Snowdrops

I was walking the dog this morning when I saw snowdrops. At first, I wasn't sure they were real. I looked again and sure enough there they were, a small perfection of pearly white and new green against the semi-frozen mud. 

My first thought was: "How did something so delicate push through something so hard and ugly?" My second thought was: "I'm crying".

After looking around to see whether there was anyone close who might notice and wonder - or, heaven forbid, ask - whether I was alright, I settled in to my head to work out what was going on.

And there it was. I hadn't expected this 'normal'. The snowdrops are nature doing normal. We humans can't do much that's normal for us right now and somehow my lockdown brain had expected that the park would remain mud, ice and floodwater in sympathy. How human-centric of me!

I usually cry at my first snowdrops because they represent those lives lost in Dunblane back in March 1996, when the community launched the Snowdrop campaign against private gun ownership. That day, 25 years ago, I was driving to my son's primary school to pick him up for an optician's appointment when I heard the news on the radio. He was primary one - as were the 15 children who died in their school gym with their teacher.

For many personally affected by Dunblane, I'm guessing the fact of the world just carrying on, flowers pushing through cold muddy ground, summer following a tragic spring, and then autumn and winter until the snowdrops came again, must have felt - and doubtless still feels - like a travesty.

Covid is personal and global. We all have our own ways of pushing through this 'hard and ugly'. And Covid is just nature too, doing what nature does. 

This morning I didn't expect the normal of snowdrops. And despite the sadness of my memories of 1996, I am so thankful for them.

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