This column was originally published in Writer’s Block in the November 29, 2017 edition of The Chronotype, Rice Lake, Wisconsin.
November is always a warm and endearing month for me. It could be because it is the month that I get to celebrate the lives of so many people that I love so much, or that everyone purposefully focuses on being grateful for anything and everything and joyfully announces it online, to a sometimes cynical (but really greedy) audience—guilty as charged.
The focus on being grateful is something I have struggled with this year. I have had to direct a lot of energy to deciding that a roof over my head and a job to go to every day might be the culmination of the things I am grateful for in a day. And then to forgive myself radically if it’s all I can come up with.
But then I remember that I can add on the love of my family, albeit from a distance, yet strong and constant. There is the use of my legs and lungs and heart without assistance. There is the opportunity to be grateful every day that I can feed myself and my two girls with a hot healthy meal and watch them grow.
Then there are days that it’s simply impossible not to be slapped in the face with the abundance of this life—the cotton candy pink sunrise yesterday, hoarfrost in October and 50º the last week of November! Peace on our city streets. The laughter of two little girls building a blanket fort, a beautiful random act of kindness delivered into my palm. My brother’s voice on the phone. Three clean biopsies. The chocolate and banana food fairies who live at the desks next to mine. A perfectly timed photograph.
And really, the simplicity of those things is so much more than enough.
It is the definitive end of fall here in the Northwoods and with that comes a quiet, a slowing down of life that covers us all, even in this busy Christmas season. It has helped us learn to endure, and I am grateful for that.
It is not yet winter, but this California girl feels its imminent arrival. And when it does, I know it will be like peace frozen. Peace captured because it really cannot go anywhere, and wouldn’t that be beautiful if it never could? The air doesn’t move and it takes every breath from our lungs when we move into it. There is nothing like it. We have only to focus on breathing, in and out.
Winter in Wisconsin is a coveter of time, forcing us to stop, move glacially like the ice masses that moved through here so long ago.
Every year we are forced to emulate those prehistoric elements. Some years for a shorter time or at a little faster pace, but the ice always comes. It is very unlike my always-rushing California, always temperate progressing, never still unless it’s rush hour, where heat is always taken for granted.
Here, we discover and rediscover heat. We have to. Unified with one simple goal, to feel warmth. We create it, we yearn for it and let it melt us a little in all its various forms—a kind smile or word, an offering of a cup of something warm and drinkable, midday sun at its peak streaming through a window, a soft scarf or a hand to hold.
And there’s something to be said for a unit of people seeking the same thing ever so slowly, moving with power, unity, strength all in great patience. We are meant to be a community connected to survive difficult things. No one survives this life alone, and definitely no one thrives this life alone.
So the reasons for the seasons of it all, the good, bad and otherwise? To make it to right here, right now, together. Simply to be and be able to say we were all there at one time or another. Invisible battles are happening all around us. And if we can get to be grateful for the bad for its possibilities, to find hope in the dark? Well, we might just transcend November and winter and possibly this life altogether.
Gently Rise, Softly Call 