WINTER SOLSTICE

The end of the year provokes assessment. Once I realized I couldn’t remember what happened of import in years past, I began annual synopsis of my life. In part this takes the form of lists of books read, theatre and movies seen. A perusal of my date book reveals important highlights I recount in narrative. I list out illness trying for a handle on pattern, on perspective. And that is the larger concern, isn’t it—pattern and perspective to package the year with. Christmas holidays are the ribbon around the box of annum.

I’m not entirely comfortable in my rejection of the holidays for its demands, its busyness and consumerism. There’s celebratory gathering I’m missing. I feel old fashioned wishing for snow and a horse drawn ride through the woods to a home where I’ll be welcomed with a hot drink. I’m nostalgic for gangs of us sledding with abandon. Winters of my childhood heightened by the world slowing down for snow.

The solstice came after a Fall tail ended with gray days and it already felt like winter. Seasons once tied to farming practices, to pagan origins, now somtimes seem arbitrary parameters. And yet I appreciate the idea of seasons deserving our attention in their passing. I don’t like to give up on the outdoors come winter, waiting for that welcome prospect of a sunny winter day to go out and close up the vegetable beds, to have a fire for guests and serve soup, to catch up on outdoor chores.

We live a refining seasonal consciousness each day when we pick out what to wear—what level of warmth necessary—and walk out the door feeling the air and our bodies adjust to the climate. Just as a woman knows her weight by the way her clothes fit, my fingers touch the window each morning to read the temperature.

My autumn of discontent, now made to winter, can be chronicled as a dissemblance of self. And what of winter? I wait for a reprieve from this season of middle age passage. My creative focus evaporated, my chores undone, I indulge distraction. These are the outward manifestations of a foggy mind, of daily attempts at momentum, but no muster to date. Discipline, self direction, once my intimate comrades, have deserted me for warmer climate. Impatiently, I await their sunny embrace.

So winter, your cure, your frosty requisite, I walk towards you fingering an acorn in my pocket.