Hope Springs Eternal

As the end of the pandemic tunnel gets brighter, has a season ever been more hotly anticipated?

Spring, the most optimistic of all the seasons. The season of awakenings. The season where everything is possible.

Herald the first day of Spring. For today is the vernal equinox, when the balance is tipped from longer nights to longer days. A harmonious balance restored.

“A light exists in Spring, not present on the year, at any other period, when March is scarcely here. A colour stands abroad on solitary fields, that science cannot overtake, but human nature fields,” wrote Emily Dickenson.

More than any springtime before, the limitations of the past year feel like a catalysis for something new. A release from a life locked down. Locked in. Family life decompressed.

For so many of us, it’s been a tough year. Yet Spring offers us a ray of hope in a world that could really use some right now.

A new beginning. Spring is freedom without limits.

“April come she will when streams are ripe and swelled with rain. May she stay, resting in my arms again”, wrote Simon and Garfunkel.

Spring is emerging from the darkness.

Perhaps it’s at this time of year we are reminded that we must live through life’s limits to experience its freedoms.

We sheltered from November rain, braced ourselves from January winds, shivered through February nights, so that when Spring comes, we remember why it’s all worthwhile.

For it is the limitations of the last year that feel like a catalyst for something new. New people and new places. New ideas and a fresh start.

Safe in the knowledge that we are kinder and more resilient. More grateful. Priorities rebalanced. Lives paired back.

A life repotted. https://www.muselet.co.uk/post/a-life-re-potted.

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant,” wrote the poet Anne Bradstreet.

Every Spring I have the urge to plant something. Anything. Everything. A flower. A vegetable. Garden herbs. New smells, new colour, new life. New possibility.

Spring calls us back to nature. It fills our sails with warmer winds. It soothes our weary bones and lift our spirits.

It reminds us of the pleasure in simplicity.

Beneath the barely budding trees of the forest, the subterranean world is coming back to life after it’s long, deep slumber.

Like prisoners waiting to be released from winter.

The waves of white and purple crocus; like flames alight in their shining cups touched by the warm welcome sun. Daring little warriors fighting their way from winters ice.

The cheery huddles of daffodils sway beneath shadowy oak trees.

The resplendent, blousy pink magnolia; a harbinger that spring is finally here. The scent of the star white jasmine along our neighbouring garden wall. There are no words to describe its wondrous scent.

The honk of Canada geese in perfect ‘V-shaped’ formation. Twice daily they enliven the skies over our little Surrey garden; you can set your watch by their daily commute to our neighbouring lake.

It’s difficult not to wake early on these bright mornings smiling to the sweet sound of worm catchers, song thrush, robins and blackbirds in their rousing morning chorus.

The promise of new life and warmer lighter days.

Spring is a wobbly bridge between winter and summer. It’s a roller coaster of battling seasons as each daily thaw elicits cautious optimism. But we travel safe in the knowledge that summer will triumph (although this morning’s frost reminds us that winter never surrenders without a fight).

But the greatest source of hope comes from my Sunday morning nature walks with our two-year-old little boy. He finds unbridled pleasure in the minutiae of nature’s detail. Children are mindfulness personified before there was ‘mindfulness’.

Seeking gnarly twigs to gift to our fearless resident robin so she can build her nest. Digging his hands into cold damp soil and letting it sieve slowly through his stubby fingers. Thrusting his little nose into the cups of the tiniest spring flowers to find their individual scent. Rubbing his curious hands along moss covered fallen trees. Chasing his shadow in the hazy morning sunshine. Squealing in delight at the bouncing new-born lambs.

In spite (or perhaps because) of all the ups and downs of the last year, I am happy I suppose. I didn’t realise that happiness was so close.

I hope it’s okay to say this. It’s so hard to know about happiness when Spring is also unfurling just east of our Surrey enclave. Flowers are blooming, lambs are being born, trees are budding, and ten million people (equivalent to the population of Portugal) don’t have time to look nor stare. It’s the backdrop to outrageous suffering. Balance obliterated.

Perhaps happiness doesn’t have to make you indifferent. It just makes you aware of what it means to lose your home, birdsong, freedom or to be separated from those you love and the simple primaeval joy of being alive in Spring.

ENDS.