April Showers Bring May Flowers
“It had been a mild, serene spring day; one of those days which towards the end of March or the beginning of April, rise shining over the earth as heralds of summer.” – Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
Is it normal to have some kind of existential crisis in the lead up to your birthday? I have no answers on that front. But, social media has taught me that it seems to be a core girlhood experience. Either way, this is my annual tradition so humour me for a few minutes.
Okay so, perhaps ‘existential crisis’ is a tad hyperbolic. I’m not having any kind of crisis, thankfully. However, turning a year older does always cause me to fall down a rabbit hole of musings and introspection…even more so than usual. I measure my life in birthdays. April to April. Like tax years. And so, it’s only natural to look back over all that has happened between this birthday and the last and all that is different. A lot, as it turns out, but also not that much. Behold the enigmatic paradox of life.
“You are a child of spring” – Franz Kafka, 1914
In my entirely biased opinion, spring is a wonderful time to be born and everyone who knows me knows it’s my absolute favourite time of year. The rain washes away the sullenness and stagnation of winter and the welcoming, vernal airs of April remind us to breathe again. It’s a fresh start. I will brave as many gloomy, glacial and grim winters as I am given, just to savour the promise of spring every year. A whole season that feels akin to the night before a school trip and I know that feeling of pure joy will never go away.
“…But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning, the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.” – Vincent Van Gogh
Every year, I imagine my beginnings in this world; a rainbow baby, the first of an entire tribe of siblings and cousins, entering the world with dramatic flair, at the strike of midnight. I try to imagine what it must have been like for my parents to take me home early that morning in their red Nissan. I don’t know… it’s odd to imagine yourself as a baby… a time before the consciousness that you have now, before you knew all that you know. And I think of all of the days that have passed since.
Every year, I replay eras and seasons that are long gone in the movie theatre screen of my own mind, pore over anecdotes that have been related to me by my oh-so-beloved aunts, uncles and grandparents from a time before my own memory. Every year, I memoralise all the people and places I have ever known. My great library of Alexandria.
You know, I remember most of my birthdays; age 5 was my first awareness of what a birthday is. Being the endearingly undemanding child I was, I remember asking my mum for chocolate eggs for my birthday (because it always falls around Easter when stores are filled to the brim with Easter eggs) Apart from a few birthdays when relatives bought me gifts to celebrate the occasion, we’ve never formally celebrated it. One thing my siblings and I have always done is letters, cards and journal entries to commemorate the occasion.
Every year, teasingly, I ask my mum if she knows what date is coming up and she always laughs and says ‘how could I forget the day I became a mother?’ and then makes some kind of du’a for me.
It’s no small thing. Another year of blessings. Another year more than many others get.
“Suddenly I wonder, “where is the girl that I was last year? Two years ago? What would she think of me now?” — The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Beyond the scope of my own life, the space between then and now represents the thousands of births, lives, deaths, reunions, celebrations, tragedies and love stories of many people whose lives have been taking place adjacent to mine (all roads lead back to sonder, I’m afraid.) Its hundreds of fruit fly life cycles, back to back, entire existences playing out over and over.
Like last year, I, once again, find myself standing at the precipice of another promising 365 days, another lifetime ahead. Now, only days away from the only age that somehow feels different to the many others before it, I hope the rest of my small eternity will be just as kind, God willing.
“You came out on the other end. You were always you” – A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara
