This Time Between
It was as if the Fall leaves had no time to parade themselves around New England. The usual flamboyancy faltered and fizzled under the pressure of some silent foreboding. They nose dived. Perhaps with slight glances over their shoulders,they flung themselves into the cavalier and unsuspecting warm breezes right through October and into November. But the cold came in time for the light, in all its bravado, to wrap itself in a downy bonnet.
Time moves forth, edges chilling into frostbite. Every degree lowered its head. Every head drooped even lower. Relentlessly, the cutting freeze spit out snow, sleet, ice. Like the leaves, once the dark pushed past its mark, the light rushed in to announce that winter is indeed here. Winter—that time of reflection and rest—daydreams slowly breaking free of hibernation.
Now, even snow is too timid to assert itself into this freeze—and nostalgia of winters past haunts me like a Dicken’s ghoul. A year ago, I stepped from Death Valley’s dropping desert degrees into the Southern California sun and warmth, once again safe from a glacial goring. But, memories have been charred by the recent fire flow through the hills of chaparral thirsty from drought.
“When fishermen can’t go out to sea,” I read somewhere, “They stay home and repair their nets.”
This is what I am doing—the busy fingerwork of net mending. Four bodywork practitioners kneading soft tissue, yanking on my leg to move my hip into place, adjusting my spine. My neck has its ups and downs—some days rotating with ease, and on other days, every movement is like a worn and tooth-broken gear. Then I sculpt my bed pillows into a cradle and gently lay my head down, grateful that my body is determined to heal completely from last January’s drunk driver broadside in California, no matter how long it takes.
I list the maintenance chores my house requires and pick at them as I can. I continue to purge “things” no longer needed. I re-establish my social relationships. But, like those leaves racing against time, I race as well. No longer do I look forward into the spinning calendar and open my arms wide. I want the world now—the rest of it that has lingered in the shadows of life’s cycles demanding priority, decade after decade. I want it all now on My terms.
But momentum, as it has been over the last few years, needs rest too. Biting winter winds beat it down for now. Humbly, I wait for the strengthening of the seasonal light to illuminate new growth. A strong neck and back that will once again support a backpack or twirl madly to a contradance tune. And for many friends as well as me, 2017 has not been kind, as if it had somehow lied to us. The spinning calendar is like a roulette wheel: the ball might land on a winning number, but most likely it won’t. And so it is, I weave the broken net strands into tighter knots, stronger, more resilient. And then, and only then, will the road be ready for me again. And I ready for it.
May we all be the Light this world needs now—with strong nets—and when this Eastern polar season softens it’s icy grip, my answers will bud on the branches of what is next for me, and I will bloom once again, stronger and more ready to step back out there into the world’s synchronistic and serendipitous sojourn.
Happy 2018!