Certain November days manage to dawn with a bit of sunlight, then proceed to offer nothing but gray and slightly overcast skies. Somehow the sun still manages to peep through, but the day cannot be described as anything other than gray. Drained of the colors of spring and summer, as well as the pristine snow-covered sheen of winter, November is one of the dreariest months on the calendar, but we near its end, and the end of the year that was so dismally 2020, and for that I welcome these next few weeks.
On the Sunday morning before Thanksgiving week, I awaken earlier than intended or desired. I’d been feeling a bit run-down – frequent trips to Amsterdam, lots of cooking and running errands, preparing for the stripped-down holiday season, a day-trip to Boston to check on the condo, and the general stress and mayhem of a pandemic-riddled world and the daily pressure that puts on simple existence. My body was telling me to slow down, and so I listened. Lots of sleep, lots of tea, a daily Vitamin D pill – and a pause in the break-neck pace of late.
November, with all its giving of thanks, is a good time to stop and take stock of life. That’s not always an easy thing to do, and often it is fraught with uncomfortable realizations, irreconcilable stances, and the uneasy notion that some of what we are doing may be wrong. Never a fun place to be, the only way out of it is to be completely honest, and to surrender to the truth at hand. So much of the ill-fitting image I tried to present in the past was about me simply refusing to entertain the truth at hand. There is such freedom in that honesty, though, that I wish I had come to that realization sooner. It would have made so much of my journey that much easier. I see that now. I know that now.
And so I slow down the day. I pause and still the morning. When that break of sunlight bursts through the clouds, I look out the window and watch it play upon the fluffy seedheads of the fountain grass. I see it peek into the innermost recesses of the pinecones dangling high in a neighbor’s tree. A little bird is the only other creature in movement. It darts among the bare branches of a maple, then flits across the sky, out of view.
