I know we are barely in September, but for this post, I thought I’d imitate all the holiday-bedecked stores I’ve recently shopped in, and prematurely write about October. We are already in the spirit at our house, as we have a new roommate named Caspar who insisted on being profiled in his own closeup for this piece.
October has been a mixed month for me, stemming from 2008, when I was widowed on the 12th of it, a day that was so bright and blue and beautiful that such sudden catastrophe seemed out of synch, surreal, and in retrospect, supremely suited to the season that October annually announces. When I was newly-widowed, and had to return to my teaching job a mere week later, I felt as though I were moving underwater. By Halloween, I’d found a kind of syncopated rhythm by which to order my minutes, my hours, my days. Young people I had discovered in my years of teaching, can be alternately predatory and poignant, and a good teacher must be ever on her toes. That year, one of my classes was full of obstreperous boys, and Halloween provided their perfect playground. The day of the holiday, they came in all dressed up, and it looked like the day would be a fun one. Once everyone settled, though, I felt a malevolent buzz in the air, and at a glance, I was quick to see why: one of the white boys in the back of the room had on, as his costume, a sombrero and serape. Other boys in the class, who were Mexican, were muttering amongst themselves and glaring at the smugly sombrero’d one. Something was about to erupt.
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“Take off the sombrero,” I told the kid in the back.
“Why? It’s my costume!” he answered.
“Take it off or leave the room. It’s appropriation, and you know that. It’s disrespectful.”
Everyone held their breath during the thirty second silent standoff. Finally the sombrero was doffed, and a collective deep sigh seemed to waft through the room. But the kid in the back wasn’t finished.
“Mrs. R?”
“Yes?”
“What are YOU going to be for Halloween?”
The kid just couldn’t quit. Smartass. So, I went back to where he was sitting, and said,
“Can’t you tell? I’ve got my costume on right now. I’m a Black widow!”
I stared at him, stone-faced. Then I walked back to the front of the room, grinned at the rest of the class, and said, “Got him!”
Everyone howled with laughter, including the smart ass. As I asked the students to open their books so we could start class, he raised his hand again.
“Mrs. R?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry. For all of it.”
“Good,” I said.
And it was good. I miss teaching. I considered it a creative act, one that required as light a touch and as discerning an eye and ear as reading cards requires. I have read Lenormand for nearly as long as I have been widowed, but now I am entering a new phase of my creativity with my book coming out and my Kickstarter deck campaign beginning both in the month of October. I love what the cards have to say about this:
Our Tarot card, from Courtney Alexander’s Dust2Onyx Tarot is The Emerging One, or the first card in the deck, The Fool. I have written about this card before, in a different context, but I love that it has shown up here. The Emerging One, Alexander tells us, is pure soul, pure spirit. The purple amethyst in the center of his forehead acts as conduit for sacred information, and the goat around his shoulders will serve to keep him grounded. As I send my work out into the world in a big way, I feel a little like this neophyte, as nothing and everything in my life full of Octobers has prepared me for this next one. I feel excited and anxious and grounded, all at once. Where does this groundedness come from?
Lenormand, these cards from my own Lenormand of Hope, answers this question, with Anchor, Bear, Moon. For most of my life, I have written, and for most of my life, what I have written has remained unshared. For most of my life, that Anchor was a weight that whispered, “Why would anyone read what you have to say?” For most of my life, I heard that question as though it were steeped in judgement, but now I realize something different: English, in its way, is as tonal a language as Chinese. What I once heard in my head sneeringly, I now hear as an honest, curious question, and that tonal shift has made all the difference. That Lenormand Anchor is not weight anymore, but rather it is the Anchor of safe harbor that writing is for me every single time I touch a keyboard. The Bear is prodigious in its power, and I know my words have power. The Moon is about identity, and mine is now anchored as Writer, Seer, Sage.
Adinkra, from the deck by Simone Bresi-Ando is onboard, as always, this time with Mate Masie, the symbol for “I’ve Kept What I Have Heard.” October has always been the month for letting go: of the sun’s warmth, of tree leaves, of spouses. This October, with new love in my life and in a climate where the sun seems to perpetually shine and the trees are always in full-flower, I fully release any doubt remaining, about my right to take up my role as a creative in a writerly way. I am happily The Emerging One, my amethyst shining from my third eye whenever I close the other two. It is the keeping of this message that will ground me.
I am honored by those of you who read my work here. I hope you will come to love Lenormand as much as I do, too. And I hope, that if it has not happened already, you discover your own creativity, confident that your joy on that path is your birthright.
Amen and Ase
If you’d like to pre-order my book, it’s here on Amazon.
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