fool's spring

I'm always writing about the weather

It just changed. I only realized it was that day when I was already in it. There were more people in the park than there had been in months, and almost no one seemed angry. Spring revives the afternoon, the hours between obligation and sleep. That ruthless and resigned efficiency of just getting to the next place had receded. Everyone was trying. Someone was wearing just a t-shirt. They looked cold and like they were slightly regretting their decision when the sun dipped behind the clouds, but they marched on nonetheless. E-bikes wobbled along the road, their riders nervous and unpracticed. On the first Spring day, everyone in the city becomes a tourist; everyone is determined to get outside — if only for a short while.

Spring always starts ugly. That’s the secret about its arrival: It isn’t beautiful. I always thought it was because well, I’m a romantic. Anything is pretty the first time it shows up. But, upon closer inspection, Spring is a bit ugly at first. Bare branches and cold ground left over from winter showed uglier with flowers trying to make inroads against them, and the patches of green on the lawns only emphasised the dull muddy browns. Early spring is a try-hard season attempting to make do with what Winter has left behind.

March is built on hope — the kind that gets crushed, only for us to gather it up and try again. Last week was bright; the sky a perfect blue, but the nights still fell below freezing. And yet, every morning, I woke up hoping the warmth would last. Hoping the sun would climb a little higher, the air would soften, and Winter would finally loosen its grip. I know better, but still, I hope. I always do. I want the warmth to stay, to stretch on for months, to carry me to the golden edge of Autumn. But it never works that way. Cold always lingers on.

March is all false starts. A peek of sunshine and I burst out the door, ready for Spring, only to make a fool of myself. I left the house in a thin coat, thinking I could trick myself into thinking it was warm. For thirty minutes, I shivered while I was walking the dog. Terrible idea, I scolded myself, I should know better. It’s never as warm as it looks from the comfort of the house. I was hoping that through stubbornness, I could force the good weather to arrive. I wanted to drag the future and the better days into view. And here’s the thing, I don’t think I can be fully blamed. It’s not just me who’s ready for the warmth, the bees have returned too. With pollen-coated legs and wiggly bottoms, I watch them dive headfirst into the crocuses that line the driveway. I guess I am not the only hopeful one.

I think we can collectively agree that January took about seven years to get through and February happened in a single breath. Time has expanded (nothing moves as slowly as a grey bleak day), and it has shrunk (where are all the days going?). But the start of Spring is inevitable. It’s certainty within the chaos. The predictability of it has become a vital metronome to tracking my life. Every event can be tracked in seasons. When things come to an end and when new things begin, I remember them by the weather. And talking about the weather is our way of admitting how strange it is that time keeps moving, yet we remain here— caught between remembering what was, and longing for what’s next.

I once wrote — 

Spring comes to London even when London is gross and muggy and depressing to live in. The trees will continue to bloom, the green shoots clawing their way out of the soil, and on the days that I can’t figure what the hell to wear, Spring will crawl through the window nonetheless. It will arrive whether or not we are ready for it, it comes around the same time every year and every year we remark it as something new to behold. If nothing changes in my life, the one thing I do know is that the tulips will arrive in March, the crocuses and bluebells before that. That is the constant in my life.

Spring has a brutal hopefulness about it. You don’t have to believe in anything to feel the shift it brings. Nothing feels anywhere as good as that first bright Spring day in a big city when everybody goes outside, and the ice cream man thinks he’s got a shot at the tourists and other hopefuls mulling about. The park froths and flowers and blossoms, insisting we can start over, promising that if failed at your New Year’s resolutions already, it doesn’t matter because Spring is a second chance. It’s the real arrival of the New Year.

During the darkest moment of Winter, when it feels like nothing could possibly change or be better, it suddenly does and everything feels different. There’s this electric change. As a person who looks before leaping and instead takes planned, cautionary steps, a good Spring day makes me want to toss it all away. I know how to be safe because that’s how I operate in all aspects of my life. I learn to live not expecting too much, and then one day I walk outside and the world is in technicolour again, and it’s warm instead of cold, and I think why shouldn’t all of us chase after what we want? Why shouldn’t I expect to beat the odds, and why shouldn’t everyone else expect it? Look at this unlikely world, reaching for the sun. I should reach, too.

Right now, I can sense the cold has not fully left us. A Fool’s Spring. I could smell it through the window; a momentary gentleness that takes over after the long harsh months of cold. Maybe it isn’t real; maybe it will be plummeting temperatures tomorrow. Maybe by the weekend, it could snow. But waking up with my face to the window and the early light coming, I feel it again, like I had never been wrong before and nothing has ever hurt me. The flowers coming up out of the ground and the leaves unfurling bright green over the dirty streets should know better, too. It’s never going to last and each year, the weather turns and we get the chance to feel this semblance of hope, of something new being churned out. And maybe that’s enough to keep us going.

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