Coneflower Soul

March in New York is a mess. Winter and Spring play tug-o-war throughout the month. The temperatures climb into the high thirties but it’s snowing or it snows during the colder nights and melts by noon. The upside is my walkway and driveway, clear themselves. The downside is the unpaved ground is either mud or frozen mud and you can never be completely sure which until you’ve stepped on it … or in it.

During Winter the trees are bare, the grass looks dead, and the sky is mostly overcast. Everything is a dull brownish gray. Now, with the lengthening days, color is slowly creeping back in and it’s always such a joy to see the first buds poke their heads up.

I find myself feeling the urge to purge. It happens every year about this time. The promise of warmer days, of sunshine and open windows, makes me want to clear out my house and start fresh.

Several of my friends have felt the same itch to clean and organize and they have gone deep with the Konmari Method. That is so not me. I have no quarrel with Ms. Kondo. I’m a different kind of person. The very thought of piling up all my clothes in one spot makes me so anxious I can’t imagine actually doing it. Faced with a pile of stuff from all over the house, I would probably never start.

What works for me is a compartmentalized approach. I’ve been clearing and organizing my way around my kitchen. I started by the entry door and on the first day did the first shelf on my right. Then I stopped. That’s the important part of not getting overwhelmed: stop at a predetermined place. Tell yourself what you are going to do, then do it, and then stop.

It’s easy to get caught up in the momentum and plow through shelf after shelf. I’ve done that. If you have too you know what happens. You run out of steam before you’ve finished and frequently have left yourself a mess. This is what keeps you from starting again. You think the job is going to eat your life and leave you with a mess. Don’t do that to yourself.

Pick a job that has boundaries or set boundaries. One cabinet, one shelf, or one hour’s work, and stick to that. Once that cabinet or shelf, are done or that hour is up, stop working. The next day do the next one thing. You will be surprised how much you can get done in an hour and you will feel so much better about doing it again when you don’t let the job eat up all your energy and time.

We’re getting some stupid March snow again and then it will be warm, then cold, then rain and who knows what else. I will be spending part of each day in March, prepping for spring, one shelf at a time. If the Konmari craze doesn’t spark joy*, maybe the way I do things will work for you.

*I do like her spark joy angle. It can be quite useful when letting things go.

This past week NASA announced that the Mars Rover Opportunity has stopped transmitting and its batteries have died. People all over social media were quite touched by Opportunity’s final words and there were heartfelt comments of sympathy for Opportunity.

I thought it was kind of sweet. Other people found a way to be put off or even offended by this. There were false analogy arguments comparing the feelings people had for the rover and what they feel for a variety of other sympathetic causes like abused children, refugees, animals. It was exhausting to read and misses the greater point; as most false analogies do.

It’s not about parceling out compassion. There is room for feelings for everyone and everything. At the moment we are mourning the loss of a thing that was dear to many. That doesn’t have any relation to the compassion people do or do not have for abused animals, endangered species, or missing children. Those are separate issues.

It’s completely human to feel deeper feelings for people and things that are closer to you. It is understandable to cry over your dog’s death. Is it okay to ask someone, whose dog has just died, where are their tears for all the other dead dogs in the world? No, of course not. It would be heartless and unfair to minimize someone’s pain in that way.

Yes, Opportunity and the other rovers are machines. Human beings are social creatures and we bond not only with other humans but with animals and objects too. Think about your childhood teddy bear, your first car, an instrument you play, art you created. All of these things are things but you have affection for them. My husband’s first car was destroyed by a drunk driver while parked in front of his house. He speaks of that car like a long lost friend. The Mars Opportunity Rover was an extension of Us and as such has a special place in our hearts.

Opportunity was intended to last 90 days but instead lasted nearly 15 years. We have all seen the amazing images sent back to us from Mars and learned the data collected that has shed light on the origins of our planet and our solar system. Opportunity was our eyes and ears on a different planet and over the years he and the other rovers were personified in the way NASA spoke about them and the stories we read. Discovery Rover sang Happy Birthday to himself on the first anniversary of his landing on Mars. Curiosity, Spirit, and Opportunity, nicknamed Oppy, have their own Twitter profiles. They are technological marvels that humans created, paid for with our taxes, and launched into space.

