It is springtime in London

and I'm back in new york

It is springtime in London, and the weather is unseasonably warm. Though it's normal for anywhere else where it’s spring, in London, warm weather isn’t a promise, it’s a pleasant surprise. The people have a perma-smile plastered across their faces. It is a fortunate turn of events. Sadly the perma-smile is only valid as long as the weather holds up.

It is springtime in London, and I have the distinct pleasure of hanging out with small humans who teach me about myself, and about life, and about being humble and taking it easy. These kids listen to almost nothing I tell them to do, and I am schooled in lessons of patience and going with the flow.

My friend (their mother) tells me I’m a pushover, and I own it. I am a pushover. I want the kids to love me. I am not ashamed to say it, but kids can smell that on you. The faint whiff of desperation; they milk it for all its worth. I learn I am not a very good disciplinarian. Even my raised voice is not very scary. I am not a mother, and I still don’t know if I will be. This is a very good second-best.

It is springtime in London, and I take the overground to Hampstead Heath and think about who I used to be. I wonder if I’ll always be prone to melancholy, to looking back. I’ve been looking back wistfully since I was 13 years old. That feels like a dramatic thing for a 13-year-old to do. I am more fond of who I am now. I pass the cafe where we had lunch that time after bloodwork, and think how different almost everything is now.

It is springtime in London, and I stand before the looming hospital building where I had a surgery in the height of the pandemic, and think how foolish I was to want what I wanted then. In the very next thought, I think, well, I didn’t know then what I know now.

Why is that always the case?

It is springtime in London, and I go to Marks and Spencer to buy fish, and I think about my mother and her undeniable enthusiasm for double cream. I always do in Marks and Spencer. I think of buying socks for school. I think of my first training bra from here, with blue and yellow flowers on it and pants to match.

I walk to Hackney Downs and sit on the grass and talk to my favourite people. I watch the kids run circles around each other, climb onto the climbing frame, and wonder what private kid conversations they’re having. I think about how many strangers you have to speak to when you have kids — other parents, teachers, people who tell you how cute your kids are. How many people does one have to have non-consensual chats with about the weather and plans for half-term as a parent?

I meet a golden retriever in a coffee shop and I think about my childhood best friend’s golden retriever running around after school in the square near my house. The ground was littered with conkers. Why was there always so much fuss about conkers? Why did we care? The spiky shell revealed the shiny, smooth seed. My spiky shell reveals my shiny insides, too. I think about all the good snacks they had in the house across the street from the square, all the sugary cereal you could ever want.

It is springtime in London, and I send a message I immediately wish I hadn’t. I am learning not to send some messages and to send others. The messages I shouldn’t send no longer get me high in the same way they used to. They’re loosening their grip on me. The thrills from an impulsive SMS that became an impulsive BBM that became an impulsive Whatsapp that became an impulsive iMessage just aren’t what they used to be. I am always learning. Later in the week I refrain from sending a message I’d really regret. That is the learning. The mistake-making is the learning.

It is springtime in London, and I travel from east to west and back again. I travel south. I eat food and kiss babies. I marvel at my life. I understand that I cannot return to what was. I understand that I cannot repeat my childhood, the memories are mine alone, and my city is different. It is mine and it is someone else’s now. It is no one’s business the ways in which this city is mine, and the ways in which it isn’t.

It is a bank holiday, and we eat Chinese food in Chinatown and go to Bar Italia, which has morphed into a tourist trap. I think of myself at 22, walking from the room I rented on top of my friend’s family home in Westminster to my office on Frith St each day, miserable and bloated. I think of the flat whites and cigarettes I’d smoke before 9 am. I think of the cashmere loo roll I wrote press releases for. I think of my phone calls to gruff journalists at The Daily Mail, The Sun, and The Mirror, trying to sell them on Christmas pudding and moisturizer. I think of the free food I ate in the basement of the building, where we kept the samples, just for a momentary respite from the futility of working in PR.

It is springtime in London, and I want to stay forever, and I want to go home, and I want to split myself in two so I can have my life here and tend to it, like the blooming roses on Navarino Road. And so I can have my other life, and tend to it, like the rat tends to garbage who flew in front of my feet not ten minutes after my return. It’s not sensible or straightforward to tend to both at the same time, but I can try.

It is springtime in London, and I spend one of my precious, limited days there crying from dawn to dusk. I end the day blubbering on my friend’s sofa. She tells me to get a new story. It’s not that simple, doesn’t she know that? She does. That’s why I love her. I decide that it’s ok to cry even when you have limited days in the place you love. And I decide that next time I won’t have a 15-hour menty b, which always seems to happen. I decide that having feelings is better than being dead, so I suppose that means I’m alive. I decide on a new story.

And so it is, same as it ever was,

Nora x