SPRING

NOT ONLY KIND TO OURSELVES BUT KIND TO OUR WORLD (PLEASE.)

My mum doesn’t like wood pigeons.

‘Horrid noisy things’

She says. I, however, love them. They signify something slow and soft, something safe and traditional, maybe the glow of a summers evening when the sun is low in the sky making the world glow with the gentle murmur of an evening where no one has to do very much at all.

However, it is an early spring and just a couple of days ago I was in Sussex with my mum and we were indeed discussing the pigeons. They were everywhere, bustling in the trees, clattering out of them, swooping between houses with the loud clap of their wings and always, always, that cooing that I love and my mum hates.

It wasn’t the soft cooing I like to say it is. Those pigeons were busy seeking partners. In places pairs sat on branches side by side and in others one might be chasing another away.

The world is busy waking at the moment. In Sussex the magnolia are in full flower, petals gleaming in the sun and littering the floor. Daffodils just beginning to go off meaning my mum is busy deadheading them in moments when she could have been idle. The tulips are out and the cherry blossom is just coming out in a pale blush. Everywhere, out in the countryside the thorn bushes are covered in a haze of white flowers.

When we walked at Exceat at Cuckmere Haven the sky was piercing blue. The weather had brought the birds out. We saw so many herons and crows, so many swans and ducks; even, to our great surprise, a black swan. And at one point we could hear a sky lark way above us, making the day one of music. The spring had also brought out people. Lots and lots of people ambling besides the wide meanders of the river. A vast ribbon of people of all sorts of colours and a multitude of languages. A lovely spring day of smiles and dogs and the occasional picnicking family.

We didn’t quite reach the sea this time. The hormone therapy my mum is on for her cancer tires her out nowadays; means she, who used to be able to outwalk almost everyone had to pause and rest and eventually turn round to go back to the bus stop for our journey back home and a cup of tea and an early hot cross bun.

It is not a particularly strange revelation but nethertheless, my mum’s operation and the discovery of secondaries, means I am conscious in a way I was not, that she is eighty eight years old and time is more limited now; though with modern treatment, maybe not particularly limited. I am alert to my mum if she appears to stumble. I am quick to say we all want her to stay with us when she talks about when she is sent off to live in a care home and slower to reply when we look forward to what we will be doing next spring or where we could take her when she next visits us in Scotland.

It is even more silly as it is not that long ago that my doctor was testing my blood, talking about the battering my liver has taken from my drinking, admonishing me, referring me to an addictions CPN. With a slight shift in perspective, it might be my mum who is treasuring the time she has with me when I visit while I am alive.

However, just as my mum has good treatment so have I managed to decrease my alcohol consumption which means my liver indicators are so much better now; maybe we both have many, many, years of spring time walks together!

Nothing is certain; far less when we will die or how long we will live for or whether we will remain fit enough to glory in a spring day. I suppose the coupling of the pigeons is a certainty as is the sight of the rooks across the road from where I live in Argyll, gathering twigs for their nests from the trees in my garden and this morning’s first glimpse of the wood anemones bright against their green foliage.

Even that is not so certain anymore. With the changes in the climate, I am not entirely sure I can count on the seasons to act as I would expect them to.

I would like to have the wisdom to accept that this is the way of life and of time but I do cling to certainties even if they aren’t.

I saw bumble bees a few days ago and one or two honey bees. Last night Wendy’s kisses when I went away, exhausted, to my bed, were lingering and sweet and outside the owl was calling.

She planted cornflowers and sunflowers while I was away, using a draining rack as a nursery. They are sprouting already. She is excited about the flowers when they come out. Dash slept on my bed last night and didn’t want to get up in the morning while, when Buddy arrived, he rushed upstairs to say hello and ruin my typing when he sat on my computer mouse.

The rooks wake me again, now it is spring; like the pigeons; gathering, nesting, mating.

I like this. I do hope, somehow, we can safeguard this beautiful world from our excesses.

To learn more about my life and life with a mental illness do read my memoirs START and Blackbird Singing. Available from Geilston Press. Best got from Amazon at the moment.