Driving down memory lane in March
Changes and renewals, seasons and growth - for this month's subject at Women's Perspective
I am sitting on the couch. Laptop in my lap. My head is buzzing with thoughts. It’s almost as if I was drunk. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been drunk. Maybe tipsy once.. But the point is that my head is swimming in thoughts. About a million things. It’s chaos in there and I need to straighten it up a bit, a bit of housecleaning, organizing while I just want to sit in my car and go. The sun is out. It’s chilly, the wind is blowing but the windshield and the car’s bodywork would protect me from the elements, while I’d just zoom away, out into the nothing. Preferably while music is playing. Just follow those double yellow lines and be in synchrony with my surroundings. Almost as if I’d reach out the roof just to feel the wind hitting my hands, as when we used to put our faces in the open window of the train as it was going 120kms per hour (74mph) on a straight stretch of a line. Speed, force, power. And that somehow equals happiness.
But I am not in my car, not on a train, I am sitting still, only my fingers are moving with high speed while my brain is on this trip around the world of sunshine, wind, train tracks, memories of childhood, likely fueled by caffeine or lack of sleep…
It’s March now, and the light is different. The crows have gone quiet, it’s only the wind howling in the city, and the bare branches of the trees are dancing to its music, and so are my neighbor’s windchimes. I am listening to this, but I should be getting back to the subject at hand: March, timetables, Changes and renewals, seasons and growth, and me in it all… Self-centered. Because we experience it all as us. Ourselves.
I stopped. Notifications stopped me. And I am happy and not at the same time. It’s great, because it feels that my work is getting recognized, and it has in fact brought writing in front of my very eyes, exactly what I wanted and asked for, that made my jaw drop. Literally being in awe. Such beautiful writing. And then my thought was: What am I doing here? I am a joke. Trying to put down in words how I feel, drunk on words, drunk on thoughts and I wanna go driving? Calm down for a second. But if I think about it… If I think about it for a little, then this fits right into the subject of what the ladies, my team mates at Women’s Perspective were talking about and what I was talking about all week: supporting one another, the pleasure of language and of course, shouting in my face: impostor syndrome.
A pitcher full of soul is a perfect example for being stunned by someone else’s work (It since has been deleted from Substack unfortunately but still exists in a book!) An example of coming back alive, possibly with even more force than previously imagined.
I have to remind myself that I am me (formed by my circumstances and my very own will) - I can’t give anything else but what’s inside me. My thoughts, my heart, my words (“my blood, my life, my soul”). So buckle up and come on a ride with me, if you will. Back into the future? In the past. What’s 30 years in the scope of time anyway?
Does it come with age? That we look back? - I asked last week in my post: The field of wildflowers.
In my mind I go back to the time, a month ago, when we, the team, were thinking what March means to us all… Brainstorming together.
It is a month of spring (even if it doesn’t look like it), when flowers start peeking out from under the soft blanket of soil, from under the white blanket of snow, when the cold still bites a little, but the sun’s ray can warm your face if you lift it up towards it, somewhere where the harsh wind won’t reach you. The yellow rays of sun warm up the flowerbeds enough to bring joy to life. The aromatic smell of hyacinths causes instant happiness. It’s like chocolate in a flower form, one of the early signs of a new cycle of life starting up again. And having had a couple of rounds around the Sun myself, this brings back memories from childhood. Stories from my life, snippets, clips from that movie that still plays in front of my soul’s eye.
Walking out into our garden in the spring, back at home didn’t only mean admiration of the flowerbeds, but taking care of the plants, the soil, the house that is standing on the land. Typically spring means/meant spring cleaning inside and outside of the house, too.
Women used a mix of limestone powder (slaked lime) and water to whitewash the walls every year. This was not only to refresh the kitchen but for hygiene and for protection and preservation of the outer walls as well, after a whole year full of storms weathered last year’s layer away.
We don’t realize how lucky we are now. I have never had to do that once in my life. I painted alright, but not using these materials. Whitewashing walls with that mix was a lot of work. It looked like applying milk to the walls with a brush that’s on the further end of a long stick. Growing up, I’ve seen my grandmother and mother doing that countless times. Now I use rollers and store-bought paint myself if needed, or better yet, get someone else to do it for me…
Different types of building materials require different paint solutions and if I think about that, just a short 30 years ago we still used more natural materials then we likely tend to do now. In the name of efficiency. Now life’s all about comfort, right?
Then, womanhood meant something very different than what it means today. At the same time, the driving force behind all that work was the same and that’s embedded in women’s nature as deep as those flower bulbs in the soil (some of my mom’s tulip bulbs are quite deep down, being planted before the addition of some 30 cms (nearly a foot of) extra layer of soil, still they come up every spring): it’s love and care for our families and surroundings.
The walls could breathe under the new layers of whitewash though applying it was tedious and tiring work, when it was done, the women of the house could breathe easier, too and be proud as well, for good reason.
This time of the year also means family visits, especially for women’s day (International Women’s Day), which was a big deal when I was growing up. The boys in our class went to school once an hour early just to fold an origami tulip for every girl’s desk in the classroom. We were somewhere around 12 maybe and I still remember.
One year a couple of years ago we folded origami tulips with my daughter that she’s taken to school for her teachers because I still remembered the boys’ kindness from elementary school.
International Women’s Day falls on March 8th and that’s when my uncle would come and visit every female relative with a carnation or gerbera (which are my mother’s favorite flowers), while it’s His nameday. I therefore associate International Women’s Day, March 8th with my uncle. And that reminds me of the respect that he shows every woman, even to the youngest ones, by including them in celebrating women’s day. The girls in the family, who are the women in the making, no exception, got their flowers in their own right from him as a symbol of the love and care with which he attended not only to his wife’s every wish but to his little girl, my younger cousin and now to her children. I am quite sure that he brings flowers to his granddaughter with the same love and admiration as he did it many years ago.
So when you have that kind of driving force deep inside, days such as Women’s Day, namedays or Mother’s day (which is in March in the UK and was just this past Sunday), they provide just the perfect occasion to express it, to get together and celebrate.
What is a nameday? It’s a tradition in many European countries. I’d say it is something similar to a birthday and it occurs on a set day when your first name appears on the calendar.
In my family there were three Irén(s) (Irene: March 25th) and there are three Zoltán(s) (March 8th). Now me and my daughter have the same name as well and our nameday is in March, too, on the 16th. But it’s the month when my grandpa, Ede (Edward) had his nameday on the 18th along with the Sándor(s) (Alexander) and with the many József(s) (Joseph) on the 19th, Gábor’s (Gabriel) nameday on the 24th. Then friends have their namedays this month as well: Ildikó on the 11th. Add to this birthdays and March is a buzzing time of the year, full of cheer and cooking and baking and time together with family and friends. Sometimes even Easter falls in March. Now that used to be another big thing to remember, but perhaps I’ll talk about that later.
Thinking about all these things. What March means to me is this:
It’s Sunshine, it’s flowers, it’s celebrations, it’s family and friends, and even this many years after I’ve left home, it still takes me back there. Smells, flavors, feelings. What it’s like to walk around the house there, the plants I planted in that garden are mostly gone now, but the plum trees that my dad planted are still there, home to bees and that’s where my daughter was petting Sári, our yellow cat when she was still little and that’s where we hung her swing on a thick branch of the pear tree when my dad was still alive.
March is when the new meets the old. The old gives way but before it does, it waves once more.
2026 March 14/16
