Wintering | Nine Cent Girl

Most of my December was spent making our first west coast Christmas perfect. I sent out close to a 100 holiday cards with cheery notes which I wrote while listening to nothing but Christmas music. Santa’s were on display all over our new home, lights were strung and lit. We fully engaged ourselves in all the festivities, shopping and cooking and baking, while wearing silly hats. As you might have guessed from this idyllic opening the holiday could not live up to my hype. But it did not stop my push to make our New Year’s eve filled with all the garnishes I could throw at it. Yes, lesson not learned. Thankfully sense and sensibility did surface, eventually, to the realization that we were indeed somewhere new, and quite possibly, I could slow down, take a breath and notice all the possibilities in this here.

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It strikes me as privilege to begin again. For a door to open when before there were only walls. There is no doubt my life has unfolded with tremendous privilege from the get-go. My first memorable do-over happened at 16 when living at home with my parents no longer suited any of us in that scenario. The whys are a whole other story, but after a short search, my parents landed me in a New England boarding school for my last two years of high school. Standing in a dorm room with my mother, my trunk and suitcase unpacked next to my unmade extra-long single, she told me, in no uncertain terms, to break from my childhood nickname, from all the troubles incurred in my childhood home, and leave behind everything that still tied me down. This is your chance, she whispered before leaving me in that unknown landscape. Needless to say, I stumbled, only to find myself lost in the dark, unprepared for such broad horizons. I was raised in the dust-storm of a large household not sure what part of me was me; I found myself hesitant what to choose when the whole palette of decisions was there for me to pick from. So confused, I fell into the blackness of night for many years. As Katherine May so artfully described, “Winter had begun.”

“By winter, she means not just the cold season, but “a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider“” (Mcalpin).