Yule

“It’s the first day of winter,” my coworker moaned, dragging herself around like Chopin’s funeral dirge. “Such a long way to go ‘til spring.”

Interesting, how disconnected we moderns are, flooded with fluorescent light and weather porn over every forecast of snow, that many of us don’t know that this is the day the light begins to return. I point out to my coworker that the days start to get longer after the solstice as the sun swings north in the sky. She seems to find some relief in that, or maybe the peppermint Edy’s ice cream had the comforting effect.

On the way home, I stop at the market to check out the wreaths and garlands. Balsam, pine, and fir, I love them all, but cannot justify spending money on their organically-grown, fresh-cut, trucked-in-from-the-Upper-Peninsula prices. I breathe deeply of my favorite scents and buy some beef medallions instead.

At home, cold rain blows into my eyes as I clip a bough of holly to bring inside to deck my hall. The cat pokes her head out of the door as soon as I open it. The smell of my two-foot Fraser fir Christmas tree hangs faintly in the air. I set the holly on the cabinet and spoon out some special food for Sylvie. I watch her eat her treat with the swelling in the heart that an Italian grandmother must feel when she serves her signature bolognese.

The little steaks are delicious broiled with cracked pepper and minced garlic and with a side of asparagus tips, washed down with a brown ale of the “winter warmer” variety.

I wish I had someone here to share it with. I make my own meaning for my life, but it’s damned hard to do it alone all the time.

I open the small, mailable gifts from my far-flung friends. Soft gray cashmere socks with a blue snowflake pattern. Some incredibly good-smelling Finnish sauna soap. Bars of dark chocolate, fancy paper clips twisted into the shapes of birds, a disposable fountain pen. A card from Ozzie Paul in Sydney, who writes, “Spare a thought for those of us having to bear the long summer days.” I plug in the lights and arrange the gifts at the base of the tree around the beautiful sandhill crane book from D. & B.

The gifts are nice. I wish some of the friends would let me feed them more often.

Earlier Farm Boy told me solstice celebrations are “just as silly and mythological as the rest.” I told him I rather preferred some of the pagan holidays. He asked why. I responded that solstice is an actual, observable phenomenon, something to let us humans mark the passage of time. “Until the earth’s poles move again,” he said.

I suppose I need the silly and the mythological. I don’t have the fortitude to not believe in anything.

I light a couple of spruce-scented candles. I stare out between the slats of the blinds for a while, watching the rain come down harder, wondering if I chose this loneliness or if it somehow happened when I wasn’t looking.