There’s a want in me.  Not generally – well, at least not constantly.  I have itchy Spring feet to be places and see things and do stuff.

It must be after the long Winter – and, take it from me, it was loooong.  I try not to crib about our climate / meteorological situation because, well, it is what it is and it cannot be changed – only my attitude can change.  Also, it’s usually possible to get out for at least a small sliver of the day – even if it’s just a stretch of the legs to the gate across the yard, there’s almost always that gap, that space to breathe.  This Winter was devoid of slivers and gaps. There was no room to breathe.  Just rooms to stay inside, hunkering down, waiting.  It was a windy Winter of storms and cold rain and don’t-even-want-to-let-the-dog-out mornings.  It was a bit of a trial.  But let’s not linger on the negative…

February, you beauty, burst onto the scene with blue, clear skies and the teeniest, tiniest hint of a bit of warmth in your breath and it was just lovely.  Lovely to get out and smell the air and, for goodness sake, shake off the cobwebs.  She’s wobbled a bit in her first week, but overall I feel assured that Spring is definitely in the air and whatever about the promise of a balmy Summer, it’ll be better than what’s passed.

But it’s all giving me itchy feet.  Springy feet perhaps?  This morning I was pining to be in a big city – I felt bereft for my Autumn trip to New York, longed to sit on a busy sidewalk people-watching over coffee, planning a jaunt to a new exhibition or that talked-about restaurant just opened.  It wasn’t company I craved, no, not this loner.  I just needed that injection of something – a slice of the action, some culture, a little every day drama and mayhem.

My sister put a word on it – a German word to be exact – because, as she noted, sometimes other languages can make up where our own fails us.  She called it ‘Fernweh’.  Auf Deutsch home sick is ‘Heimweh’, home hurt.  ‘Fern’ means ‘distance’, ‘Fernweh’.  Distance hurt.  It almost named my melancholy.  But my melancholy stretches to ‘beauty-hurt’, ‘beauty-seeking’.

This morning I had watched a small video on a famous New Yorker’s instagram feed of a subway busker in Grand Central Station.  He was playing John Legend’s All Of Me on a Trombone.  As he played, people passed by, on their way to work or going home or visiting someone – carrying out the ordinary.  And in the midst of the ordinary-ness, his music was just so beautiful.  And a different beautiful to my usual life’s daily encounters where, honest to goodness, I see so much beauty as a mother and living where we live.  But maybe you become complacent.  Immune.  And after a long, dark, grey Winter my inspirational reserves are at zero.  This little unassuming video clip just shook me up.  And I feel I need shaking up!

I got the memo about Winter and I hibernated.  Now I’m relying on Spring to renew me – my enthusiasm, my energy, my vigour.  I need to re-see the stone walls and hills and the ins and outs of my every day life with a little extra sunshine and some fresh air – I’m ready and waiting.  Because I don’t really want to swap worlds or lives – I just need a fresh perspective to re-appreciate the beauty right under my nose.  And while Winter was a time to sleep and look inwards, now needs to follow a time to satiate that hunger in every human being to see, feel and experience things that remind us we are alive.  Again.

Such excitement seeing the new lambs – and that excitement is most welcome