"He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme."
- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
I'm inside, wearing a sweater, sitting right next to a hissing radiator and shivering violently as tiny raindrops spritz against the window. I must be back in England.
As everything happens a second time, the excitement of the new adventure is infused with the memory of the first time, when the thrill of this new life in Oxford was so intense as to make it not quite plausible. You know that feeling as Christmas approaches? It's completely new and completely familiar; it's comfortable and it's exciting. It's young, and fresh, and ancient.
That's what it's like.
Life now is a whirlwind of work, lectures and seminars, rehearsals, performances, riding, evensongs, and countless little moments and conversations not worth writing about and yet precious—little pearls on an ever-lengthening string that is the gift of a little time here.
I lost control of myself briefly and joined the polo team. Now my friends will tell you it's all I talk about. It's a good thing I can ride. Everyone likes to say they were picked last for dodgeball as a child at recess, as if it's some sort of clever way to be self-deprecating; I actually
was always picked last. Always. PE class was the dreaded event of the week from the age of 5 to when I graduated at 18. When my PE class did its baseball unit and it was my turn to bat, that one really loud boy would shout and gesture broadly for all the kids in the outfield to "Move in, move in." Confidence-building, I can tell you. I always failed the annual flexibility test, I was among the last few stragglers to finish the infamous Mile, and I have never in my life done a pull-up. Ever since that elementary school trauma, I have retained my complete inability to do anything useful with a ball. So, as I say, it is a good thing I can ride, because hitting that little polo ball is proving not to be my greatest strength. I pick up a lovely, smooth, steady canter, point the horse at the ball, sail towards it, lift slightly out of the saddle, raise my right arm above my head, let the mallet fall in a graceful arc behind me, and watch it swing harmlessly several inches over the top of the ball as we canter off harmoniously into the sunset. My favorite trick is to dart ahead of an opposing player and physically block him from getting to the ball. Because if I can't hit it, dang it, neither will you! How far that technique will actually get me remains to be seen. The introduction of a ball into the only sport I'm actually good at is proving to be an interesting plot twist.
I'll leave this here, because I have to put my breeches on now and go compete in my very first polo match—actually, my very first athletic competition of any kind, ever. I'm playing for St Cross and Wolfson against other Oxford colleges. See facebook for photos of polo and other Oxonian adventures, and I shall endeavor to update this with a little more regularity in the future!
It's on, elusive polo ball. You're going down. Let's do this.
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