Round the Year

Every year, sure as the apple ripens, rots and falls from the tree, February begins the beginning of my end. At least, I think it’s my end. I begin to panic and question the very essence of my being. My fiber is on rocky ground. I am doomed. I can’t survive this crazy, mixed up life. How am I going to go on? The most basic things become challenging beyond reason. Rather than just brushing my hair from habit every morning, I must actually CHOOSE to brush my hair or it will not get done. Food is scavenged from here and there, no real plan. Planning is too hard. I feel everyone around me’s pain and sorrow. Everything is emotional and crying becomes my norm. I don’t just see a homeless person on the street; I see ME on the street, hungry, afraid, cold, lonely. I feel everything so deeply, I wonder, “how can I survive this darkness?”
Three years ago, during the darkest time in my life since almost dying at birth, I discovered how beautifully my life coincided with the earthly seasons. Spring begins to creep in after the intense winter months, quietly and with small tendrils of leaf buds, almost too small to see. The trees are fuzzy with new growth and the air seems lighter and softer. Summer is one glorious out-breathing of life and joy and happiness and sunshine. My physical body, stripped down to the most bare of clothing, soaks up all the delights the beautiful world had to offer. Quick decisions and “you only live once” attitudes sometimes get me in trouble, but there was always time to muse over that later. The ominous LATER. Autumn is a time of preparation and in-breath; a time to gather in my loved ones and prepare my home to be the light of our day-to-day instead of the golden sunshine out of doors. Crafting and merrymaking coupled with heavier foods and more intellectual stimulation reigned. Winter marks the intense gathering of every ounce of strength to carry on in the deadened, hard world around. Rain and cold, once so delightful in the early autumn months, now become suffocating.

It is this time, now, that I find the hardest. The time between the winter and the spring. I like to think of it like pregnancy. In the beginning, which seems like the end of summer/beginning of autumn, you are, if not delighted, at least in awe of the being growing within you. As autumn turns to winter, you beginning to want this whole business of growing a human being to be over. It isn’t until the transition between winter and spring, so like the last transition of labor, that you wail and cry out, “I cannot do this any longer! Someone rescue me!” This was when I begged for pain medication while in labor. This was when I looked at my midwife and said, “I’m dying. I cannot go on anymore. Help me. Please.”
This is where I am right now. Today, the first week of February. I am in transition. I don’t know that I can go on, but I know that I must and that at the end of this transition, there will be blossoms and there will be sunshine and I will rejoice in my existence again. I am already half-way through the birth canal of this season. I have put in the hard work and the pain. I just need to hold on a little longer to emerge through into the light. Brand new for a whole new season. A whole new year. Just like the people surrounding little Calla in Barbara Helen Berger’s book, The Day You Were Born, I will say to myself and those around me: “Welcome to the spinning world! We are so glad you’ve come!”