loving sun, bitter wind
finding balance at the vernal equinox
I wake to a warm, vernal sun and a thin sheet of ice on our pond. The blankets are holding me captive, especially my weighted one, storm cloud grey and too cozy for words. The birds may have been singing in the spring, but I am inclined to leave them to it and go back into hibernation. I want caffeine, but decided not to have any today. I opt for a homemade chai from a recipe my aunt received from her yogi that is naturally caffeine free, splurge by adding a spoonful of honey, and the last of my half and half. I really need to go shopping. I really want to go back to bed. Spring can wait for another day.
Today is the vernal equinox, a day of perfect balance. Today the sun hovers directly over the equator, bestowing upon our world 12 hours of light, 12 hours of darkness. My oldest daughter is the first one outside, feeding the outdoor cat and bunnies. “It’s pretty nice out there,” she tells me. “I was able to push through the cold wind and feed without a coat. Some of the time, without a coat,” she amends. I love the way she uses words, like she is the Queen of English and they do exactly what she wants them to. I journal while she is doing her school work, four pages of conscious streaming ending in a frustrated scribble. I know this lethargy, this inability to act. This is my inner child of the Internal Family Systems way of healing, and she wants nothing but to curl up somewhere warm and womb-like until life stops demanding that she adult. I find it fascinating that, the more I write in her voice, the more my hand forgets how to write. I can’t keep up with my thoughts. I misspell words or leave them out. I ignore punctuation. It’s a mess, like my childhood journals. But afterwards I feel a little lighter. My child has been allowed to speak. She has been heard.
This spring for me is less about growing new things, more about finding balance between the old. My inner child and teen, my critical and loving inner parents, are learning, so slowly, to trust and communicate instead of hiding and sabotaging. Under an afternoon sun I walk my inner child around the yard while my daughters run and play, free as migrating birds returning home. I crumble handfuls of last summer’s dried lavender over the garden beds and speak a blessing: grow and be blessed, my garden. Grow and be blessed. My winter wool sweater, grey as a rainy sea, can’t quite keep out the wind. Only the top of my head is warm from the sun. Bits of lavender stalks catch on the rough fibers of my knitted sweater and I brush them off. Knots of narrow, deep green dandelion leaves poke through the thick blankets of autumn mulch and rabbit manure covering my beds. I enjoy seeing dandelion growing in my garden. When they get big enough to threaten other plants I pull them out and eat them, or feed them to the rabbits. Rabbits love dandelion greens. I should pick some in celebration of Ostara, another name for the spring equinox.
Rabbits and eggs are sacred symbols of Ostara, the Goddess of the dawn and springtime. Before coming outside I read my girls a story in which Ostara, who loved children, turned a wounded bird that the children found and brought to her into a bunny1. The newly transformed—but healthy—rabbit cried because she could no longer sing or fly or lay eggs. “Change her back!” the children begged Ostara, but the lovely goddess shook her head. Such transformation cannot be undone. Instead, the bunny was given a special gift: for most of the year she would live in the moon, higher than even a bird can fly and safe from predators. But, at the very beginning of spring she would return, and lay beautiful, colorful eggs for the children to find and delight in, as a way to thank the children for having saved her life. Kindness breeds kindness. New things always grow out of the old. Transformation comes at a cost.
Lore Wilbert, who writes Sayable, says it this way:
Whenever a new mother talks about getting her body back again, I think to myself, “You will never get your body back again. You have carried life within it and borne life from it and now you will forever belong to another in a way you never have before. That body from before knew none of that and it is gone forever. You will never have it again.” And this is also what I tell myself about the past few years: I will never have it again. That body did not know how to navigate all that the past three years brought with it. And now, for better or worse, this body does.
(Lore Wilbert, Sayable, “Here I Am: Here You Are”
I have borne children and been changed by it. I have also been a child. My body remembers what it was like to be a child and scared because I am helpless, to be a teen and frustrated because I am still helpless. I cannot go back and change what it was like for me when I was young, but I can sit with my inner children now so that they don’t feel alone anymore, I can listen to them so they know that they have been heard. On this festival of new beginnings and childish delight, I give myself the gift of presence and attention. This body, for the better, knows how to do that.
Story retold by: Jackson, Ellen. The Spring Equinox: Celebrating the Greening of the Earth. Illustrated by Jan Davey Ellis. The Millbrook Press. Brookfield, CT. 2002.