It’s a cold day today, but in a spring way, and I love you.
(24th March, 1937; Letters to Véra by Vladimir Nabokov)
The slog of January to very early Feb was one, for us, submerged in greyness. The first month of the year seemed to last forever, yet with no real sense of the days passing by. Just fog!
Our vitamin D levels dwindled as there was absolutely no visible sun; those select mornings when it did make a short appearance saw us all vastly uplifted.
It was a Valentine’s Day visit to Whitby with family that I only properly remember a completely blue sky… I have a fond recollection of a couple sitting in a bus stop, sunbathing in five-degree cool. Romantic!
As I experience more years (having recently (reluctantly) turned twenty-five), I grow increasingly impatient for spring’s arrival. Not just for the daffodils, lambs and chocolate eggs, but more so for the longer days and increased likelihood of sunshine. With longer evenings on their way, I feel less inclined to convince myself I’m running out of time.
Over winter, I wilt – a plant without what it needs – I’ve come to find the transition back into green, yellows and pinks more and more welcome. Everything shifts, in a flowery sort of way (colour comes back).
A usual indication of the change in season is our cat basking on the garden patio. She’ll only do this when the conditions are just right, and it seems that today the stone is at optimum temperature:
This is handy, as it often lets us know whether it’s suitable to let the tortoise out for a stroll too.
A bit of natural sun makes all the difference to a heat lamp for her, which I’m sure we can all agree with (I’m terribly anti-Big-Light these days). I don’t know if tortoises contain or produce serotonin, but their heat-seeking (survival) instincts resonate strongly with me.
It may sound extreme, but things simply feel more doable when the Sun is out. I have all the instincts of a hibernating animal, who has been cooped up much too long and all of a sudden feels much lighter (in more senses than one).
Perhaps this is just a reflection on my grasping at any sense of optimism nowadays, if merely a bit of warmth through my joints: life feels that bit more liveable, I don’t feel half as unwell as the cloudy day before, and for some reason my body works a bit better than usual. I feel suddenly inspired, as though I’ve quite literally had some light switched on somewhere in my brain.
Seeing Project Hail Mary at the weekend (enjoy it!) seems to have inspired me to think about our Sun and perhaps worship it a bit more than before. This, and a particularly glare-y bus journey home.
I suggest we all pause and bask (responsibly) for a bit.
(Title taken from ‘I have to tell you’ by Dorothea Grossman)
AS YET TO BE 
Leave a comment