Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
The Ides of March
For some people this phrase refers to a dark and gloomy day after a fortune teller warned Julius Caesar to “Beware the Ides of March”. This phrase is from Shakespeare’s play of the same name. In real life, Caesar was stabbed multiple times by a group of Roman Senators on March 15. Shakespeare then coined the phrase that many have heard without being aware of its meaning.
I don’t know exactly why I came up with the Ides of March this morning. It’s an example of how my mind works: words and ideas come blooping up to my consciousness just like the stuff in a lava lamp. Well, now that the idea has taken root in my brain, what to do with it? March 15 has come and gone and I have no recollection of what happened on that day. Checking my calendar it seems I attended a webinar in the afternoon and then went to the airport to pick up Rose and Mary in the evening.
A little research tells me that the date of March 15 meant the beginning of a new year in Roman times. The word, ides, referred to the first new moon of the month, often appearing between the 13th and 15th day. That’s a more benign meaning than the day on which a Roman emperor was brutally murdered.
William Shakespeare’s writing contains many phrases that have come down through the centuries and turned into popular sayings. I am aware of a few of them. “A wild goose chase” from Romeo and Juliet; “Too much of a good thing”, from As You Like It; “Dead as a doornail” from Henry VI, Part 2; “Neither rhyme nor reason” from The Comedy of Errors; “Break the ice” from Taming of the Shrew.
I’m not smart enough to know what plays each saying comes from, so I looked this part up, but the sayings themselves are a part of my lexicon. I credit my high school English teacher, whose name escapes me at the moment. Her mission in classes was to teach us the importance of a good vocabulary. She taught us the richness of all kinds of literature. As I write this I can visualize her young self, tall with a proper demeanor. At the time I was attending high school in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She was there because her husband was doing some work with a nuclear energy initiative.
I love the internet. I googled nuclear power in Brazil and found out that in the 1970’s there was a secret military program intended to develop nuclear weapons. It makes sense that my teacher’s husband was doing preliminary work on this in the mid 1960’s when I was in high school. Who knew? Another thing that bubbles up in my consciousness is that we were living in Brazil in 1964 when the Brazilian military staged a coup in March and a military junta assumed power. I remember that General Motors, my dad’s employer, almost decided to evacuate us to a ship that was in port several hours away. Somehow that never came to be.
So, this morning I go from March 26, 2023 back to a March day 59 years ago, to a place far removed from Creve Coeur, Missouri. This is how “Life comes full circle” (King Lear) for me. Oh, and her name was Mrs. Nichols.