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December Diary
BY MAGAZINE COLUMNIST JOANNA HELLER
Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. Very favorite foods and very loved people. And ritualized time and space to invite gratitude.
My son-in-law David roasted the turkey, the sweet potatoes, the white potatoes, carrots, stuffing … and we stuffed ourselves. Deborah made a really great pumpkin pie, some amazing non dairy ice cream, and I’m sure, many last minute shopping trips. And she greased any wheels necessary to smooth the event. One of her many strengths. Nine year old Jacob diced vegetables and made a delicious soup as well as a very very chocolate cake.
But as all the Thanksgiving feasts begin to cool down, a page turns.
Shifting energy as the year winds down
I’m sad to see the warm rich orangy earth tones of the harvest season disappear as the fallen leaves are raked into piles and the pumpkins disappear. Then the foreground is the deep dark green of spruce and fir trees, holly leaves, and the red of winter berries. Chilly.
I prolong the feast. I eat the leftover cranberry sauce, stuffing, and sweet potatoes for as long as I can make them last. They’re fine with turkey, fine with chicken or fine with toast for that matter. Actually, I happily eat that stuff with just about anything. But before long I start to feel a bit alone as the world suddenly shifts to the big winter holiday season.
Xmas music and advertising appear everywhere. Likewise blinking lights.
Dark green wreaths with red bows appear on doors, windows and walls. And on automobile radiators. I imagine the needles flying into the radiator and clogging up the works. The hardware store, the grocery store, the coffee shop, and every restaurant. All suddenly decorated in those unvarying shades of red and green.
Everybody has apparently left the Thanksgiving table and gone directly to the attic or the basement to dig out the dusty Xmas decorations box.
Solstice merry in the blood, a little jangly in the nerves
These December days are the big big holiday. But not for me. I’ve never really felt at home with this holiday. I am not quite here and I am not quite not here. I paddle along the edges watching the mainstream swim by.
The excitement vibrates all around me. Advertising reaches it’s annual peak pushing countless tons of brand new, shiny shoddy plastic stuff and compulsive gift giving. Background music and blinking lights everywhere. I wait at the edge for things to settle.
On the other hand, although I don’t live by a school calendar these days, I feel vacation week freedom in the air. And on that same hand, some of the music is surely soul stirring …
Not Muzak. Not “Jingle Bells”.
An experience of connected community
This year the change of season is particularly jarring as I am still breathing the energy I felt in Italy. The late summer early autumn warm sun and Mediterranean light. The Tuscan countryside with its terraced hills, and open fields of grape vines punctuated by Mediterranean cypresses. And the fig trees with their luscious figs ready to be picked.
I loved our week in Lucca walking out the door early each morning, stopping for a cappuccino, refilling our water bottle at the public fountain, or just walking the neighborhood as it came alive. The Luchese walking or bicycling to work or to the market or stopping to chat with neighbors at their windows.
And the days in Venice sitting at the edge of the Grand Canal with morning panini and cappuccino watching groups of art students carrying their projects to school. It was very easy to be present in those moments. Also easy to be present in the peace of the Peggy Guggenheim Museum garden.
And also easy in the long walks in Rome each day getting lost repeatedly while searching for the right bus to reach one famous spot or other only to find ourselves in easy view of yet another enormous ancient ruin from another lifetime, another century.
Quiet and time to clear space for new life on its way
Here in Connecticut, I miss all that. When I walk outside my suburban raised ranch house I am in a driveway facing a road. Fairly empty. This road doesn’t ever come to life. Or have much of a past either. No one leans on their window sill to chat with a passing neighbor. There are no passing neighbors. Not walking anyway. And the windows have screens, not sills. They keep the bugs out. And the neighborhood, too. It just doesn’t work the same way.
Our December days are still getting shorter and the afternoons bring a chill. I will take this time to rethink and reorganize. I have spent many more Xmas weeks and New Year’s Eves cleaning closets and sorting accumulated piles of mail and magazines than I have spent drinking toasts. This works pretty well. The new season is a turn in the road. And it’s a revived sense of possibility as the winter solstice arrives and the hours of day and night abruptly reverse course.
Suddenly the days will stop getting shorter. They will stand still for a moment and then turn on their heel and start to lengthen. And the road bends toward spring. Fresh pale green leaves will appear. More light. More warmth. A good time to reclaim my present moments.
And a perfect time to remember Mary Oliver
“Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
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© 2011, The Magazine of Yoga, LLC.
