Regardless of how you gussy it up, the basic idea is: things come and things go.
As I've gotten older, the idea of linear time has lost its sheen. Now that I've realized that adulthood isn't a destination one can arrive at (unless you count your own coffin, which is so grim), I'm free to the embrace the idea that I first encountered Katherine May's book Wintering. May takes the position that seasonality is a constant, that we all have our own winters—emotional, relational, physical, and, y'know, climatic—where we withdraw, slow down, and rest. We can emerge from these winters like bears from their dens, blinking at the buds on the trees that have been there, undetected but vital, since the previous autumn. Winter is a state of mind, a necessary slowdown, and a rebuke to productivity and hustle.
By encountering winter, not as an apocalypse but as a slightly difficult gift, we can greet it as a friend when it arrives. This is a radical departure for me, because I don't really enjoy winters in the seasonal sense, and the emotional-physical variety are often hard for me to shake off. But it is possible, and once I do, I find myself revived and refreshed, ready to do and make and be with an energy I feel I've earned.
Over the past few years, I've become more aware of the Wheel of the Year, a relatively ancient way of understanding time's passage. Each year is divided by eight major days: the two solstices and equinoxes, plus mid-holidays (Beltane, Samhain, Imbolc and Lughnasadh) that celebrate harvests and spring's return. In the olden days, each spoke of the year would be a festival, communities coming together to remark that the end of October really is sort of spooky, or that we need a bit of coziness in mid-December.
I like the Wheel of the Year. For one thing, it has its roots both in the Celts and the Slavs, which are the twined branches of my family tree. Following this tradition feels like it actually belongs to me, unlike some of the mashed-together rituals I've adopted because they are around me, but not inside me (although any excuse to eat a dumpling or a latke, am I right?). It has a relatively gentle pace. The days are spaced roughly seven weeks apart: just enough time for something to shift in the natural world, like the leaves coming off the trees, or the major job of harvesting and preserving the garden mostly done.
In fact, it was my conscious effort to tune into the natural world that actually gave me more reason to pay attention to the Wheel of the Year. These eight little micro-seasons each have their own rewards and their own special beauty: who doesn't love the unexpected brilliance of a blue-sky day in February, or the crocus and forsythia popping out in early spring to reassure us that all is not lost? Daily walks with my kiddo over the last few years have brought my attention to these little changes, like the bushes that go from glossy green to neon pink over several weeks, or the dog-hot days where the only time to play outside is early morning or late afternoon? The grasses that grow in September, the snow in November, the brilliance of the night sky in August? The slow flow through the year means there is no beginning and no real end, either: it's just the next thing, and not too far off.
Annual cycles are part of many calendars. The Christian liturgy even has its own seasonal colours (violet for Lent and Advent; black for All Souls' Day!), and the Hebrew calendar has a casual four New Years in its calendar, with two—Rosh Hashanah and Passover—being the heaviest hitters. Annual cycles show up in other places, too: when you're building a passive solar house, you have to be aware of where the sun will be and when if you want to keep your house cool in the summer and warm in the winter. And we still have vestiges of harvest season built into daily life, like the summer break from school that was originally for farm kids to go help out, or even Daylight Saving, which was satirically suggested by Ben Franklin as a way of preserving candles. (Ugh, dude.)
But my sense of the sacred isn't bound by stained-glass windows or tractor ruts. And of course, surprising no one who has been reading this blog for more than ten minutes, I do find myself yearning for community festivals, for weird rituals, for street dances and sidewalk dinners, for bonfires and midnight swims. The idea of roots so deep that time can't shake them loose can be very appealing, and while I likely will not be erecting a May Pole any time soon, I wouldn't say no if someone invited me to join them.
What I like the best about it the whole idea is that nothing is permanent, and while that's a major downer in some regards, it can also be a huge relief. Difficult seasons will pass. The family in the throes of the terrible twos will emerge one day into blessed little-kid life. Illnesses have good days and bad days. I feel lonely and isolated one week, and celebrated and connected the next. The wheel turns long, as well: as our parents get older, so do our kids. We start over in jobs, in hobbies, in houses, in cities. We are beginners, novices, experts, and then beginners again. When things are wonderful, the urge to grab hold is strong; when things are shittier, we're more eager to move past it. Either way, the sun comes up.
I'm not a neo-pagan and I don't know where this wheel is rolling. But I do know that embracing the fact that everything comes and goes and comes again is giving me a sense of peace. I know that I will get older and things will change; I know my son will grow up and leave home; I know people I love will get sick; I know I will someday too. But when I remember that we always have the bright yellow shock of forsythia in spring, the quilt of the August starlight, the red sumacs in the ditch and the honk of geese as they wing back and forth in shoulder season, I feel startlingly reassured that all is not lost.
