THE SHACK

 

It is February 2^nd, the feast of Candlemas, Imbolc and St Brigid’s day. We are sitting in the shack that my sister has built for her journeying into the other world; the world of animal spirits, dreams, astrological and shaman practice, a world I know little of. From the outside the shack looks like a garden shed, but inside it is a Tardis, full of wondrous things; amethyst and rose crystal, quartz pebbles, drift wood and mermaid purses, charts of the heavens and the moon cycles. We sit on her mauve sofa and look out at the dying of the light. Her Border Terrier, Tali, named after the whisky, not the abbey, sits on guard at the paned glass, her nose lifted ready to defend us against urban foxes. She doesn’t know the door is locked and we are all about to make a journey.

         Imbolc is a Celtic festival, celebrating the return of the light after winter. The angel who embraces the earth during its hibernation, stretches and unfolds her luminous wings. She welcomes the sun, the light, warm and golden. Brigid, a favourite Irish saint has also been worshipped as a goddess, the maiden aspect of the triple goddess; maid/virgin, mother and crone.  Brigid is the Keeper of the Sacred Fire and Sacred Waters. She is also associated with learning, poetry, prophesy, healing, metal working, and friend to animals, birds and people. She is often pictured with a white cow and has an association with milk. The word Imbolc means milk or ewe’s milk, which was thought to come in at this time. Brigid was said to be the wet-nurse or mid wife of Christ, and Imbolc is often thought of as mid-wifing the year.

         We sit in silence for some time in the diminishing light, icy blue, darkening, and we gaze out at the skeletons of sycamore and cherry, their limbs and fingers splayed in frozen animation. Sissy bends over to ignite the tea light that sits in a hanging globe of stained glass.  Cobalt, milk-white with a stain of blood red glow in the shack like an egg nurturing its young. It was what I was doing three and a half decades ago at this time of Imbolc.

           I was twenty weeks pregnant when doctors discovered I had contracted a virus similar to German measles. The impact on our unborn son would have been catastrophic; I was working in a long stay mental handicap hospital at the time and had seen the effect; one teenager, deaf, blind, without speech and with profound learning disabilities, sat on the floor of the ward, rocking, banging her head, for ever rocking, and poking her fingers in her eyes to get some kind of stimulation, to find her own light. We didn’t want that for our son or for ourselves. I’d seen the depths of love and pain that parents gave and suffered at the hands of this virus. But, having been brought up as a catholic I was torn. Although I was no longer a believer, I did believe in the sanctity of life. To terminate a pregnancy at this stage was to end a life; to kill, to murder.  But a life sentence for our son and ourselves was the alternative. So we chose murder.

           Sissy speaks and tells me that Candlemas is also the feast of purification. Perhaps this is the chance I have to cleanse myself of my sin, to ask the spirits of the universe for redemption.  Another life is now emerging in our family; my daughter is pregnant with her first to-be-born. The tea light blinks and I see the glass globe like my daughter’s tummy growing in its milkiness, nurturing the new life within her. I think about my new role as I move from mother into grandmother, to crone. Sissy speaks about the joy of becoming a great aunt. We both look deeply at the light, think about the miracle of new life and hope that our daughter will have a rewarding and happy pregnancy. We wish for a healthy baby girl to carry on the maternal line-the line of the triple goddess.