We all know that Opportunity was a machine. We also know that it had a life of some sort. Most of us can’t really explain how we mean that. I think that understanding of Opportunity, as more than just a machine, is a throwback to our animist roots as humans. It’s in our bones to sense the life in the world around us. This is why we bond with our cars as well as we do to our cats.

Opportunity’s final words were very human and poked us in our existential dread but that doesn’t make the sadness we feel for him less real or shallow. It instead reminded us of the affinity we have with all things and that brought out our compassion. This week that compassion was focused on a little robot who shut down on Mars.

I’m sorry to see him go.

In 1999, Mr. Wonderful and I sold our tiny townhouse in New York City and bought a single family home in the Hudson Valley. When I say our townhouse was tiny I’m not kidding. The entire property plot was 23 feet by 36 feet. That included the footprint of the house. We were so excited to be able to buy ourselves a home; a place of our own, where we could raise our kids and be a family. Before we closed on the house we had already outgrown it. It was a two bedroom house and we were expecting baby #3.

We made it work for years. You can get away with a lot when your kids are little. Our oldest was going on eleven and we knew we needed to upsize. We also knew that was going to be a challenge. Mr. Wonderful would have to drive to the city, every day, so the final say was his. The last thing I wanted was a miserable husband who resented us because of his situation. If we weren’t all going to be happy there, it wasn’t the right house for us.

We did find a nice house, good schools, nice neighbors, and commutable to the city. It was in pretty good shape but no one updated the interior since the house was built in the 1970s. We made that work too. Little by little I removed ugly wallpaper and wood paneling. If you don’t have the money for renovations, paint is a good way to go.

The one thing that I absolutely despised was the double oven range. I cook every day. I make all our food from scratch and when the kids were little I was baking muffins and things several times a week. That range was a nightmare to use. It took up too much room in an already tiny kitchen. The top oven burned everything and overhung the range top in such a way that I could only use small pots on the back burners. It was so unnecessarily complicated that to get the bottom oven to work required three different knobs. So aggravating! Our first Thanksgiving dinner was two hours late because I didn’t actually turn the oven on when I thought I did.

We didn’t have the money to replace it so I adjusted to that awful range and made it work for the next bunch of years.

If Mr. Wonderful and I are anything it’s practical. We made a list of all the things the house needed. We prioritized and slowly worked our way through it. Five kids, one salary, new house, money was tight. When I say slowly I mean slowly. One day, while out with Mr. Wonderful, he took me to an appliance store.  I thought we were just going to see what sorts of things were available and what they cost. You know, window shopping. No, he had brought me there to buy a new stove. I nearly cried. He had been planning this for ages. He squirreled away a portion of his cash every week for nearly a year so we could buy it outright. It was so sweet. I picked out a nice, simple, single oven range and by the end of that week the worst thing in my house was gone.

I don’t think any other gift has ever made me happier.

It’s not just that the oven was something I really wanted. It was that my husband went out of his way to make it happen for me without me ever asking him to. It was on our list and would have eventually been dealt with but he didn’t want me to have to wait. That thoughtfulness and care made a mundane thing like an oven incredibly romantic.

If you follow me on Instagram or are friends with me on Facebook then you know that first thing Saturday morning I accidentally knocked a mug off a shelf and couldn’t catch it in time. Instead of smashing itself on the floor, the mug crashed into the oven door glass and shattered it into a thousand pieces. I was a bit more upset about it than I expected I would be. I actually have a sentimental attachment to this oven. The repairman will call me sometime today with the cost to repair it and I really hope it’s not too much.

I knew more than a week ago that I was going to have the house to myself today. So, I made plans. There was art to make and a couple of readings to do. There were things to prep for the eclipse work I was planning. There was a soup recipe I wanted to try and of course, knitting and Netflix. I had a nice day all set for myself. I was going to have a day of just doing things I wanted to do.

