“A portrait of my child, once a week, every week, in 2016.”
The joy of still being in your pyjamas at 4pm after a busy week…
A busy couple of months to be honest. The weather has shifted, though, in the last couple of days, and we have taken advantage of that by slowing down and cosying up and taking time to breathe.
Linking up with Jodi at Practising Simplicity for The 52 Project.
Alongside everything I have been doing this week – creeping ever closer to a completed third draft of my novel, keeping up with Arthur’s ever-expanding social calendar, and supporting Leigh through another wave of deadlines – there has been the faint bubble of anticipation. The sense that, after weeks and months of the dark and the cold of winter, spring might finally, actually, be just around the corner.
Arthur and I were at my parents’ place last weekend. Although they’re less than an hour away, and still on the sea (well, the estuary anyway), the environment there feels very different. They are surrounded by countryside, and there is no escaping the shifting seasons. So it was there I noticed spring first. It took me almost by surprise, but it has not disappeared since we returned to Brixham.
Flowers
Arthur has learnt the words for primrose, snowdrop and daffodil this week. He sought out the little patches of colour as we traversed the woodland, and I couldn’t help but notice the shoots beginning to seep from winter branches. Back home we saw that our own daffodils had finally burst out from their buds, trumpeting the promise of warmer, lighter days to anyone who cared to listen.
Eggs
For the past few months my parents’ chickens have refused to lay. The flock was expanded at the end of last year, and ever since their nest has remained empty. In the past few weeks they have seemed to call an end to their strike. Looking at the beautiful eggs they are now producing in abundance it seemed way too coincidental to have nothing to do with the coming of spring: and on doing a little research I discovered that sure enough, the longer days have much to do with the chickens’ willingness to release their eggs into the world.
We travelled home on Monday with a collection of them, almost too lovely to eat.
I am pleased to report that they were delicious.
Weather
One thing that spring can be guaranteed to bring is crazy weather, and this week has most definitely not disappointed on that front. On Tuesday, we were woken up by a hailstorm at three am – it was so insanely loud I thought for a while it might dislodge the slate on the roof. A few hours later, we woke again to pink skies reflecting off the sheen of an almost perfectly still bay, the only sound being the squark of seagulls and the distant drone of fishing boats heading out to sea.
A text came through from a friend as I was getting Arthur organised to head out to his drama class, saying that we should make the most of the glorious day. Just as I was sending my agreement, the rain rolled in. Yet by the time we were ready to leave it was beautiful once again. Dark clouds gathered before the day was done.
The weather this week has most definitely been unpredictable, but not entirely unpleasant.
Warmth
In the moments when the sun has come out, there has been no denying this week that it is starting to get warmer. There have been points when I’ve almost been able to taste those delicious summer days, children laughing as they play for hours in the great outdoors, parents watching over them whilst basking in the rays themselves,
We had music today at Lupton House, followed by the precious coffee and catch-up I’ve come to so look forward to. Afterwards us mums stood and chatted as the children played, tentatively exclaiming our delight at the warmth which filled the air.
Hope
This is perhaps the least tangible of the signs that spring is on its way, but it’s no less important for that. I cope with winter better than I used to, but still during the past few weeks I’ve felt a little like I’ve been wading through treacle just to manage the tasks which make up the day to day.
But this week that sense of drudgery has been replaced with hope, with the anticipation of spring rolling into summer, of leaving the house without a coat and returning in the evening whilst it is still light.
I suppose deep down I love the seasons, all of them, for the contrasts they bring. But I cannot deny that I have my favourites, and spring is most certainly one of them.
My word of the week this week is spring.
You might notice me first in the scent of woodsmoke that rises up from the ashes of the long days of summer. Or perhaps you will see my gnarly fingers reaching up towards the sky, revealed as my breeze steals the last of the golden leaves. Or maybe it will be that moment you make yourself late as you return home for a jacket after shivering at the bus stop. Or when you realise you have not been out in daylight since you woke, looking wistfully through a steamed up window at the lingering shadows whilst the clock on the wall counts down the minutes until you are released once more into the cold and the dark.
However I come for you, you will be in my grip before you know it.
You will hear me in the winds that rattle the window frames and howl down the chimney. You will feel me under foot as you struggle to keep your balance on a patch of unexpected ice or crunch across crisp grass on a frosty morning. I will numb your fingers and caress your cheeks until they are red and raw.
Some days you will be glad that I am here.
