February

Life stirs

Leaves as sturdy as leather. Photo, author’s own.

One bird, a Great Tit, is resolute in his song. In the way birds have, a phrase over and over, not grating, delivered with assurance, a bedrock of sound, of song, of hope.

These cold bright mornings, the sun sends spangles of gold onto the walls and floors. The sky is blue, and the earth sparkles like a diamond, the light clear and clean and sharp. Frost steams off the outdoor table as if the garden is breathing.

Some mornings are still, petrified, not a stirring, not even a squirrel, as if February says, ‘Spring — pah!’ And a mist descends and turns the window grey as a graveyard.

I plant willow in the garden. It has been in a vase for two weeks where it has sprouted filigree leaves of spring green and pink roots like elastic bands.

A morning frost surprises. A surprise founded on nothing but the belief February ought to bring warmth and light. Until I remember, we are still deep in winter and the opposite month of the year is August, that pinnacle of psychological summer.

Driving past a playing field, coaches spill lines of school children in coats with fur lined hats, clutching plastic bags of packed lunch. In the field, teachers set out a table. For results? A meet? It’s February, and five degrees and an icy drizzle spits from a grey sky. How snug to be in a car with a heated seat.

February comes from the Latin Februare meaning purification. Fitting then that midway through the month, I do a 48 hour fast. I eat my last meal on a Friday evening, gorging on a plate of chocolate ice cream.

Saturday goes unexpectedly well. Perhaps it is because I have prepared myself psychologically, but I do not feel hungry, none of the usual anticipation for lunch. Ambivalence carries me through the afternoon and then a slight stirring, a tug towards something in my hand while I read Maeve Brennan, which I assuage with a mug of herbal tea.

Sleep is swift and Sunday I write and thoughts, sentences, ideas tumble, but that’s normal for Sunday. Later comes a light-headed feeling. My stomach is dormant, all levers stopped, all buttons turned to Off.

I fast knowing I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want, not forced through war or famine. Even so, to halt a habit so engrained, so reflexive, so unconscious as eating shakes up the mind and body. The day is purged of its slave-like obligations to food and the constant requirement and reflex to eat.

How food dominates and punctuates our days. Meals are signposts of respite and relief, milestones where we alight from the day’s doings. Without food, the day stretches stark, unshackled, unmoored. Food keeps us tethered to the rhythm of the day. The day sprawls without meals.

I make it to 42 hours before I crack, before I feel hunger so acute it blots out all other thoughts and becomes an obsession verging on hysteria. I scoff avocado and toast and almonds and walnuts and a banana and a slice of apple pie and three oat biscuits and then toast and jam, and I drink an entire pot of tea and feel akin to Judith Kerr’s tiger.

And still I feel hunger, like a panic. I force myself to wait a while, but am thrown out of self all day. A 24-hour fast is doable, but 48 hours is into the realms of suffering. I am left with a feeling of mutiny, as if I have been duped. By what I cannot say.

Forecast set for fair. Three sun symbols, 13 degrees. I catch sight of tulips and I suddenly remember tulips in the way I suddenly remember Christmas in November. Broad spears of leaf are already through, sturdy as leather.

Out walking, two lawns have been mowed, leaving those dapper lines so redolent of Wimbledon and summer and cricket bats and the chink of glass. The winter half of life is suddenly pierced by memories of the summer half of life.

Sky brightens now at 6:30, and the moon is a slice of melon. We have had so little rain the pond is low. The fish startle me, already moving and so orange in the drab greens of the water. Stones the size of my fist suddenly move, lumber and hobble across the floor, pushing out fleshy and disconcertingly human thighs. The toads have arrived; spring really is coming.

A flowering cherry, the type with the palest pink blossom that always seems too fragile for February, is a harbinger of scent and petal. A frothy farewell to the tunnel we are leaving, the long dark stretch now far beyond our backs. The light gallops towards us.

I leave the month with a newfound respect for its alchemy, its turning of winter into spring. February is the hinge of the year. Purification is done. We are ready for the spoils of March.