When my father drove to the store in the 1960s to buy corned beef and cabbage, we knew spring had arrived.

In the Marches of my Skowhegan childhood, New England boiled dinner was a tradition in our house, complete with potatoes, carrots and turnip.

My father loved to cook the meal himself, piling the steaming fare onto a large platter and presenting it to us proudly, insisting the only seasoning we needed was apple cider vinegar.

The snow outside was melting, the sun was higher in the sky and the days were growing longer. Winter was over.

Before us lay the promise of warmer days, more outdoor activity and eventually, thankfully, summer.

We are only about 25% Irish, so our boiled dinner didn’t necessarily come on St. Patrick’s Day and we never really celebrated the holiday. But the time of year portended change. Good change.

March is a month of transition, and that of my birthday. We set the clocks ahead an hour on the 8th and although our mornings will be darker, evenings will be lighter, longer.

Town meetings come in like the March wind. Taxpayers in smaller communities get to exercise their democratic right to decide how their money is spent, and who gets to do it.

They elect local officials, determine what will be built or torn down, decide rules and regulations and perhaps most importantly, catch up on all the news from neighbors they haven’t seen over the long, cold winter.

March is muddy, yes, and frost heaves pepper the paved roads. Thankfully, “Bump” warning signs typically accompany them.

As spring comes, so does the Ides of March.

“Beware the Ides of March,” a soothsayer warns Roman dictator Julius Caesar in William Shakespeare’s play of the same name.

On March 15, 44 B.C., Caesar was assassinated by Roman senators, an event Shakespeare immortalized in the play he penned circa 1599. As the character Caesar lies dying, he peers up to see his friend Brutus who, as one of his assassins, has betrayed him. “Et tu Brute?” he asks.

In March, we lovers of theater and literature like to recite, in dramatic voices, those lines of warning and betrayal. Not everything is as it appears, we seem to say.

Such as the impending arrival of April, which we believe will offer relief, yet the rains say otherwise. And likely, the snow.

My father used to talk about climbing March hill, referring to the hard work of getting through the tough winter into spring.

Come April, he’d croon, “Well, we made it over March hill.”

He was smiling, anticipating that in just two short months, he’d be able to start his vegetable garden.

Amy Calder has been a Morning Sentinel reporter 37 years. Her columns appear here Sundays. She is the author of the book, “Comfort is an Old Barn,” a collection of her curated columns, published in 2023 by Islandport Press. She may be reached at [email protected]. For previous Reporting Aside columns, go to centralmaine.com.