Sometimes in my dreams I return to my elementary school, which in dream-form is large and strangely austere. It’s full of pillars and courtyards like a crumbling Roman house.

I’m ill again; and all day I slip in and out of sleep, and dream of locales, old haunts, childhood memories. As if illness causes a sort of temporary regression.

***

It used to be that people wrote books that tried to encompass everything. Histories of the world, of mankind, of the universe, of Europe or the African continent; encyclopedias, overviews of civilisations, tomes that chronicled every human accomplishment since the invention of fire. Now people write books of such amazing specificity: books on the banana, the pineapple, the sewer rats of Manhattan, biographies of little-known scientists and histories of obscure cultural practices.

Is this because we think we have a grasp of the big picture now, or because we’ve given up on it entirely? Sometimes I think it would be nice if we still had people who could tell us with such confidence that “it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” If only so that we could shout no, it isn’t!, if we so chose.

***

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I’m older today.

I remember the year I turned four. I woke up early and climbed out of my bed and toddled to my desk (yes, even then I had a desk and yes, even then I used it religiously) and pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and a crayon and took a deep breath and waited for a piece of knowledge–something I’d been missing–to come to me.

I put the crayon on the paper and I drew, and as I drew I realized that something was still missing, and so I toddled off to my parents bedroom and said, “I’m four. Shouldn’t I be able to draw a heart now?”

So they explained, as best they could, that knowledge is acquired; we do not wake up each year on our birthdays with our heads suddenly full of new things. The learning process is continuous, and age, funnily enough, has absolutely nothing to do with it. (Last night I met a man who had just turned forty-three; but in the last decade I’ve been a hundred, and I’ve been sixteen, he said.)

Over the next few days I practiced my hearts until I could form a passably symmetrical one in an instant; so in a way, turning four was the catalyst, only not in the way that I’d thought. And now, here we are again, in February, and I’m reminded of crayons and childhood by the book my parents send me. They say I’m Harold, drawing my own path with my own purple crayon, and I think they’re probably right, and I think I probably have been ever since I drew my first faulty heart on my fourth birthday, or even since before then. Since forever.

And it’s good to remember this because this morning, I woke up, and the Man brought me a mimosa, and as I sat there sipping it, preparing to struggle against the wind on my way to work, I caught myself thinking: do I know how to be an adult now? Hoping that the morning would magically imbue me with a belated understanding of adulthood (I think I’ve hoped this every year since I turned 18).

And of course, it didn’t, it can’t, I will never wake up and know how to be an adult, not today, not next year, not when I’m 43 or 100. So I guess I’ll just pick up my crayon and keep drawing.

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He says I nest. What he means is, when I come in the door and it’s cold, or I’m tired, or it’s been a long day at work, I crawl into the couch. The right-hand corner. Curled up, facing sideways under a suede and fleece blanket that was a Christmas present from my parents a few years ago. I like the curtains to be drawn back so I can see out the window, see the bare-branched trees and the house across the street.

It’s not conducive to productivity; I’ve lost hours like this, just sitting, staring, reading, half-asleep. But still, there’s something comforting about it.

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It started with white wine, a roaring fire, and a dawn that came too soon. Then there was that cold, austere part of winter when everything froze over, and I ran out of money, and took lots of long walks around Christ Church Meadow photographing the ice on dead grass. A new pub opened on our street and changed the way we interact with the city. It snowed so much that all transport to and from Oxford was canceled and I went in to work wearing wellies. I started the last semester of my MA. We went to New York City. I got older; then the Man got older. As the weather started to change we went to Wiltshire and circuited the standing stones at Avebury (I lost a boot heel there). Then finally things began to blossom. At dawn on the first of May we stood on Magdalen Bridge to welcome springtime, serenaded by a bunch of small boys in gowns at the top of the tower. The Man and I celebrated two years together and then went to Hay-on-Wye, where we bought far too many books and had to take them home on the train, which seemed like an appropriate way to mark our anniversary. My parents came to visit, and the three of us drove up to the Lake District and climbed a small peak.

Summer appeared suddenly, as it always does. A friend had her first baby, and I started a new job. I wrote the better part of a novel, went punting, sat in the garden and watched the grass grow long; we had meals outside when weather permitted, which wasn’t often, spent long evenings with our computers and our pints in the pub. I worked a lot, and summer disappeared, and I handed in my dissertation. We needed a break, so we drove south to Devon, where we drank strong cider, went for walks, played cards, made meals in a little cabin. This was all very refreshing; and then October came, and it was Autumn in full glory. I watched the turning of the leaves and the seasonal decay, and started to feel a bit lost, because now I was done with school again, and it felt so soon. We went to Dublin, where we drank Guinness and listened to traditional music in a damp grey pub.

Cold settled in around us. We hatched plans in pubs and bought tickets to New York, again. We went to New York, and fell in love with Brooklyn. I got to see my family, and some old friends. My MA results came. We planned a big trip. Oxford froze over, and we all slipped our way across town trying to prepare for Christmas. The Man and I spent the holiday with his family; we ate turkey and roast potatoes and unwrapped gifts in the conservatory. We slept in, took long naps, sat with our backs against the radiators.

Then the New Year came. We had a civilized evening with friends; we set off a firework; and in the early hours of the morning, we cycled back home, across the Donnington Bridge, over the calm black river. The streets were mostly empty and the wind was chilling, but also refreshing.

And now here we are.

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