And so here we are again (in the northern hemisphere) at the winter solstice. I’ve only recently started noticing the winter solstice - marking it on the calendar, observing the dwindling daylight, anticipating the turning point of the season. I have Katherine May to thank for this. In her book “Wintering” she writes about observing the winter solstice at Stonehenge, and later in the evening, around a bonfire on the beach with a few friends:
“The phrase is repeated among our group like an echo: we have turned the year.
We have turned the year.
We have turned the year.
It would have happened either way, with or without our noticing, but this way gives us the fleeting impression that we have seized control—not of the seasons, but of our response to them.”
For me, the winter solstice is a small, private pause amidst the busy, somewhat fraught holiday season. Noticing this moment, with or without a ritual, shifts my perception of time. Normally, this week feels like a hectic race to Christmas, finishing work assignments and buying last-minute gifts. This year, I’m doing all that, yes, but I’m also thinking back to last year’s solstice, and the year before that … where I was, who I was, what I feared, what I hoped for in those moments. Time spirals in this view, allowing me to peer back as through a telescope, or as if I’m folding these moments in the seasonal cycle upon each other, close enough to touch.
Last year on the solstice, I was heavily pregnant and deeply depressed. I was starting to claw my way out, with the help of therapy and anti-depressants, but it was hard. It was such an anxious time—so much unknown lay ahead. Which, in truth, is always the case. Facing an unknown future is a condition of being alive, but the business of bringing new life into the world forces one to confront the fact in distinctly scary ways.
The year before, I was at home all the time, waiting for a COVID vaccine, waiting for things to change, staring down an unknown future in a world where everything had been turned upside down. I was grieving, too. I remember that time as scary and difficult, but I also feel so privileged that I was able to sink into a cocoon. Time felt different then—it unspooled slowly and quietly. I walked the dog, lit candles, baked bread. In some ways, I long for those slow, quiet days.
And this year? This year, I’m exhausted and aching to slow down, but also joyfully chasing after a very mobile, very noisy 10-month-old baby. In all my imaginings, I couldn’t have imagined him in all his beautiful specificity. My red-haired sprite. Parenting is so hard and it contains so many paradoxes, but if I could go back to myself last year, I would tell her that despite all her fears, this baby will be a radical invitation to experience joy and presence in new ways.
It’s worth it, taking the time to notice things.