Melancholia visits me in Springtime. Every year since I was a child. Without fail. March and April drown me in my rising anxiety. Summer approaches

My malaise sprouts from multiple roots. Daylight Savings for one. An extreme morning person, who functions best between the hours of 4 and 11 am, I am never able to get enough sleep. The extended daylight delays my night slumber so that being alert and productive when it’s most natural for me to be so is nearly impossible. I dreaded DST when it would descend in April. Now they foist it on me in March, even before the season has officially sprung.

Heat’s another. Especially in the time of global warming, I shudder each time I  try to envision what to wear as I slog through sweaty days of teaching and social engagements. Never well shaped for scanty suiting, my body is most comfortable disappearing into layers of winter wear. Summer terrifies us.

This year, however, my despondency is exacerbated by the relentlessly untenable political reality in which our country is enmired. I’m already exhausted from the interminable campaigning. The orange imposter and the bloated goons who give him power have robbed me of the homeland I used to trust. The Democrats have turned discourse into hate-mongering.

And women have once again been relegated to the back of the bus. That’s where Elizabeth Warren has gone. And I am bereft.

What is it about America that its ship of state inevitably seeks to keep a Great White Father at its helm? Despite the fact that every one of them finds ways to deceive us as he happily manipulates us into believing he is good for the country?

Why are we so averse to having a woman lead this nation?

In this primary race, the single candidate who was everything America used to stand for was a woman. Smart and sensitive, educated and empathetic, powerful and personable, Warren had a progressive agenda that was no mere demagoguery. She really did have a plan.

And yet. . . . The progressive wing of the party put their weight behind a blustering windbag whose sound and fury signifies less than nothing. All he really offers, as far as I can see, is a penis. And a loud voice. (At least his single standing opponent in the race has Warren-like decency.  At least there’s that.)

Warren’s bid for the Presidency is the victim of sexism for sure. More hideously, it is proof that ageism, ubiquitous for women over 60, is kinder to men. Both remaining candidates are far more doddering than Elizabeth Warren will ever be. Still, here we are.

All of which puts me in a sadder state than ever this spring. The birdsong outside my window reminds me that my granddaughters are growing up in a society that is no more mature than the one that bred me. The one that believed that a new, slender cigarette was a sign that we’d come a long way, baby.

My sadness knows no bottom.