With spring comes new dreams

What new hopes will you allow to grow?

There is something about spring that makes it feel safe to dream again. The sun, a benevolent energy returning. The blue sky is once again an infinite vault for our ambitions, no longer an iron-gray lid on our hopes.

Leaves and buds reveal their tender selves to an indifferent world, daring to live again with the all the vulnerability and audacity of the reborn. If they can do it, so can I.

So I begin, once again, to dream.

I dream of an eyrie, close to the sky.

For the last 11 years I’ve lived in a second-floor apartment with a modest, south-facing balcony and three big picture windows that let in plenty of natural light. But now that I no longer have to carry a baby up and down the characteristically steep, narrow Amsterdam stairs of death, an extra flight of steps seems a small price to pay for even more light and a roof terrace.

A roof terrace! Imagine it. An outdoor shower, a Big Green Egg.

The faux-coconut scent of sunscreen, a chemical tropical cocktail; the bitter orange tang of Campari and fizz of bubbles; the slap and sizzle of meat on the grill.

We could swap our one canvas deck chair for a pair of wooden sun loungers. Stretch out our pasty, winter-weary legs in the sun. I could read in a bikini, shading my eyes with a book, during the too-brief but glorious days of Dutch summer, as though the sky will be bright, hot and blue forever.

And maybe, just maybe, that top floor apartment will have a little room just for me, where I can keep my books, close the door, and write.

I dream of a cabin, close to the ground.

A tiny house. An escape.

Somewhere along the wild, pale coast of North Holland. Among the dunes. In a forest. By a lake. Anywhere I can drive to myself, when I finally pass my practical exam and reclaim my life from driving lessons.

A cast-iron, wood-burning stove that sends tendrils of smoke out into the trees, or into the sea air. An unmade bed without a frame—pushed into a niche perhaps, or on a platform, made for cocooning. Stacks of books, all the books that can no longer fit into my shelves at home.

The barest essentials I need to feed and wash myself so that there will be hardly anything to tidy. One cast-iron pot, two enamel plates, two tin cups, a single jug for drinking water or picking wildflowers. Unpainted wooden walls and unadorned glass windows—the bigger the better.

The chief luxury will be light. And birdsong.

And books. And time. And space to myself, to write.

I dream of solitude.

In December I applied for a writing residency on the Costa Brava in Spain. A month in my own room in a white-washed house by the sea; a room made for writing in a house made for writers.

I had never dared to dream of such a thing. I could never take so much time away from being a wife and a mother, and this writing thing was just an inconvenient hobby.

But now my daughter is 11, and the easiest and most independent she’s ever been. The Dutch have a saying about kids this age: Elf, kan het zelf, which translates roughly to “I’m 11, I’ll do it myself.”

And now, with an international book deal under my belt and a book on the way, this writing thing is now… well, a thing. A beginning of a career, and a justifiable reason to demand solitude—and get it.

My capacity for solitude has grown—no, transformed—compared to three years ago, when I began writing my book. Sometimes this unfamiliar need startles me into looking around for the me I once was—the extreme extrovert, the social butterfly, the girl who knew all the people, places and parties—much like you’d pat your pockets for a pen or pair of sunglasses you were positive you just had in your hand a second ago.

The panic of an old self slipping away makes me fill all the empty spaces in my agenda with a coffee here, a catch-up there, until it’s bristling with appointments, errands, stuff. I become my own worst enemy. I pave the distance between idea and page with distraction after distraction, a DIY demolition job against new work that wants to be made and a new self struggling to emerge.

A quieter self, a slower self. One that craves the solitude to hear itself think, and the space to capture those nudges and thoughts on paper.

Without quiet, I cannot listen. Without time, I cannot feel. And without the quiet and time I can only find in solitude, I cannot create.

I dream of new adventures.

A road trip in a pickup truck to chase a cosmic event. An eclipse!

A languid unfolding of winter-pale legs on warm coral sand. A holiday.

A mythical club in Tbilisi. A reclamation of autonomy among strangers in the dark, in a womb pulsing with the beat of a hundred hearts.

A train ride across India, up the foothills of the Himalayas, to see with my father’s eyes and live his memory of what might have been.

I dream of new harmonies.

These dreams are timid, fragile, precious. They are tiny seeds sown by small movements the men I love make towards each other: easing, extending, acknowledging.

My boyfriend makes plans to cook for my husband, measuring my daughter’s room for new bookshelves. My husband invites my boyfriend to the kickboxing match he’s signed up for in May. When the invitation is accepted, my husband quips, “Well, looks like I’d better make a good showing, then.” Promises of a game of pool, which life reschedules again and again; the optimism of text me, I’m around next week.

I dream of my words seared on canvas and leather, stamped on wood, inked on skin.

Are these dreams, or just Instagram posts I’ve seen? Hanya Yanihagara’s words on a sleek black Maison Valentino satchel in Milan, Rupi Kaur’s words wrapped around a slender arm as an Inkbox temporary tattoo. I’m a little suspicious of them.

They say there are no such thing as original ideas; maybe the same logic applies to dreams. I wonder: are any of the dreams we dream truly our own?

I dream of stories that make me feel small, stories too big for one heart to hold.

I dream of growth, expansion: that I will one day be capable enough to tell them.

I dream I am a better writer than I am today.

There is a lightness to dreams that allows me to hold them at a distance. It is this buoyancy I crave after a long, heavy winter. Dreams haven’t deepened into desires or intensified into needs, which have the power to obsess us in their pursuit, or crush us if left unfulfilled. If these dreams don’t come true, I will tell myself: ah, they were just dreams anyway. Life will go on; I will be fine.

Here in Amsterdam, the cherry blossoms and magnolias are in full bloom, the markets bursting with the splendor of tulips. Rise and shine! Wake your fantasies from their slumber, coax your delusions from their dark corners. What do they whisper to you? What new songs do they sing?

As always, I love to hear from you. So hit that reply button to send me a dream in private, or post one in the comments. Come, and let’s dream into spring together.