As all the flowers foretell

On springtime making me feel old, a new pen, and Holy Week

We got back to England just in time for Spring to arrive. This is our second springtime in London, and my tenth spring in the United Kingdom. I’ve come to dread winters here. I spent my formative years in Colorado and California. In California the Januarys are sometimes a bit rainy, but in February you can lament the lack of seasons while you take a walk on the beach in temperate 75-degree weather with an iced coffee in hand. Colorado winters are severe but sunny, a bipolar rapid cycling between winter blizzards and spring sunshine. During the last winter I spent in Colorado, there were blizzards almost every weekend, as though they were scheduled to start each Friday, piling eighteen inches of snow at a time, followed by days of unrelenting sun starting the next Monday, in which all the snow would all melt, ready to start the next cycle in four business days.

British winters are crushing in a subtly cruel way. November is endured with the prospect of Christmas, but once the holidays are over and the decorations are taken down, one is plunged into months of relentless, soul numbing grey. This year, there were forty days of rain in a row in parts of the United Kingdom. A friend told me she was thinking of building an ark. But this year, we escaped.

We spent most of February in Hong Kong, for my husband’s work and to meet our new niece, born the day before we arrived. It was a wonderful trip: temperate days, iced milk tea and noodle shops, time with family. It was truly restorative, but as we neared the end of our trip, I was gripped with a fear: I was worried that we’d missed Spring in England. It was like London was a friend with whom I’d been in a quarrel, but after a few weeks of cooling off (or in this case, warming up), I feared they’d move on to other companions. I began to experience FOMO.

I was pleased to arrive back to see only the beginnings of buds on the trees, the air still stinging with cold, but a brightness suffusing it with promise of rebirth. The contrast between the utter grimness of winter and the profligate abundance of spring in the United Kingdom always makes the ordeal seem worth it… at least almost. I’ve witnessed the unlikely but inevitable return of spring to these isles ten times now— six times in Scotland, and four in England. It’s all splendid.

And somehow, this year the springtime beauty makes me feel like I’m getting old.