This time of year is always strange. There is a drumbeat of family birthdays, including mine, and the pandemic has heightened the sense of time passing. My mother died at the end of February 2014, so this is seven years, unbelievably, since then.
Spring represents renewal. My father has had the vaccine, as has my sister and both my in-laws. I don’t know what my mother and grandmother would have made of all this if they were still alive. The so-far-successful rollout of the vaccines is making me feel cautiously optimistic for the first time since last March. Of course, that’s the other strange thing about this time – it’s a year since the pandemic hit. I remember the paranoia in my workplace, of people disappearing with ‘flu’, people trying to open doors with their knees (so they didn’t have to touch handles), and little coughs and widened eyes. I think I had it, but I’ll never know, and that mad month became a whole year of anxiety and physical withdrawal from regular life.
Finally, I feel hopeful. I don’t know what the rest of 2021 will bring, but my daughter goes back to school on Monday and will be with her friends for the first time since December. In three weeks time I will be able to drive to the beach and walk along the sand. My family and friends are okay. It’s Spring, and it feels like it.