As I write this it is dark outside. Winter Solstice was two days ago but I still must remind myself that now the sun will be rising sooner and setting later. It is cold for around here, close to 20 (F). But in a few hours it will be pushing 60. It has been that kind of year - a year of extremes, a year of cycles.2005 was dominated in this household by the health of others. While we have been well - save that broken little toe I managed - others we care for have not. John Donne hit it hard, straight on. I haven't the energy to chronicle the anxiety, pain, and loss; after just finishing the better part of a week with my mother in the hospital - the same building where my step-father died in May - I am spent. And this is neither the place nor time.
This time of the year - Thanksgiving, Winter Solstice, Christmas - reminds us of the larger picture we are all part of, like it some days or not. But each of us has only a short time in that picture to figure it out, make it ours, pass it on. Oddly, if we draw back the lens and take in that picture we really don't get smaller, we grow with it.
So this season is not a time to dwell on just one part of life's cycles and rhythms; it is a time to try to see it whole. It's a Wonderful Life. Really. And these are the good times, even if they don't seem like it.
Season's Greetings.
The illustration was scanned from a drawing I made in 1974 and used for Winter Solstice cards. Thus began and ended my watercolorist career.
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