A New November

Each year I dread November. As well as unconsciously shuffling through tightly compressed memories of my mother’s death (43 years ago) and all the associated bleakness both outside and within, I can hardly bear the early darkness that creeps in after a five o’clock sky, flecked with pink. I am flooded with memories of living in Britain and that particular deep reaching dampness that can only really be remedied with a large Scotch in a steaming bath. (And at seventeen, as now, I don’t even drink Scotch …) I  literally feel myself again beginning the long walk home after visiting the hospital, the scent of it still in my nostrils, holding the lapels of my prized military-style coat closed against a cruel wind from the Irish Sea and stopping to buy a ‘Twix’ chocolate bar to cheer myself. Street lights look strangely muted and yellow, barely glowing as I have always imagined them to be in Jack the Ripper’s foggy London. Every day is the same now – and I want that to stop almost as much as I fear the routine ending.

But this November, this particular November week is quite different from any other – and not just because of the freakishly mild temperatures we’ve been experiencing. Like other truly momentous events, I will remember exactly where I was when the news broke: out in the back garden standing in coins of sunlight, swishing leaves into a pile, the dog scampering about at my feet and suddenly hearing The General knocking urgently on the window and brandishing his computer screen. Of course I could not see but as I hastened to the door, he was already there to meet me saying: “He’s won! He’s WON!”

Trump was voted out. It felt like something truly historic had happened, like we should be taking to the streets or listening around the radio a là World War II for further updates and especially after an election that was lasting for days. An incredulous, tentative bit of joy seemed to bubble up and spill out throughout the world. Finally, after all these months: the corrosive, never ending bulletins of Pandemic deaths; political uprisings; the resulting every-other-nights of insomnia; endlessly sad news stories of financial ruin, the homeless, addiction, environmental disasters; Murder Hornets decapitating bees; not being able to personally access any of the things that would usually offer an escape (family, friends, outings) and then receiving this welcome bit of news! A chance to taste that slippery, hard-to-maintain feeling once again.

Hope.

I am now actively trying to make peace with November. I am taking more note of the red and gold in the trees and enjoying the sweetness of Stanley, watching him see autumn for the first time, snapping at the leaves as they flutter down around him and leaping with unbridled super-hero abandon wherever I have just raked. I’m not getting New Age Soppy here and I know it certainly won’t be easy when this faux end-of-summer suddenly evaporates and is replaced by that shawl of dark afternoon gloom. But now, however tentatively, hope is back. Perhaps, (like Dorothy’s power in the Wizard of Oz) it was there all along and we just stopped looking.

5 comments