Sunday mornings. In a city. Oslo, to be precise. Sunday mornings in early March. Spring is right around the corner. You can feel it in the air. The hope and promise of spring. March and April are perhaps my favorite months of the year, although the summer months rival them, at least in terms of garden life. But right now, life is returning to the city, to the garden, to us all. The sun feels warmer on my face when I sit on the bench in my garden after having filled the bird feeder. I love watching the small birds fly to and fro, eating seeds and chattering away. The snowdrops, the real harbingers of spring, are poking their heads up and starting to bloom.
There is a peace that I love on early Sunday mornings when I walk to St. Olav church. The sun is shining and there are very few cars or people about. There is the occasional jogger or dogwalker, but by and large I have the sidewalks to myself. It is at these times that I love being in a city. I know I'm surrounded by people and I like that, but they're not milling about me as they would be during mid-summer. So I'm enjoying the peace and quiet time, walking up Teltusbakken and past our allotment garden, then walking along Kjærlighetsstien and the park/playground until I reach Akersveien. I then walk past Our Savior's Cemetery and then past St. Olav bookstore. Akersveien is one of my favorite streets in Oslo; it is peaceful, perhaps due to the religious feelings engendered by the church, bookstore and cemetery. It fills me with the peace and feelings of safety from childhood, when all seemed (mostly) right with the world, when Sundays meant going to church with family and then coming home and eating afternoon dinner together. When I walk along Akersveien, I forget that I am living in a nonsensical world that gets crazier by the day.
March is an unpredictable month in terms of the weather, I know that. So I enjoy the little tastes of spring that we are given on days like these, when the sun shines, when I feel like I have no cares in the world, when it feels as though the peace of the divine is shining down upon us.
