I want to thank you for your warm response to my last post. The heaviness of it has let up a bit to make room for more meditative processing of what I've been feeling, and I've been thinking on what triggers these lows, and the bigger idea of how these triggers work their way into my days.
On the more base level, I've been looking at when this last low started and where it centered my mind. One of my dear, dear friends from college came to visit over the holiday. He is really a fantastic fella, and a truly important person to both Sebastian and I. During our visit, he asked the obvious question, "What have you been up to?" And I had no idea what to tell him. He's been having all the adventures -- expected and unexpected -- that someone our age might have after graduating from a top-notch university and living in an exciting city. Learning music production, seeing truly innovative and challenging theatre, getting an itch to try out another big city. Telling him that I was staying at home with my babe just didn't sound quite right. It is so much more than that. But how do you relate everything -- the bigness of finding a daily rhythm that helps your baby (who didn't sleep for the first 8 months of his life) actually sleep, the imitative play that he has been doing that is both adorable and a huge developmental step, finally finding a place to live in that suits both our spatial and aesthetic needs, finding my way in truly keeping a house, establishing family rituals that honor what we are and what we are becoming -- to someone who simply cannot know what it means? It is not his fault for not knowing. That simply isn't where he is in his life right now.
But in that moment (and in the days following), my own life felt very small. The girl I was just two years ago, felt totally alien to me. And I missed her. Not just the physical her (which, being the most obvious, was the thing I gravitated towards most heavily), but the dreaming and doing her. The her that packed up for a new city (or country) each summer to try on something different for a few months. The her that navigated her way with confidence and curiosity through New York City, convinced that if you just looked like you were completely comfortable and at home (even though it was late at night and you were walking alone) in spanish harlem -- or anywhere -- no one would bother you. The girl who listened to gypsy music at a tavern in Prague with the best teacher and writer she had ever known. The girl who basically didn't eat for two months because she didn't have time to work for pay while she was directing a play. Her. That girl who was interesting. And fun.
But I do care about what I am doing now. And I find it interesting. And challenging. And so beautiful sometimes. But there is a solitude in it. Home life is taken for granted, really. Not here, on the internets. No, here it has found an honored and celebrated position and I am so grateful that I can share my own small triumphs in this space and find acknowledgement and shared joy in your own voices and experiences. But in the real world, the breathing world, home life seems to carry little true significance and yet so much stands on its smoothness and solidity. As Ralph Waldo Emerson describes it, "If a man wishes to acquaint himself with the spirit of the age, he must not go first to the courtroom. The subtle spirit of life must be sought in facts nearer. It is what is done and suffered in the house that has the profoundest inerest for us all."
The home is where we begin and end our days. For many, it is where we pass entire days. Such a space deserves respect and proper tending-to. And such tending-to takes time. And that is where my time goes. I can mark the minutes by the small tasks I've completed, but that wouldn't be all that interesting.
Yet, I do hold those moments and those tasks with reverence and great interest. Sometimes it is just impossible to share that, and so, on this particular occasion, it boiled down into a low headspace for me, capturing everything in worry and dark.
In the good clear light of morning (mornings always feel a bit easier to me, full of what is possible and, often in the Pacific Northwest, the only light of the day) I can see some patterning in this struggle of mine, as well. These are the darkest weeks of the year. Each day gets visibly shorter and shorter. I can see the amount of time it takes the light to move from one end of our apartment to the other grow smaller. And a small panic pits itself in my stomach, a worry that time is skipping ahead of me and suddenly it is night. And another day is gone.
I'm not sure why I never saw this before, but how good it is that these dark weeks are marked with festivals and holidays -- more so than any other weeks of the year. We need the warmth and inner light that come with the gathering of family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, St. Nicholas Day, Winter Solstice, the Christmas festivities. The daily meditation over first one candle's light, then two, three, four. Small (and big) bits of special to carry us through until the light begins to creep back into our days.
December truly is my favorite month of the year. I always thought it was just because of the obvious -- my birthday (!) and Christmas -- but as I study this month as an adult, with my own little family, I see it is so much more than just those two days. Yes, it is dark, and it is difficult. But December is a whole month of human-generated light. We take extra thought and care to express our love and appreciation for those we care about (and how we truly need those extra reminders in this time). We string colored lights indoors and out. We make sweet treats and filling feasts, foods that we don't indulge in the rest of the year, and we share them with each other. We nourish each other, inside and out, in ways above and beyond those of the other months of the year.
And so, in this first week of December, the first week of advent, we work to keep our own inner light kindled and burning as it waits to be joined by the daylight, that life-giving light.
There is wonder in the hopeful waiting for the sun to reborn at Winter Solstice. There is wonder in the hopeful waiting for the birth of a child. There is wonder in the hopeful nature of human spirit -- a spirit so apparent and alive in this season especially.
There is wonder and light along my own path, though I may doubt it at times. This is the month to remember it, though. This is a good month, and its only beginning.
+Chelsea
that are a little bit quirky, a little bit sweet, a little bit weird, a little bit traditional, but never obnoxious...
that invites images of simplicity and grace while you're dealing with the chaos of things.
