Back in my Shell

I'm still here. Pulled within....

The over-the-top crazy energy of Fest is over now and I've reeled my vulnerable self back into my shell. It's necessary.

So today I stayed still. I finished a book and began another. I wrapped my head in a scarf and my hands around a mug of hot sweet tea. Rain lulled me. I heard crows in the trees and buses lumbering children home from school. I saw autumn colors burning in the distance and mistook them for sunset.... I lit a lamp, pulled on a sweater, and wondered for a second if I'd just dreamed my time at Fest.

I didn't. It happened.

Later perhaps I'll endeavor to get my post-Fest thoughts organized. Try to recapture some of their sparkly sheen. Maybe begin a letter about it all and how I got caught up in its magick and about how it changed me. And about how things look now from a little distance. Kind of like fool's gold.

Or maybe that's just a trick of the light....

It's hard to tell from inside the shell.
...

Wintry Play

More of a snowlady than a snowman...

Yesterday I shoveled slush, salted walkways, walked in the snow, made a snowman -- the first I've made in years, as I recall; the last being one I created ages ago for James on Valentine's Day.... 

When I initially went outside, making a snowman wasn't my intention; I was really only planning to create a path across the yard for the mailman so he wouldn't have to go back out to the icy street between houses in order to deliver my mail.

Shoveling the path is what I usually do (and sounds easier than it is), but since yesterday's snow was wet and sticky I couldn't help myself. The stuff was perfect! It was a sin to waste a snowman-making opportunity. And as I rolled the heavy snow along the pathway I recalled wintry days from my childhood, little Me desperately working with my wet woolen mittens to pack snow into a ball when it wouldn't stick together.

What began as play soured quickly. Moments earlier my across-the-street neighbor (a contractor) jogged past with his clipboard on the way to another neighbor's remodel project, and he'd already given me good-natured (I hope) grief:

"Playing? Really?? Some of us gotta WORK!"

I know he was teasing, but my ears heard the words like parental scolding and it bothered me that I just couldn't ignore them....

After he'd gone, the street became quiet once more and I quickly finished my task. It was just me in the snow again, my world all cotton wool-ish and insulated. It made me think of the recent snowfall just days before. James and I were outside clearing the driveway (thinking that we could expect much more snowfall and wanting to get ahead of the game), and the entire neighborhood was doing the same thing, burning through the pathetic amount of accumulation with their screaming snow blowers...

(Let me just say that I dislike snowblowers. I wish they hadn't been invented.Yes, I get that they're a godsend and all that. And it's not like I haven't been envious on those days when Mother Nature sees fit to bury me in an avalanche too big for me to dig myself out of....)

...and I couldn't help but notice my neighbor down the way, blowing out his driveway while his teenaged sons stood around talking to their friends. How different would it have been if they'd all shoveled together? Would they have conversed or joked like James and I do? Would they have noticed the birdsong or the sound of snowflakes falling or the rhythm of their shovels? There was an opportunity for something and it wasn't being taken! (It's like doing the dishes together; how many opportunities for conversation/problem-solving/bonding have been lost by the invention of the dishwasher?)

Love the winky face! :)

Anyway, I finished up my snowman quickly, not bothering to round out his edges or brush off the accumulation of grassblades and rabbit droppings. I picked dried hydrangea blossoms and poked them into his head for hair. A row of dotted Echinacea pods became his mouth; two more, his eyes. Milkweed stalks were his widespread arms. A row of withered daisy blossoms were his buttons. When he was finished, he looked more like an old snowlady in curlers than a snowman.

As the day melted on, he listed drunkenly to one side, still with the loopy smile. And when James saw him later that night, he suggested we scatter a couple cider bottles in the snow at his feet for the fun of it.

But today I went back out and straightened him up. I replaced a button and coiffed his hydrangea 'do. And now I'm considering making him a sign to hold:

"Make Time For Play. It's as Important as Work."

...