Here Comes the Sun
Although I’m a lapsed Episcopalian, I still love the season of Advent—the carols, the candles, the consummation of the year. Most of all, I love the winter solstice and the old pagan celebration of the rebirth of the sun. I’m never home at the solstice, and though I always mean to mark it in some important way, I’m usually traveling or caught up in my family’s Christmas Crazytown.
Like so many people this year, I’ll be missing my family, but instead of dwelling on the loneliness, I’m going to try and dwell in it.
To move slower, to think deeper, to steep in silence. I want to match my internal clock to the earth’s rhythms, to keep the beat of eternal time as much as an anxious multi-tasker can manage. I might not achieve anything that lofty, but I’m hoping to make a holiday that isn’t make-do because it’s only me. On solstice night, I might light all my candles and have a glass of really good Champagne while I listen to Frank Sinatra and Thomas Tallis. Despite being a careless, impatient cook, I’ll plan a Christmas Eve dinner that even I can’t screw up. Maybe the oyster stew that my mother used to make—a rich milky broth studded with plump oysters swimming in butter. I’m sure I’ll give in to tears at some point, but what’s a soup without the salt, life without loss? We’re headed toward the sun after a sad, cruel year, but there’s some dark to get through first. It’s up to us to light it up.
Nikki Hardin is a writer of stories, musings, and memories. Her poetry has been published in Riverteeth Journal. She was the founder and publisher of skirt!, a monthly women’s magazine in Charleston, South Carolina. You can reach her at nikki@thedailynikki.com.