When you fill your lungs with the cool clarity only I can bring, or see a frozen landscape sparkle under sunny skies bluer than you thought was really possible. When you wrap up warm against me, shunning the transformations I have wreaked on the outside world to cosy up with those you love. When you marvel at the quiet beauty of fresh snowfall, transported back to childhood and a world that was simpler and more magical.
Other days you will wish with all your might that I had never come at all.
And then one day, not long after you have convinced yourself that I am all there is, I will be gone.
In my place there will be green, and warm sunshine that seems to melt your very soul. The universe will be full of possibility again, and you will wonder why you let yourself let go of hope.
It will not be much longer until you almost forget that I exist at all.
But I will always be here, waiting.
And when you least expect it I will return.
Ever since I can remember I have loved the coming of spring. I don’t suit winter. I quite enjoy snow, in moderation, and find the rare cold, crisp, sunny days as exhilarating as the next person, but it’s the interminable darkness that really gets to me. The darkness that sets in before you get a chance to get outside at the end of a hard day’s work and hangs around for way longer than it’s welcome after you’ve dragged yourself out of bed in the morning, fighting your body’s desire to hibernate.
For years I thought I suffered from Seasonal Affective Disorder – I didn’t just dislike those months of darkness, they consumed me like the fog that rolls in over the sea. Even the anticipation of the shorter days that set in as early as the summer solstice was enough to instil that sense of dread that would just get worse and worse as the seasons closed in.
Now that I’m not operating on someone else’s timetable I’m not so sure. There’s no doubt that living by the sea helps too, and spending most of my time with a little person who sees the world without a trace of my weariness. Despite not having slept for more than two hours at a stretch for the past fifteen months, despite the challenge of juggling nearly-new motherhood with writing a second novel and trying to find a publisher for the first, despite the fact that this winter it has rained for days and days on end, I don’t need spring anywhere near as badly as I have before.
That’s not to say it’s not exciting. The snowdrops pushing through the sodden ground, the bare branches beginning to burst with buds, the daffodils that have suddenly taken over our neglected garden in an explosion of yellow. And alongside all these things the seeds of new ideas that are taking root inside my writer’s brain.
I seem to be settling into a pattern with my writing, one which I hope is sustainable and suits my rhythms. In the autumn, as the days begin to close in, I lose myself in researching and planning a new novel. By January, typically my lowest point, I’m ready to bring the plan to life, spending long chunks of time writing, letting my characters take the story where it needs to go. This year, as with last, I’ve set myself the deadline of Easter to complete the first draft. I’m on track to achieve that: I’m about two thirds of the way through with another month to go, and as the story gathers pace and urgency it’s all I can do to pull myself away from the keyboard when motherhood calls. Once that first draft’s done I’ll let it sit for a while before going back to it with fresh eyes, handing it over at the same time to a trusted few initial readers. With their ideas and mine I’ll then attempt the redraft in the height of summery optimism, hopefully having something I’m happy with as summer draws to a close.
Alongside all that redrafting, though, the seeds of the next project need to be germinating, shooting up into the light so that I can work out how to help them grow in the next phase of their development. And with that in mind I had begun to panic a couple of weeks ago: the end of the current novel was in sight, but I had no idea what I was going to work on next. I have several ideas for new novels in the Lili Badger series, a couple of distinct directions in which things could go. But I don’t want to start working on those until I know whether the original has legs. I love it, and would enjoy nothing more than to lose myself in Lili’s world again, but however much I try I can’t justify it to myself. I need something new.
In the midst of my panic, I went for a walk. Just the usual walk into town, taking the long way round by the pool, allowing myself to tread more slowly than I normally would so Arthur could soak up his surroundings. I began to notice the dedications on the benches, stopped to read them. And without me even noticing the seeds began to embed themselves.
By the time I got home I had two reasonably formed ideas for new novels. Both with their heart in Brixham, and both with stories which spread out across place and time in their mapping of life and love and death. Both have strong female characters at their core – something which I am beginning to realise is emerging as a pattern in my work. I haven’t decided which one I’ll run with yet. I hope I’ll write them both, in time. But now the seeds have been sown I’ll leave them for a while, trusting that they will germinate in my mind as I bring my current project to its conclusion, ready for me to nurture when I can shift my attention to them more closely as spring turns into summer.
Thank you to Sara at ‘Mum Turned Mom’ for inspiring this post with her prompt: “Spring is the time of plans and projects” (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina).
Sophie is... 