When we are born it is New Year's Day, the first day of January, the new beginning, a new life. Already the days are just beginning to get a little bit longer. Depending on where you live everything is frozen beneath at least six feet of snow and ice. There are no flowers, no leaves, and no birds sing. This is like the first days following childbirth and the baby seems barely conscious, completely helpless and dependent on others for all his needs. We have only the hope and faith that he will grow and become one day independent and flourish. If you live in our mild climate on the west coast of Canada January often progresses into the very early signs of spring and like the first seven years of the child's life there is no sense yet of maturation, but there is growth and progress. The child walks and talks, feeds and cleans herself, plays, learns and talks back to her parents. The first flowers, be they snowdrops or hellebore are already blooming.
February begins as a blessing of early crocuses. The cold air says winter and the garden says camellias and early daffodils. The child grows quickly, has accomplished many things already and is on the threshold of young man or womanhood.
The flowers push on in March and soon appear the first hyacinths and tulips, plum blossoms and cherry blossoms and the child, now an adolescent, is already struggling with the pangs of first love and the torments of desire.
In April the gardens and parks are a riot of magnolia, forsythia and early rhododendrons and soon the air is replete with flower fragrance as the trees slowly burst into tender pale leaves that shine in the gently warming sun. The young man and young woman are twenty-one, hard at work, hard at study hard at play and hard at love. And they are so dowered in beauty that everyone who sees them is breathless with wonder, awe and delight.
May is High Spring and the man and woman are now twenty-eight, their youth already tempered with gathering maturity and their dancing steps are a little more deliberate, a bit steadier, their beauty is calmed a bit but they are still radiant as the fragrant lilac and iris. Already they are marrying and having children and soon the flowers of the earth will bear her own red and golden fruit.
At the beginning of June they are thirty-five and already have begun a family. The flowers already are beginning to give way to fruit and seed and the birds sing madly every morning and evening as the summer prepares to begin and the light is at it's strongest, brightest and longest.
They have just turned forty-two and labour hard in their work, careers, professions, and in raising their children and families and the urgency is about to begin for already the sun is reducing its light and the heat grows and the fruit ripens. They are no longer so beautiful as they once were and they will never again romp in the meadows of youth and the sun is so hot and the labour hard.
In August they are forty-nine and the harvest is full and ripe and the sun beats down on the earth, singeing the leaves and the earth groans with thirst. The children are nearly grown and nature is tired from her summer labour.
I have lived two years in September and now I am fifty-eight years old. The harvest continues and the sun is warm but softer than before and the cool breeze forebodes frost.
In October I will be sixty-three and already moving slower. The mornings will be cold and the leaves brilliant with the colours of the sun as they die and fall from the tree.
I will be seventy years old when November arrives and seventy-seven when November ends and the red and orange leaves fall from the trees onto the cold ground that rests now and waits for the first frost and the long winter sleep. The feasts of All Hallow's, All Saints and All Souls will have passed and I will be reminded as my journey begins to draw to its conclusion that even though I am alone I will one day be surrounded by a company of angels saints and friends.
When December ends I will be eighty-four and ready for the end. The frozen ground will receive me as seed that will sleep in its holy death and dream of the coming spring, the coming first leaf and flower bud, the fruit and seed of a future harvest, the coming life.
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