Read my latest story, "A Tale of Two Birthdays", at 52|250.

Winter Solstice came early for me this year. One hour early to be precise. And it helped me to better understand the meaning of the day.

By the time I got out of bed on this shortest of days, the outside light was growing dim through the clouds that only the night before had brought snow but since had turned to releasers of rain. I tried to turn on my lights. Nothing happened. I tried to change the bulb. No good. I called for repairs and waited. I lit candles as the streetlights came on.

About an hour before the official moment of the solstice, the electrician arrived. When the lights came on, it was as if my room in all its glorious mess had been restored to me.

Winter Solstice is about the return of the light, but that’s not the whole story either of the day or of what happened during the time I just discussed. Why was I only getting out of bed in the afternoon? I was suffering from terrible menstrual cramps. When those ease up as they have (mostly) by now, I get to return to the world. While I was waiting for the electrician, I had an argument with my partner, one based in misunderstandings. We’ve resolved it now and returned to our normal state of mutual support. I nearly said of love, but that wouldn’t be quite accurate. Love during an argument, like the sun in the winter, never quite goes away.

Winter solstice isn’t about the light returning, though it is nice to have the sun out after four. The holiday is, rather, about our moving closer to the source of life, the sun. It’s about returning to the source of our strengths which is also, indirectly, the source of our weaknesses.  It’s about finding the closeness for which we yearn.

(None of which is to say that the movement away doesn’t have a purpose too but, for now, I’ll let those of you celebrating summer solstice think about that.)

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Thanksgiving 1989

   seven hours on linoleum
cracking & mildewed at the edge

while children wave to Santa
at the end of a parade
televised from somewhere they've never been
in their black cardboard pilgrim hats

                          and the girl gets called to help
                          among the sizzle smells & greasy sounds
                          it's only slipping cranberry
                          sauce from a can
she has her own perfection
demanded in those seconds
to keep the bitter sweetened mush
in shivering shape of can

                          she's supposed to graduate in 1999
                          she's supposed to then move on
                          to perfections of flesh
                          gravy          stuffing
         & marshmallows on yams
                                can't all be facing the same way
                                lest they look planned

and she's supposed to graduate
to making her own pilgrims
she's already sworn she'll teach them
it was wrong to kill the indians
be thankful anyway

             next year's turkey will be her last
             bite into     moistened meat
             she'll think it's no less chaotic
             than if she stuck the carving knife in her own thigh
             thigh & thigh, breast & breast
                                            only she has no wings

Thanksgiving 2009
whiskey & Guinness
on a flat stained carpet
stuffing & cranberries
will be bought next week on discount

honey, call your mother
she never killed
those birds

written as a fictionalized response to read write prompt #102: memory recipes

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In theory, having a day set aside to focus on environmental issues isn’t a bad thing. I think I would have enjoyed its 1970 form. It often seems, however, that celebrating Earth Day is a bit like giving your assistant a bouquet on Secretary’s Day in lieu of a living wage and health insurance. Indeed, when you Google ”Earth Day sale” or “Earth day products”, it starts to look like deducting the cost of the flowers from your assistant’s paycheck. How much water did it take to make that T-shirt? Are you going to recycle that card when you’re finished displaying it on your refrigerator (which, incidentally, is set a bit colder than necessary and contains way too much meat)?

Where the analogy breaks down, however, is that as much as we talk about saving the Earth, environmentalism is really about saving ourselves. It’s about maintaining a habitable environment. Of course, as the work of the Goldman Environmental Prize winners highlights, it is the poor who suffer the worst consequences of environmental degradation first, which makes it even more difficult to convince the wealthy, who are responsible for most of the harmful consumption, to change their habits.

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It never hurts to have a reminder to let the people you love know that you love them. It never hurts to have a reminder to be kind, gentle, and appreciative of the people who are precious to us. Such reminders never hurt by themselves.

What does hurt is when a commercial culture gives us, instead of these simple reminders, ads for flowers and bears that suggest that men, if they don’t give enough, will be regarded as inferior and women, if they don’t get enough, should take it to mean that they are regarded as worthless. Then, instead of having a holiday that is a reminder to do what we ought to do every day, we have one that encourages female passivity, perpetuates the gold-digger stereotype, and stresses out the men who are supposed to buy all this shit (especially in a bad economy). It’s also heteronormative, and it holds up the couple as the only valid form of relationship. Did I miss anything?

So what, then, should we do about Valentine’s Day? Treat it as a reminder, acknowledge the problematic cultural constructs around it, but mostly, whatever relationship you are in (and if you are single then this means your non-romantic relationship or your relationship with yourself), use this day to be grateful for what’s good in it. Treat the other person, people, or yourself with love, whatever that means for you.

For my Scholastic across the Atlantic: tell me, do you recognize this place without clicking through?