Welcome, March. This is going to be a busy month, and I've already screwed up the first thing I meant to do: see my older-younger brother, Nat, in his college's production of A Doll's House. It's the last play he'll be in before graduating, so I'm sad to miss it, but I got confused about dates and missed my chance. Hopefully he'll go on to be in lots of plays professionally someday, and I can go see him and bring roses to throw on the stage and shout "Bravo!" during curtain call.
Alex, my younger-younger brother, is taking to the stage this month, too, as Angie the Ox in the high school's production of Guys & Dolls. I hope to make it home to see that. I've never seen him sing, but he plays the drums, and taught me how to play Guitar Hero last time I visited, so I'm sure the musical genre will come easily to him.
I've been to a lot of concerts in that high school auditorium. My siblings and I were all in the bands (concert band, marching band, wind ensemble, jazz band, etc), and my brothers and I did the annual musicals. Nat was always the star of the show, though: lead in the musical, drum major, big parts in the dramas they started doing in later years. I'm proud that he's still following that dream. In fact, he's coming to Boston later this month to audition for post-college roles. I'll have to see if I can bring roses for that.
In the meantime, I've got a midterm to study for. I haven't taken a real sit-down, calculator-and-#2-pencil test since...well, since the GRE, but that was the first one in a long while. So there's much studying to do this week. Flashcards to make, review sessions to attend, panicked emails to send in the wee hours, asking classmates to clarify the difference between confounding and effect modification in a retrospective cohort study.
Next weekend, when the midterm is a happy memory, Stephen and I will fly to Maryland to visit our friends Sarah and Adam in Takoma Park. This is a fitting time to make the trip; ever since I drove to the White House with friends for a protest in March of my sophomore year, I've associated the DC area with early spring. We were there last year when the trees were full of blossoms, and I keep thinking about a walk we took in Georgetown, where there were petals scattered all over the sidewalks. Here's a photo I took of Stephen and Sarah that day:
DC is so lucky, getting spring weeks before New England does. So I like visiting in March.
(P.S. Ian: Want to borrow Chicken w/Plums? It's a good read.)
