AND FINALLY

Three cheers for the merry month of May

NOTHING is more beautiful than May in England, when all the leaves are fresh with promise like our younger selves, and warmer air bids the shoulders relax.

I love the poet Thomas Hardy’s description of this precious time when ‘...the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings, /Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk’. But don’t throw caution (and sweaters) aside to plant your containers yet, because they might still get frosted.

You can’t trust the ‘sour spring wind’ — as Hardy also observed in another poem, called An Unkindly May.

The seasons provide useful lessons. They also remind us to see our lives in stages — not clear-cut (because we’re used to unseasonable weather) but still unfolding ahead. I often gently tell exhausted young mothers that the ‘terrible twos’ (and the terrible teens!) is just a stage — so try to enjoy the present while you can.

One minute you’re getting married and then, in a blink, comes your 25th anniversary. One minute you’re on the floor playing with children and then, in the time it takes to shout ‘No!’, you’re looking at an empty nest.

In my Mothering Sunday card, my son wrote, ‘This is your time now, Mum.’ He meant that now the period of looking after elderly parents is now finished I can make plans. It takes deep breaths to try to get used to the idea — and, very much a homebody, I have no wanderlust.

To me, sheer bliss is found on the old sofa with husband and three little dogs, and enjoying my new hobby of crewel embroidery while watching something excellent on TV. Easily pleased, you see.

Nevertheless, after not having a holiday since May 2019, we’re leaving the pooches in the capable hands of my son-in-law (the family still living with us while their house is refurbished) and packing the car with umbrellas and sun hats to head off. So next week this column will be absent and re-gathering its energy. Where? Why, England, of course. Nowhere so beautiful in May.