There’s a magnolia tree with flowers spilling over its walled enclosure. I spot it one lunchtime while running errands. I cross the road, pull out my phone, and take a few snaps, trying to capture their creamy centres and soft magenta petals against the brilliantly bright blue sky.
An elderly woman waits behind me as I do.
‘Would you like me to take a photo of you with them?’
I decline. She continues, ‘I have a tree like this near my front door but now, at the bottom, are all the dead flowers. They don’t last long.’
‘Still,’ she adds, as she begins to walk away, ‘they’re beautiful while we have them.’
She walks on, throwing an ‘enjoy them!’ over her shoulder.
I will. I do.
And with that, spring is well and truly here.
‘We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.’
– The Moment, Margaret Atwood
It’s been a big month of change and growth and the tilt into spring seems to only amplify the two.
It’s hard to write of the emergence of spring without reverting to cliché. But, after winter – even a short, mild one like Sydney had this year – it’s hard not to be swept away by the warmth in the sun and the thickening of the air. It’s hard not to swoon as the first scent of jasmine wafts by. Hard not to feel your shoulders drop, your breath lengthen, your limbs loosen.
Summer warmth and possibilities are now within reach.
After months of go, go, go and rushing from A to B with a seemingly endless to-do list, I’m looking forward to more moments of pause.
I hope that this spring, this summer – these seasons ahead – are filled with a gentle slowing and a new sense of ease.
I make rough plans to go on road trips to visit friends out of town. To possibly camp down the coast. To swim in the sea a whole lot more than I have done in the last six months.
It feels exciting – a buzz, lingering on the horizon. Joy, approaching.
‘Things come toward you when you walk.’
– A wilderness with a map, William Stafford
The sunsets in my new flat are a thing of wonder.
The day I got the keys, the sun shone bright and orange through the slatted blinds and bounced off the startling, white walls, welcoming me.
Since then, the walls have been painted in soft pinks and creamy peach tones and the glow has only grown warmer as the flat has felt more and more like mine.
I pack and unpack boxes, move furniture, wash all the laundry – sheets, towels, summer dresses – that have been sitting in storage for far too many months. I unpack until my body aches. I wake early to begin as the sun stretches over the city. I unpack and potter long after the sun has set. I head to bed exhausted each evening. But there’s something almost delicious about it. The whir of my mind becoming quieter from the physicality of it all. The productiveness of it. The visible difference each day makes.
My parents helped with The Big Move. It makes me teary, now, thinking about how much they helped. Of how, even as you age and grow and meet big milestones head-on, you still need your parents. Of how parents can’t help but parent you, even as you extend well into adulthood. It’s been stressful, so stressful, these past few months. But to have them here, cleaning and sorting and unpacking alongside me feels like such a huge weight off my shoulders. How lucky I am.
Friends come and visit, even as the flat is in a state of chaos. Makeshift chairs and makeshift coffee tables. They bring snacks and drinks and milk for their tea. Gradually, the flat takes shape and I’m able to cook for others and welcome them with cakes of my own and mugs of strong brews.
It feels good to be in hosting mode again. It feels nourishing to cook for others – even as I’m tormented by saucepans of pasta that bubble and overflow like a witch’s cauldron.
After months in a busy sharehouse, it’s restorative and soothing to once again feel at ease within a home. Knowing it doesn’t matter what I look like; I don’t need to dress up to leave my room and head to the kitchen. I can take my time to make my dinner and then eat it at the dining table, instead of in my room. I can have a fruit bowl on the kitchen bench and fill it until it overflows.
I can make it mine. A small luxury. An indescribable one.
One friend stands in a room before it becomes my bedroom and says, ‘It feels so – safe.’
The magnolias continue to bloom. Bright and delicate and persistent. They bloom on busy streets and overflow into small lanes. They contain so much hope.
Of course they’re blooming here, now, in a time like this.
The post-adrenaline crash hits. Coinciding with an event so disastrous it felt amateur at best. It falls at the tail end, after a busy day of work. And so I leave early, sneak out with a lift full of women who swap compliments as we descend from the rooftop bar to the street below. Making the best of a bad situation, together.
A friend reminds me – again, again – of how much has changed since we met. In the world, generally. For me, specifically.
I feel like I’m trying to get all my ducks in a row before I can relax. And so my Saturdays fill with errands, crisscrossing Sydney in my car. I feel tired and often overwhelmed but there’s something new, resting beneath it all. A feeling of being grounded in a way I haven’t felt for years.
A sigh of relief. An increasing sense that it’s going to be okay. I’ve been through a lot and it’s only given me a new perspective. That will keep happening. I need to let it keep happening.
I tell friends my flat is a work in progress; that I’m looking forward to it evolving. Perhaps I should apply the same thinking to myself.
It’s a Saturday morning. I sit at my dining table, music on the speaker in the kitchen and a mug of tea in hand. A child sings to himself as he descends the stairs on the other side of my front door, the sound of his parents’ footsteps trailing after him.
It feels nice, after eighteen months of living in houses, to once again be surrounded by the sounds of other flats. Of other lives being lived, all within the frame of a building. There’s something comforting about the immersion; all of us living beneath one roof.
Later that day, I walk up the steps back into my block and think – I know the name of the neighbour next door. I know the name of the neighbour on the top floor. These things feel as precious as gems.
I drive from my old neighbourhood to my new one, one Monday morning. Blossoms, new and bold, are bursting forward from spindly branches.
Things feel new and hopeful and bright.
It’s a good time of the year.
At the end of the day, I put my key in my front door and breathe a sigh of relief.
I’ve made it.
I’m home.
I absolutely adored reading this, Emma. And I’m so glad you’ve found a safe, beautiful flat for a fresh, spring start x