Solstice

Today I needed to finish up some Christmas shopping. One of the items I needed to purchase could only be found at the Cincinnati Nature Center. I looked forward to going there. I figured that I would buy my items quickly and then let the kids play in the visitor's center while I read a book (Tweak, by Nic Sheff. It's a memoir of his addiction to crystal meth. I'm finding the bleaker the better right now). I thought I'd look at the panoramic view of the bird feeding area. What I didn't count on were the following:

I'm still sore from my operation, and I can only handle about an hour total of standing up. We went grocery shopping right before the Nature Center. So I hurt.

I didn't count on acoustic Christmas music on the speaker system. Of course I walked into "Silent Night." Later, it was "What Child is This?" There are way too many Christmas songs about babies, sleeping babies, lullabies for sweet, sleeping babies, etc. And the secular Christmas songs are annoying during normal years. This year, I really don't feel like rockin' around the Christmas tree OR having a holly, jolly Christmas. T'isn't the season to be jolly.

So the baby Jesus songs are on the stereo system, and I'm borderline weepy already. Then my kids call me over to the bird viewing area. "Hey, Mom-Look at all these birds! They're so pretty! They're different from what we see at home! This is so cool! I wish we lived by here!" This makes me smile. I have successfully indoctrinated them. My dad would be so proud of me, if he were here.

Wait-no fair. Dead family member double whammy. I was sad about the baby. Then, I thought about my dad. I'm bummed that he barely got to know my nephew Christopher, who was a baby when Dad died. I think it's totally unfair that he missed my graduation from grad school the first time, my wedding, my niece, Kate, my two children, and his soon to be three great grandchildren. And, looking at the birds, I think he would have loved going to the Nature Center with me and the kids. He would have taken Vincent and Lily fishing. They would have been so happy together.

But there was another dimension to my sadness in the moments I sat in the bird viewing area. Anything I say might sound like cliche, but here goes: The starkness of the trees, the cold weather, the grey sky-they're all beautiful in their way. This dark, bleak midwinter is sucktastic. But there must be some lesson I need to learn from it.

I sat and cried for a few minutes. Then my children asked to walk on the boardwalk path around the pond. I agreed. We hit the trail. The cold was bracing. There was a little bit of snow on the boardwalk. Vincent and Lily made snowballs and spent about ten minutes throwing them at the two frozen patches on the pond. We watched four adult ducks gliding through the pond, graceful as ballerinas in the Nutcracker. I thought about solstice. I'm not a pagan, but it seems like such a comforting holiday. If I understand correctly, the idea of solstice is that one celebrates the rebirth of light on the longest night of the year. To me, the celebration seems to say, "The world can be no darker than tonight. Let's rejoice in the fact that, although it seems far away, the light is coming back to us gradually."