Remembering January 6 (On My Daughter’s 20th Birthday)

Remembering January 6 (On My Daughter’s 20th Birthday)

I was on a first date on January 6, 2020, walking on Stinson Beach with a lovely artist who I wound up going on five dates with before he decided he wasn’t into me. We were less than an hour into our date, marveling with some sadness at an array of dead blue jellyfish sprawled on the sand, when someone from my family texted me about the insurrection. 

“Is it a sign?” my date asked. I wasn’t sure if he meant the dead jellies or the attack on our nation’s Capitol building, but I could tell from his voice that he didn’t interpret it as a good sign.

It was also my daughter’s 14th birthday. She was born on 6/6/06 at 6lbs 6oz. My very Christian mother was frightened she might turn out a devil baby. But her angelic sweetness reassured us that the sixes were just a coincidence.

When I realized that her birthday would go down in infamy in our history books, the way September 11 has, I felt sad for her. It’s already kind of a shitty birthday. The weather is always dismal and it’s so close to Christmas and New Year’s that her birthday often gets lost in busy holiday life. Many people do that thing of giving her one gift for both Christmas and her birthday, so she always gets a little ripped off, though she never complains about it.

We celebrated her birthday on January 4 this year at Harbin Hot Springs because she flew to Portugal to spend the second half of her winter break from college with her father, who has expatriated to Portugal. So she lost 8 hours of her birthday on a flight from San Francisco to Lisbon, falling asleep on January 5 and waking up on the eve of her birthday, Portugal time. Once again, she got a little ripped off.

I miss her…the nest is empty again. But even more so than that, I feel both the gratitude of her birth and the melancholy of remembering that fated January 6 when those of us who are democracy-loving realized our country had taken a dark dystopian turn- and half of our country was okay with that.

Now, things have gotten darker with the invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of its President and his wife without Congress’s authorization only 3 days before the six year anniversary of January 6. That frightens me and makes me scared for the future of not only Venezuelans, but also freedom-loving Americans, as well as those in Greenland, Canada, and other countries Trump has his eye on. The return of American imperialism is not something I wish to celebrate on my daughter’s twentieth birthday, even though many in my country seem to be cheering on the “might makes right” Donroe doctrine Trump and his cronies are spouting off about. 

But in the midst of all this darkness and fear, I am also aware of the returning of the light. Each day since the Winter Solstice, the sun is setting just a bit later, so I can walk my dog on the beach as the sky turns lavender just a bit longer before they lock the gates. Each day since the Winter Solstice, I feel the stirring of spring just a little bit closer, as the narcissus and daffodils bloom here in West Sonoma County. After seven straight days of pouring rain and widespread flooding, the sun came out today, on January 6, leaving steaming puddles in the meadow across from the barn I just moved into. It feels like a day for galoshes and stomping in puddles, with care not to squash any worms or salamanders. 

So there it is- the dark and the light, the hopelessness and the hope, the rain and the sun juxtaposed into the rainbow I saw over Harbin Hot Springs on the day we celebrated my daughter’s birthday early.

With that juxtaposition at heart, I’d love to share two poems by one of the writers from our writer’s group The Writer’s Calling, K L Aspden. She wrote them for the Winter Solstice and read them in Monday’s gathering on Zoom. We were all blown away. If you love what you read, you can follow her on Substack at http://safespaceforwobblyhumans.Substack.com and learn more at her website www.klaspden.com. 

And if you’d like to join us for our next gathering of The Writer’s Calling on Zoom, we welcome all writers of all experience levels. We have quite a few new members this month, so we’ll be helping welcome and integrate the new folks. Join us here.

Northern Hemisphere
By K L Aspden

It’s the darkest day
and all is not lost.
We still have candles in our homes.
It’s the darkest day.We’re forlorn
except for the faces
who look out from their windows,
meet us in a gesture of recognition.

It’s the darkest day.
Don’t leave your best outfit
in the wardrobe
hanging on for that special occasion.
Clothe yourself in soft, elegant fabric.
Put jewellery around your neck, your wrist,
pin it to your garments.
Sparkle however you can.

It’s the darkest day.
No one can steal your dignity.
No one can rob your glimmering light.
No one can take the values that shine
through your translucent body.
Hold on.
It’s time for us to gather, to shine from our corners
before dusk falls.

Hold on
and hope
for morning.

The Morning After the Darkest Day
By K L Aspden

Things will grow brighter
you’ll see.
Slowly at first.
Things will grow lighter. Heavy coats
will slip from shoulders.
Boots will be kicked off. Steps
will find their spring again.
Old dogs will sniff at doors to walk their long walks
instead of curling up in their beds.
Snowdrops will peep out from the mud.
Children will go in search of fairies
in the wood. Neighbours will chat
over garden fences. Curtains
drawn against the cold will be opened.
Hearts will be flung wide. Warm rays will come and go
from the outside.
People will begin to trust again
to unlearn the language of fear
to shine
and not be afraid of the dark.