 15th on the Roman calendar. Caesar had been told to look out for trouble. As forewarned, the ides was the day Julius met his demise on the steps of the senate, stabbed to death because of his political promise.
March is a capricious month. Sometimes she tears up flowers that have bloomed too early or heartlessly freezes the beauty out of them. The plans and expectations of mere mortals make no difference.
A few days of warm sunshine convinces us that March has been sent to the corner like a naughty child. We are charmed away as the damsel Spring shows us glimpses of her approaching arrival, flirt that she is.
Suddenly, March lets out a roar of freedom from being in “time out,” while throwing icy sleet into the throat of open lilies or decorating pink crabapple blossoms with dustings of snow so light a lilting breeze scatters it into the air like pixie dust.
The wise sages of soil and plants and trees warn the ingenues to beware the ides of March or any other day in the month. No one tells March what she can do. She is the matriarch, the dowager, and she will have her way.  We have no choice but to like whatever she gives us and whenever she wants to give it to us. Some things in life cannot be controlled, and March is one of them.
We might as well give up and go fly a kite.
Kirkpatrick is a guest columnist for the “Opelika Observer.”