Hello Darling Spring…

Spring is such a gift isn’t it? We muddle our way through Winter trying to see through the blankety walls we build between ourselves and real life, cursing cold and snow and bin- men who abandon our wheelie bins on frost covered paths, and it feels as though it will go on forever. That never again will the sun make the dust dance, nor will we dare to step outside without three thermal vests and the lesser spotted Long Johns…
But no sooner are we resigned to a life rich in hot chocolate and frost bite, then lo and behold, with a flick of her glittery wand, Mother Nature banishes Winter and Spring settles upon our souls, inviting us to run to the school gates without a coat and pop into the garden three times a day to watch the buds of our chamelia unfurl before our eyes. Inviting us, most curiously, to be better than who we already are.
This morning I woke up terribly early, the gnaw of period pain interrupting a gloriously vivid dream and making it impossible to sleep. And so I tumbled out of bed, all mussy hair and ruffled white nightie and crept like the ghost of myself, down the stairs.
And there it was: Spring. Right there in my living room! She’d let herself in, all green and bright and beautiful.  The ivy wrapped around the tree outside my window suddenly alive again. The sky the kind of crisp blue only Spring can deliver. The milkman whistling and jangling and happy.
And so I sat and did nothing. Staring at the sun making patterns on my Victorian floorboards, doing nothing, reading nothing, sipping peppermint tea  and making reckless plans. Dwelling on a weekend full of sorrow for a friends loss, fear of the kind of sinister goings on that have a nearby house and it’s occupants held up by knife-point, and sensing that my relationship is in jeopardy because I’m too old for living right there in the moment with no plans for tomorrow. Because without plans we are lost. Because without plans we are at the mercy of trusting every fluttery emotion, unable to wrap ourselves up in the certainty of a bigger picture, no matter how vaguely sketched. Because without plans we drift, and nobody appreciates a drifter. Because as always my Darlings I am a slave to my hormones and my emotions cannot always be trusted, no matter how lyrically I might spill them out…
It is a time for starting again, Spring isn’t it? A time for shrugging off cocoons and fluttering our wings again. For getting a grip on what is and not what we hoped it might be, choosing to re-invent the same scrumptious wheel, and popping possibility like paracetamol, unhindered by the debilitating comforts of Winter and not yet exhausted by the heat of Summer.
Spring I think, is more than anything, about celebrating life: new baby bunnies, frolicking lambs and ours. Our lives! It is about saying this isn’t all there is and on this, the first day of my self-declared Spring, I can go out and chase life up and down the lane! I can channel Alice and admit that I used to be much muchier, that somewhere along the way I lost my muchiness and today, today my friends I am going to hunt high and low for it, and take no nonsense and remember to be myself and see the Doctor about my twitchy eye and make lemon curd and a birthday cake for Richard with hopes for tomorrow baked right there in the topping and hang out a line full of lavender scented aprons just because I can and sweep the front path and work on the project that makes me feel giddy and resist screeching when my son’s teacher fails to notice that yet again he isn’t in the line of children she is supposed to be delivering safely on to the playground, and instead go into the classroom myself and get him and the coat he hasn’t quite managed to pull on and issue my icy, but effective “I’m so disappointed in you again Lady” face to dear old teacher, and whisper the (probably unlikely threat) of a letter of complaint and take him home and stuff him full of love and gluten free cornflake cakes and make the damn cardboard house for the school project that has turned into an a quite hideous display of parental talent and ostentation and maybe sign myself up for a course in anger management while I’m at it?
Ah Spring. You are quite the devil aren’t you? Who knew you could inspire such emotion? Muchiness ebb’s and flows, but as sure as Easter eggs are chocolate, you return, and I for one, adore you.