The days of January bring truth to the saying, “You do not know what you have until it is gone”. Ice and snow separate us from the warming embrace and nurturing green of an earth that sustains our physical life. There is nothing external to comfort us, to provide for us, to sustain us. The ground we walk is frozen, our roots to the physical dormant.
Sleep has overtaken our mother and we are left to face the adversity of the elements without her active, vibrant presence.
There is a disruption in the pattern of all that lives on this earth, where the coyote dares to approach too closely to its own potential dangers and the bobcat hunts in the full light of day. Where the fragile among us, depending on the length of frozen days, may perish. Where those who have not prepared for this time, or did not have the capacity to do so, face a perilous day-to-day journey through the deepest of cold in a season without sustenance.
We long for the connection we realize we have taken for granted, that we spent little time being fully appreciative of before now. Why does our mother’s sleep separate us from her? Where does she go in the dreamtime? When will she awaken? When will she return?
Not too soon for us, we miss her. We need her — more than we allow ourselves to admit in easier, better times. Feeling like abandoned orphans, we watch her sleep. We stare at her still face, quietly and in anticipation, for the fluttering of an eyelid, for the beginning of movement, for the acknowledgment that we are remembered and reconnected. For Spring.