Daily Archives: 2007/12/12

Listening to Paul Harvey a few days ago, he told a poem about November. I wish I could recall the name of the poem and if you, reading this, happen to know the name, I would be pleased if you would share it with me.

There is an electricity in the air this time of year. Not that which you see because of the upcoming holidays and the excitement that always comes with people running back and forth looking for gift and at the lights that adorn all the houses.

There is a crispness in the air… the feel of something that is about to happen. Nature is holding it’s breath waiting in excitement for the spring to come, and you can almost feel it. While this time of year is a time of death and change, as was described in the poem that I heard, there is a beauty there because from that death will come new life. The leaves that fall will be the mulch that will feed the new life that will spring from the ground next year. The snow that falls, if you are lucky enough to live in a place where it snows just enough to be pretty, and not make you wish you lived in Florida, and wraps the land in a covering, like a loved one wrapping a gift for you. When you walk in the snow, you can hear the whispers of voices not of this world, like spirits from the past trying to share a secret with you, but just barely audible. It is a beautiful conclusion to the light and colour show that nature gave us with the changing of the leaves this fall.

Trust me… I was not always this sappy during this time of year. In fact I was pretty much the most negative person you might know, starting right about the time Halloween ended. Back then, this time of year only served to remind me of everything I did not have. My mother and I really did not have a lot, and there was not a whole lot of money to spend on much more than a good Thanksgiving and Hanukkah dinner, then go back to school and hear about what all the other kids got for the holidays. Add to that the fact that my father rarely did anything with me for the holidays.

Growing older just made me more resentful of my childhood. It was not until I met the woman who would become my wife that I would start to get over this. She would show me that this time of year was about more than the bad I experienced as a child. So with her help I learned to enjoy this time of year and see it for what it is. Not just the holidays, though they do have new meaning for me now. Not just Hanukkah, but Christmas as well along with the other joys of this time of year.

Now I look at this time of year as a time of renewal and change. A time to look forward to the next year and what it hold… the good and the bad. I guess you could say it is a time of cleansing.