The Year Without
This post begins in the past when I first started it. Late. In a month that seemed to rush by, every day shorter and more hurried. Never catching up I seemed to have lost all of November as well. Where did all the time go?
October 29th
I am actually writing this in a word document on my little Microsoft tablet because my internet is out, and I cannot write directly into my blog. At this exact moment there is no internet, no TV and no Alexa. So there is no background noise and no music. The upside – no commercials about Attila the Hun or other nonsense. Like so many other things that weren’t this year, it seems just another sign of the times.
This year, for the first time in more than 25 years, we will not have a Halloween Party. While Halloween has not been officially canceled, it has officially become one of the scarier days of the year. Because of everything out there, goblins and monsters being the least of it, even the real ones not as scary as what we do not see.
Last night we had a tropical storm warning, and of course along came the winds and rain. A tropical storm warning 3 days before Halloween seems incomprehensible. I’ve seen my share of pre-Halloween weather warnings; snow, ice, wind, no burn (the saddest, because there can be no fire). But the tropical storm out did all that. The eeriness of the day layers on the spookiness as we close the year. Even our giant pumpkin, a gentle soul selected from a beautiful farm in the North Georgia Mountains did not survive for it’s grand debut, but melted unceremoniously on the front lawn. The day the storm threatened, the great pumpkin gave in and wallowed in its yuckiness. And now my yard smells like pumpkin death. Not a welcoming scent for Trick-or-Treaters – assuming any come.
October 30th (Devils Night, Eve of the Full Moon)
Today I am carving pumpkins, drinking a glass of wine and trying to get into the holiday spirit. I have my favorite orange sweater on and a ghost wine glass in hand (“I’m just here for the boos!”). But my heart isn’t in it and I am having a hard time coming up with faces. Even the witch painting I started sits unfinished. She beckons, but I cannot seem to get her on her way out of the woods. We both sit at the in between space, waiting.
Halloween is tomorrow. And the full moon. A convergence of things to celebrate. We should be folding up scape paper and filling the Monkey Head with negativity to burn or divining the recipe for Witches Brew through tasting trial and error. Winter silence approaches, a time of renewal. But something is missing and it seems to have trapped the joy in there with it – someplace out there, just not here.
Dec 29, 2020
Two months have gone by since I sat at my desk and tried to write here. I look at the snippets above and notes I had jotted down for future posts trying to recall what was at the heart of it. In my journal, somewhere in November, I lament that going out now feels more alien than staying home for a 4 day vacation used to feel (back in the day when I was on the hamster wheel called “work”). There is a sense of displacement, an inability to enjoy it, a constant nagging feeling that something is not quite right and maybe we shouldn’t be out here.
That day in November I had gone to my daughters houses to drop off some promised supplies and goodies. Something I had done many times in the past as they live so close – becoming the ultimate emergency delivery service. But it was made awkward by the standing on the porch, the no hugging, the no welcome into the chaos of the home to see what was up, the grandkids standing 6 feet away for mutual protection. Looking at those words on paper, it was clearly not a good day. This would not be the year with the Thanksgiving family chaos and food shared across 4 households. It would not have shopping and silliness and bonfires. It must have rankled me that day, another loss in a year that wasn’t.
As winter completely closes in it seems hard to stop reflecting on all this year was not. It was often without family and friends except in grief. It took loved ones and distanced us from those we would normally turn to for support. It took away the fairs and fireworks, the scavenger hunts in tiny stores for special gifts. It took hold of our traditions and tried to wrest them away. It took more than it gave. And left sadness in our hearts to take up the empty space therein. A sadness that can be hard to push out and left me silent.
I look out the window now and the sun is shining, the sky azure blue despite the time of year. It tells me a new year will come, even with all the loss. The days are already infinitesimally longer. At some point we will write “2020” on a scrap piece of paper, put it in the Monkey Head and burn that shit appropriately under the light of a mostly full moon, tossing in some sprigs of sage for good measure. We will come back inside and light a candle. A light to push back the dark, because that is what we need to do. It’s what we can do. And while New Years is still a few days away, my New Year’s resolution is to keep that candle lit and keep these pages full. So there are no empty spaces for the dark to hide.
Peace.
The Snowman: Into the Woods
Into the woods we go
Looking for what we do not know
Only we must, so we look, we fuss
We walk and sigh and know not why
But into the woods we go….