The bird, and lost in utter grief I fail'd
To send my life thro' olive-yard and vine
And golden grain, my gift to helpless man.
Rain-rotten died the wheat, the barley-spears
Were hollow-husk'd, the leaf fell, and the sun,
Pale at my grief, drew down before his time...
--Tennyson, "Demeter and Persephone"
I've always greeted the winter solstice with mixed emotions, mostly on the blue side (that whole seasonal affective thing) but also thankful that the days will now start getting longer, however slowly. I remember, years ago, reading about Persephone and feeling a strange mixture of grief -- that what I was feeling was fairly universal, and would probably recur every year of my life -- and relief, that spring would also recur every year of my life.
Now that I'm back in the land of Real Winters, I again feel that "hollow-husk'd" fatigue of body and spirit... sometimes. It's nothing like before, though, since this creature
graced my life... I have to smile when a 21-pound, two-and-a-half-foot tall bundle of happy energy in nuthin' but a diaper lets out a belly laugh and reaches for me...
oh, ma...
did you really put a picture of me in my diaper on the frickin' Internet??? Geez.
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