730 things — Day 102

The summer solstice! Always feels like a special day. Happy solstice to you, if you are a person who likes to notice the seasons of the light (or even if you're not). Blessed be.

I feel things changing. Today the sun hangs poised in its journey, but after this, even though it's still summer, we will begin the long journey down into the dark; the autumn will come with the fruit and the trees in all their colours, and then the long nights and the frosty stars.

In my own life things are changing. I am tired and don't walk so well, and I find it hard to think with a mask on. My hair is grey and I wear glasses and the sort of clothes all elderly ladies wear — it intrigues me how differently people in the street and in shops treat me nowadays. I'm impressed by them — they speak up loud and look at me with kindness in their faces. Either that or they don't notice me at all and treat me as if I didn't exist. I get cold, and also tetchy, and I walk slowly; I am very fond of cardigans. I think to myself, I have seen this, I have observed it so many times, and now here it is arriving in my own body. Old age, like a person moving in to the Earth House of my being.

Yesterday was the last time for our lockdown online church to meet, now the flesh and blood congregations are re-convening in their bricks and mortar buildings. It was the right time for it to end, but it felt strange to be leading worship for the last time. I no longer belong to any church at all, and that feels strange to me.

Well, so many things are changing, for all of us, aren't they?

Today's things to go are gathered together in one of the craft kits I make for Freegle when I have odds and ends to dispose of. A knitting or crochet kit, with odds and ends of yarn in a bag.