Rory Fitzgerald
It’s the last stand of the snowmen. As I write, our once-proud snowman, is standing forlorn, misshapen and incongruous, in our green and florid garden. The spring sunshine is blazing down on him like a lethal nuclear blast. I sense that mortality is on his mind. This has been a long winter which, even in retreat, has made unexpected rearguard actions such as the recent mid-March Arctic spell.
For the children, the transformation of their humdrum everyday world into a winter wonderland is always going to be welcome, whatever the season.
When we awoke last week to find the ground carpeted in a thick layer of pristine snow, the kids ran in to us at 6am with the happy news. The announcement from the head teacher arrived over breakfast: school was going to be closed for the day. Buses weren’t running and the roads were impassable. There was only one thing for it: sledging.
The kids’ surfboards double up nicely as sledges in the off-season. We met with friends and walked along the quiet, white roads to the hills above our village, spotting icicles and animal tracks in the snow as we went. As we hiked higher, dragging our improvised sledges, an icy blast came in from the sea. Rising higher we could see the whole coast, and our little village, covered in transformative white.
The kids dived merrily into deep snowdrifts near the hedges and had to be dragged bodily out. When we arrived at our village’s unofficial sledging piste, several of the kids’ friends from school were already on the slopes, rocketing down the hill sporting grins from ear to ear. In the interests of performing a health and safety assessment of the slope I had to have one or two – ok, several – trips down myself. After a few hours of merry mayhem, the cold began to set in to the bones, and we wandered home for some après ski hot chocolates.
Now the spring sunshine is back, with a radiant strength that whispers of summer. Daffodils, spring blossoms and tender early leaves decorate the garden. The birds are busy twittering about and the whole of nature murmurs and creaks with life and growth. I sometimes feel like I’m living in a time-lapse sequence. That most precious commodity, time, just evaporates and melts like the snow. A moment passes and suddenly it’s already the future.
That little sapling I planted yesterday is now a six-metre tree. That tiny little girl I held in my arms the day she was born, last week, is now seven years old, her eyes gleaming with delight on her birthday. The snow extended her birthday weekend by two whole days. This gave us all the more time together as a family to celebrate this amazing little kid.
To let her know how loved she is, and how cared-for she is, and how we delight in her. Messages and presents arrived from near and far, the mantelpiece was cluttered with cards and all her friends turned up for a big party.
Time can be cruel. Just ask the snowman – or a very elderly person. With sadness, I see people I once knew well, of the older generation, move on from this life, thanks to time, and its unkind ravages.
Yet we celebrate the passage of time too, when we celebrate birthdays, or when our hearts rise with the New Year, or a new springtime. For time can be kind, it gives us life, and growth, and hope.
But, either way, there’s no use complaining about time. For good and ill, it does as it pleases. Thankfully, it’s next inevitable task is to bring us summer.