popular Chinese New Year phrase for qing chun ("green spring" — youth) is 青春常驻 (Qing Chun Chang Zhu), which translates to "may you stay forever young", a flattering compliment to mature relatives for vitality.
This has been a season of many changes for the family and some recent bereavements made me think about Didion's essays on the mental contortions that follow loss, and the same impulse in ordinary transitions — changes in life, changes at work, changes within yourself. We replay conversations, revisit old familiar haunts, we keep keys that open no doors. We struggle to accept that a phase has closed, maybe because we are taught to prize perseverance over discernment, but not so much to leave without shame.
This winter has been short of snow and ski, so I'm not quite ready to leave. But all life includes endings, even those we resist for beyond their natural time. One of my favourite passages in Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, is when he says in the Vale of Blackmoor that "rays from the sunrise draw forth buds, stretches them into long stalks, lifts up sap in noiseless streams" meaning that for as long as spring starts again, trust that the green shoots have an instinct to reckless, relentless and intense growth.
So, if staying in winter makes you brittle and cynical, then I wish you grace with the difficulty of finality, steadiness in vulnerability and that you can feel both sad and grateful in accepting that bodies age, institutions change, children grow faster than we'd like. And most of all, that in this green spring, that blank space forms new shapes and possibilities that make you glad to be alive with it. 青春常驻, 新年快乐!
Ages 10 years 1 month, and 6 years 6 months.
