Bee-hind

You might think I've been sitting on mine for a while now. Or perhaps you understand me more than I think, and you know that I haven't been doing the let-mommy-eat-bonbons routine. (Who invented that one, anyway? Where are all these supposed bonbon-eating mommies, FOX reality-show programming aside?)

Partially I have been keeping busy. Partially I have just not been feeling artful. Partially I have been feeling awful. Cycling through all of that on a daily basis exhausts me enough that I'm back at the crossword puzzles again in the evening, much to the dismay of my husband (I sometimes call him my "Hals-band", which is German for collar).

Somehow the beginning of spring is often like this for me. It's like you feel as if you have all these things to do (spring cleaning, change your life, do something meaningful, be everything to everyone, garden) and yet it's still too early to do most or many of them. And when the time comes to do them, you're too overwhelmed to do any of them.

Apparently, despite the popular notion that people go off the deep end at the holidays, more people go off their rockers in the springtime, or so my German psychiatrist once told me. We mused about why that would be: is it simply an evolutionary attunement to the seasons gone haywire? I.E., our bodies are gearing up for a period of increased activity for survival (establishing new crops or searching for fresh food after a long, sparse winter)? Could it be the sudden surge of color into the world and into the veins? (Our appointments were often spent talking about things like this, or politics or art. Much better than "How crazy do you feel today? Crazier than last week?")

This morning as I turned out of our street I saw a telltale sign: The first horsefly of the season holding on behind the side mirror as I accelerated. Last year, after moving in in August, our house was full of the suckers. We postulated that they proliferated in the presence of the actual horses that live at the nearby actual farm. Their entrance was facilitated by the open doors for the movers who stowed our lives up to the rafters.

Now outside it is variably warm, apparently warm enough for the first resurgence or spawn. I guess with flies you speak of generations. Still, it's hard to see spring quite yet. We're still overlooking a few grayish piles of snowy slush that my son likes to trample through on his way back from the park. The snowdrifts left glacial deposits of sand, glass, wrappers and glass, which rim the sidewalks and lawns that are trying, trying to think about a start.