May's paper flower
It is May and the time to unveil my paper flower of the
month. These are strange times and I
wanted to choose a bloom that reflected the mood and moment.
It has been six weeks now that we in France are in
lock-down. My teenage daughters and I
have remained the entire time in the enclave of our home. Only Jon has left, once a week, to shop for
us and a neighbour.
My world has been a protected and privileged one, secure in
the confines of my garden, its birdsong and sweet smells of spring lilac and
lily of the valley. To sit concentrating
on the watercolour paint spreading into the crepe paper and cutting out petals
is to be transported from a real-world of fear and pain.
Sleep is disturbed and filled with strange colourful dreams
that translate into an undefined uneasy wakefulness. My father and aunt, both in their eighties, are
alone in their separate homes in a different country, we talk in a disembodied
way across the airwaves, unreal and I just have to hope that they remain out
of danger.
Of the reality of Covid-19, I watch the news, this terrible
sickness, families ripped into shreds by their grief which they cannot assuage
and the heart-wrenching decisions of the medical professionals which they have
to affront like an unending tsunami. I
sit in my sunny garden, feel inadequate and guilty.
When we finally emerge from our bunkers, blinking into the
sunlight, the unknown must be borne bravely.
I am keeping my imagination firmly in my pockets for what comes next; I
am too much of a coward to look it straight in the face.
So, to this May flower...delicate to reflect our bruised
humanity but above all, it must bring hope and light, the things that makes man
good. Here are my sweet peas; fragile,
bursting with colour and rising resolutely from the earth. In the language of flowers, the sweet pea has
a bittersweet meaning; it is associated with blissful pleasure but also
departure. Stay safe.
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