Notes from March.
Inside, I have been busy tucking away seeds into earth. Tiny parcels, some so small my clumsy fingers can’t even discern them individually, holding everything that a plant needs to be able to grow. Opening paper packets and spooning compost into empty egg boxes, I’ve sat with the comforting mixture of science, beauty and mystery held in a seed.
Each weekday morning became a little routine. While the morning smell of coffee crept through the house, I would draw the living room curtains to inspect and compare our patches of damp compost. And now, gangly green arms stretch their way across the coffee table and windowsills, reaching across each other, headed – rather obstinately – towards the light. Waiting, impatiently it seems, until they are rooted outside. It feels like a small miracle.
Outside too, it’s as if nature has been slowly wiping sleep from its eyes and stretching indulgently, leisurely even. The birds and their songs, the sun from behind the clouds, the buds on otherwise lifeless-looking branches. As I look around me, I wonder — how do they all remember what to do after the long winter?
I also wonder, will I remember as easily?
What it’s like to not have to always give people a wide berth out of politeness? That I won’t always have to stifle the impulse to touch a friend on the arm, or walk closely next to them? To feel normal, natural and relaxed in someone else’s house, or with other people in mine?
I feel groggy after this winter; so much of what used to feel like the inconsequential, everyday features of life now hold so much weight. And then, I stop worrying about forgetting, and I remember. It’s the very nature of what it means to be us.
Like the bare branch that never forgets how to produce buds and leaves come spring, our need and enjoyment of each other runs deep in our memory.