These are my seasons

All that thinking about seasonal celebrations and I think I'm getting somewhere, possibly right back where I started.

I've thought for ages about how out of sync our religious holidays are with our weather. Christmas in England did make a whole lot more sense than having it in the middle of the summer holidays.

Then I was thinkinhg about pagan festivals and enjoying looking at my southern hemisphere wheel of the year and eyeing up what is coming up.

Only Lughnasadh was just after school started back and Samhain, which I do intend on us celebrating as it has the courtesy to fall on a Friday, is also soon after school starts back for Term Two.

So I'm hanging out the washing today, and it occurs to me that I do have a seasonal life and a distinct rhythm and what it revolves around is term time and school holidays and I may as well just love it because anything else is mostly layering more stuff on top of what really makes us tick here in the messiest house in Wetville (though as Cathy came today and I carried on doing even more cleaning afterwards, we may, temporarily, not qualify for the title).

In term time we live crazy lives. Not as crazy as they could be, but quite crazy enough. I have learnt through dismal experience that if I don't employ the marvellous services of Cathy for two hours per fortnight (more is too expensive and less is not enough to avoid drowning), then by the end of the year (and long before that), we live in a cesspit.

In the holidays, I read books instead of making school lunches and going to paid work and once I've read one wonderful book cover to cover, then I am ready to attack our house, to turf things and make order and go to the dump and deal with all the jars and bottles which hang round looking like they could be useful but in practise being quite the opposite.

We do wonderful things together like go to the movies and watch Nanny McPhee. That was lovely - almost two hours in which we sat together, all four of us, and had fun without a single bicker. Not one. And no one wee-d in the wrong place either. Nice movie.

So I guess our lives have an institutional rhythm. I may as well enjoy it and find the good bits (of which there are plenty) because the reality is, that it isn't about to change for us for a long time.

A great thing happened here in Wetville today. We have a fish shop again, selling mostly fish caught off our own coast and brought to shore right here in Wetville. Super fresh turbot for dinner was divine.

Tomorrow we are off on a holiday. We are going to my parents' place where they will look after the children while we go out tomorrow night in their little village (drinks without anyone saying muuuu-uuuuum). Then the next day Mum and Dad will look after the children again while we go out for the day and then go to my special university days friend Jan's place and stay overnight. First time that we've left them overnight. We are all excited, all six of us. Seasonal joy.

Comments

Mary said…
An institutional rhythm! Yes, I get that! But it needs a snazzier name (for marketing reasons ;-) ).

Enjoy your adults-only time.
Sandra said…
Thanks Mary. I do agree on the need for a better name for schooling seasons. Maybe learning seasons but I'd want to clarify that 'holidays' involve a lot of learning, albeit in a less artificial context.
Nova said…
just randomly, i'm not sure if it would be available outside of titirangi ;) but i found a neat book called "easter in autumn" by collette leenman (a local steinerite) which is full of ideas of how to make easter make sense in NZ, whilst still incorporating christian/pagan/traditional elements :) oh & i've got the mabignon (sp?) here too, i just got too caught up in trying to correctly pronounce the welsh to actually follow it properly..

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