Groundhog Day

I write a post on February 2nd each year, because the date has special significance to me. Yes, it’s Groundhog Day, and it’s also the midpoint between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, and some may know it as Candlemas, the Christian festival of lights that celebrates the presentation of Jesus into the temple forty days after his birth. In ancient times, candles flickered in windows on this day, driving away the darkness, and people looked toward lengthening hours of daylight, brighter skies, and thawing earth. But for me, it marks a milestone in my personal history, the anniversary of the day when I arrived in California and began a different life. I was in a 1973 Buick (pictured above) and my worldly possessions were crammed into black plastic trash bags in the trunk, and I suppose I was a desperado of sorts, but I was also being the hero of my own novel, and it definitely took some guts.

It’s a day of gratitude and reflection, and I honor it quietly. This year, I went next door to my mother-in-law’s house in the morning for introductory instruction on the old sewing machine she has had for about fifty years. I’ve been wanting to learn some new skills, and sewing seemed potentially useful. I took home economics in high school in the 1960s, and it was a mostly demoralizing experience. We used tissuey patterns for simple skirts, but I did not understand the need to be meticulous in such matters, and my hems were never up to Miss Llewellyn’s standards. She wielded a tool she called a “rip ‘n pick” and mercilessly tore my hems out so often that I lost all interest in re-doing them. I guess I eventually finished some version of the skirt, sheepishly wore it to school once (as was required), and never again sewed. So it was pretty exciting to be sitting with my mother-in-law by that sturdy old machine, there of my own volition, learning to guide the fabric ever so gently, marveling at the perfect little stitches that so effortlessly resulted, and thinking about the Industrial Revolution, and what a big deal this thing must have been in the 1840s. I don’t think I’ll ever take this to the realm of domestic art, but maybe I’ll make a few dinner napkins, and maybe I’ll do some mending. These seem like worthy goals.

And that’s not all I did on my Cal-iversary. I also chatted with my daughter and son-in-law, went for a walk in the wind with Monte, and lay on the couch reading a good book. Now I’m sipping ginger lemon tea, my new favorite, and avoiding the things that upset and discourage me. David Whyte said it well:

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

That’s how I’m feeling on this Groundhog Day. I am letting go of that which does not bring me alive. I am filling my heart with light.