Springloaded

It happens to me every spring, and yet every year I forget it's coming: restlessness, wanderlust, cabin fever, spring fever, soul fever. A desire for change so strong that it masquerades as an undeniable feeling that change is coming. Big change, momentous change, cobweb-sweeping change. But change of what? Scenery? Employment? Location? Beliefs? Vocation? Yes, all of the above. Or no, maybe something else. I don't know. It's just the headstrong feeling that something (good or bad) is barreling down on me, and I'm practically holding my breath waiting for it.

The feeling lasts until I remember that it's just the month of March, and despite what T. S. Eliot said about April, this is the cruelest month, mixing memory with deisre. March in Pennsylvania, with its half-assed promises of spring. The air warms to 55 degrees once or twice before mid-month, and we all throw off our coats and pull on pastel hope. Then it snows and the wind cuts us up again. Meanwhile, my Instagram feed fills up with photos of soft, bright flowers in the South and Pacific Northwest. I remind myself that bitterness on behalf of others' good fortune is an unattractive quality. I know that come April, when I'm posting my own photos of fresh shoots of green, folks in New England and Canada may still be shoveling out their driveways and cursing the lower latitudes.

But it's till March here and everywhere, the lion and the lamb, the memory and the desire, the liminal space space between seasons. And me, longing for change, convinced it's coming. I look at travel websites, real estate listings, job openings, new haircuts. I binge on TV drama and movie romances. I take long drives alone, down country roads I've never seen. I alternate between pots of hot tea and tall, clear glasses of water infused with lemon. I vow to rearrange my bookshelves, to scrub the floors, to dust my desk. I feel springloaded, waiting to unspool at rocket speed, like one of those trick cans with a snake that pops out when you open it.

Change is coming: I keep saying it. And I'm not wrong. Change is always coming. Wait long enough and everything changes in some way. But waiting for change and making a change are different things. I don't know what I'm waiting for, but maybe it's time to stop waiting.