Sierra V. Fedorko

March blusters in with buttercups below winter-bare trees. And perhaps, we don’t much admire this month which is neither warm nor cold, beautiful or ugly, simply because it unravels much like the way our heart feels most the time. We are both winter and spring, joyful and grieving, growing old and becoming young again.

A glorious mixture of birthing my daughter in the winter-worn days of March and four months later giving up my social media addiction has me experiencing the life in this month like never before.

For years I have loved the buttercups filling up March spaces in wild-strewn patches, but now I also notice how the wind feels and how the breeze plays with fruit tree tags and garden banners. While I long for the warmth of a reliable sun, I admire the clouds bunching up in the sky. I notice the birdsong that beckons spring. I savor the sound. It’s back again. Back again.

There seems to be a lifting of pressure in the winter air. It begins to spread out until finally the air is spread thin and sweet in the later summer and early autumn months. Of course the winter air will press around us loudly again, and we will welcome it, but for now, we welcome its passing.

We anticipate spring.

We’re learning to embrace life like March embraces the days within it…

Unabashed to feel winter and spring, to hold joy and grief, to be old and yet grow young again. We laugh in the cold. We are bent by comfort in our sorrow, and the billowing blessings unfurled, and all our unmet expectations that turned to wildflowers,

Somehow.

Weatherman said a lot of things
like snow and hail and winter
STORM,
but weatherman didn’t quite predict
buttercups in bloom
to stay
and sway and sing and burst
during and while and after
it all,
or to beckon and billow
tenfold
despite the bitter
fray.

So bulging at the seams
goes spring
like it always does
when winter wanes so
loudly
when flowers come untucked
quietly
by their boisterous
laughter
at the weatherman.

And sometimes
I can hear them
laughing
while bent by cold
March wind
and every now and then
I find myself there with them
in the cold
and laughing
too
while
bent by unmet
expectation
that turned to
burgeoning
wildflowers
despite the blistering
storm.

-S.V.F., Laughing in the Cold

Who knew I’d ever grow this fond of March? Who knew I’d ever be able to have children? Yet, while I write this, my daughter sits on the floor rifling through one of my past prayer journals, an old ultrasound she pulled out of its pages lying next to her. Somehow? There’s no question here.

God, my Lord and Savior. That’s How.

In years past, my wildflowers have been literal wildflowers, but my wildflowers have also been the garden God gave me on a childless Mother’s Day, the goats we got the following June, their babies birthed on that one Monday following Easter, the healing in my soul through all these things.

And this evening?

My wildflowers are switching the laundry, the basket filled with children’s clothes, picking up the forgotten bowl of goldfish crackers next to me, admiring the burgeoning buttercups from my bedroom window, preparing dinner, refilling water bottles, another round of our Good Night routine…

What do your wildflowers look like?

Isn’t it something to be in March? For it dares us to be right here, and then it whispers of spring in the truth of its dare, getting us excited for what’s in store. Life is in the forecast, it sings with birds and bunched up clouds and fresh wind, and you’re right here.

See? See!

Ps- I’ve started eating the remainder of the goldfish crackers. So that’s how “clean-up” is going. Heheheee.