January is a beautiful word

Existential reflections from the life-giving dead of winter

I was born in winter
snow-baby, wrapped in sky

out of the blustery night I came
to warm you

not like a fire, exactly;
the soft, timeless glow

of crackling embers. Dim light 
is still a kind of light.

Every year on my birthday I think about my parents bringing me home from the hospital in the dead of winter. Dad starting up the old army green VW Rabbit in the hospital parking lot, coaxing the engine to generate some warmth before bringing me in. Mom wrapping me up in a bundle and holding me close as we moved through the doors, out of the hospital, into the world. How did it feel, to brand-new me, breathing in that first blast of winter air? Like a shock? An assault? An invitation to adventure? Or did it feel like I was coming home?

There is always something existential in my thoughts about winter. I was born here. I belong here. And yet, here is so dark. Here moves so slowly. I’ve felt it harder this winter than in other recent years, that unshakeable slowness. The earth, the air, all my energy sources have dimmed their lights, and I have been asked to enter a season of modified hibernation. This isn’t quitting, my muses tell me. It is rest.

My year of being 45 was almost laughably as described by our vast pop-culture catalog of movies, books, and TV. I’ve never felt so much like a stereotype. Middle age, mid-life crisis, call it what you will (I’m tempted to call it “the mid-life fuck-its”)...if ages were products with warning labels, 45 would have to come with the following disclaimer:

When I turned 46 a few weeks ago, it felt subversive to actually celebrate. But celebrate I did: a night out with a random mishmash of friends partying Muppet Movie-style (picking up more bodies and momentum as we moved, bar to bar, across town), followed by a quiet night in with cake and wine and kids. Birthdays mean something different to me now than they did when I was young; the milestones a child looks forward to are all in my past.

Now, I just feel lucky on my birthday. The numbers are forgettable from here on out, but the fact that they continue in their upwards progression, that life keeps growing richer if not always better, and that my story continues from one winter to the next…these are the kind of miracles that are easy to overlook. The reliability of aging through a life, and the constancy of moving through seasons, make these processes appear ordinary, and yet it’s hard to imagine a finer form of magic.

-JS 1/30/23

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P.S. I am writing this on the actual birthday(s) of my nephew Arlo, who at age one year is so sweet and new and full of wonder...and of my dear friend and longtime collaborator Chad, who's been fighting hard for his life these last few months in a cruel and unexpected way. Both of these people have inspired me this year, in different ways, to bravely reflect and come to some kind of terms with my feelings about life, death, love, hope, and mortality.

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