What I did instead was spend most of the day removing snow and ice from my walkway and driveway. I wasn’t happy about it. I also know that how I felt about it was irrelevant. It had to be done and I was the only here to do it.

Once you know you have to do something, that there is no alternative, it makes no sense to resist that reality.

When I got up this morning, the snow that had started last night had turned to freezing rain. It made everything slick with a coating of ice and the inches of snow were that much heavier. If you live where it snows then you know what I was facing. I bundled up, grabbed my shovel and, with a sigh, went out to assess the work ahead of me.

The whole time we’ve lived here shoveling snow was a family event. Mr. Wonderful, me, and the kids each took a portion of the job and got it over with. Then we’d go back in the house and have cocoa. Being by myself this job felt huge. I also wanted to complete as much of my original plan as I could. Some of that stuff wasn’t just fun it needed to be done.

So I followed the advice I give to clients with big projects or goals they are working on. I broke it all down into sections and gave myself a deadline and a schedule to get it all done. The deadline in this case was actually imposed by Winter herself. This evening the temperature is going to drop to 3F/-16C. Whatever snow is still on the ground would be ice by tomorrow morning. The deadline for my other work was flexible with the exception of the eclipse work. That got priority.

When faced with a big project it’s important to be realistic about your capabilities. Knowing how far you can push yourself and for how long is a critical piece of information when planning out your strategy. I have also found, for myself anyway, that alternating things you don’t enjoy with things you do enjoy makes the whole job a better experience and makes me more effective.

Half an hour to forty five minutes of chopping ice and snow and moving it off the walkway and driveway was about all I had in me in one burst. I divided the territory into sections I thought I could do in that span of time and started. When I was done with each portion I would go back into the house, dry off, warm up, and work on the more pleasant things. It worked out.

I got all the snow and ice removed that I needed to before the wind picked up and the temperature dropped. I prepped some items for the eclipse, did some readings, and even made that soup I wanted to try. There was also a nice cup of tea, some knitting and Netflix once I was done.

I’m a bit sore from hours of lifting snow and annoyed that my FitBit doesn’t have snow shoveling as an exercise choice because it should totally count. All in all it was a good day.

The winter holidays have a way of distorting time. No one really, officially celebrates all twelve days of Christmas anymore but with family visits, and holiday parties, we sort of do. Work weeks are shortened. People take holiday trips. Businesses and schools are closed all or part of these days. We really should stop pretending that we go back to work after Christmas Day and embrace the energy of this time of year.

There is such a build up to Christmas. It’s a lot of planning, and shopping, and cooking, and decorating, and baking. To spend all that energy for one day is not very satisfying. Whether we mean to or not we extend the experience throughout the days around Christmas and, with a boost from New Year’s Eve, we keep going for a few more days. I think it’s in our blood.

Our ancestors celebrated the return of the sun in myriad ways. Rituals and celebrations with fires and feasting happen all over the world and as far back as anyone can reckon. We make our feasts in modern ovens and capture the moments of celebration on our smartphone cameras but we aren’t that far removed in time or place from the people who prepared their feasts on an open fire and captured moments as memories. They also practiced divination for the coming year. A lot of us do too. You might seek signs in nature during the Omen Days or have your cards read. Either way you are in good company.

Whatever you and yours do to celebrate the winter holidays it all comes to a close on January 6^th. Whether you call it the twelfth day of Christmas, the Feast of the Epiphany, Little Christmas, or Three Kings Day, January 6^th is about as far as you can stretch the holidays. (In the western world anyway) When all the celebrating is done, it’s time to get back to your regularly scheduled life. Once upon a time, not that long ago, that meant it was time for the ladies to get back to their spinning and the men to get back to the plough. From this we get Distaff Day, which is January 7^th and Plough Monday which is the first Monday after January 6^th. Every few years, like this one, they are the same day.

I hope your holidays were enjoyable and satisfying. I hope there was good food, laughter and lots of love. I hope your omens were all favorable. Today is the day to get back to work. I hope you are doing so with a full and thankful heart and that you don’t have to spin any fiber unless you want to.