Pre-almost-spring

Soon, soon...

There’s always a moment in the year. A shift. Sometimes it’s the light, sometimes a scent, and sometimes just an instinct, a feeling that we’re moving – perceptibly, with increasing haste – towards spring.

Now you’re talking.

It’s often false, this feeling – derailed the next day by squally winds and rainy nonsense – but that needn’t matter. That one day – usually some time in mid-February – will be one of early and sustained brightness. It speaks to me in a low, reassuring voice.

There will be more of this, I promise. Just keep going.

We’ve made it through the dark, grim days of perpetual, interminable January. Yes, the days were getting longer, each one fractionally lighter than the last, but somehow it didn’t feel like it. Some years, February pulls a fast one, its 28 days miraculously stretching like pizza dough in the hands of an expert pizzaiola. Not so much pre-March as January+.