On Winter, Aging & The Cailleach
It’s a particular grey that brings snow. Part steel, part dove. I wait for it, and then finally, that first snow, chilling, but cleansing too.
She loves winter as much as I do, probably more, because she carries it with her all the year round, curls up with it, dreams it into the sky and onto the ground, that Old One. The Cailleach. Pale crone that ambles over the land, winter seeping out from her cloak and her imagination, Goddess of winter and the dark season - of the old.
Many of us don’t like to grow old. I don’t seem to mind. I’ve been through the boiling bloods and heat, didn’t mind that either, like a forging it seemed. A steeling of the will. Leaving fecundity behind, roots now deep and gnarled in family and place. Aging – my skin changing – laugh lines? No, not really, more like furrows, as in ‘a furrowed brow’, frowning deep lines into my face like old bark, skin on my hands wrinkled into thin waves, fingers turned to talons.
They say ‘women of a certain age’ become invisible, but again, for myself, I don’t mind. All the better to listen, watch, stalk. We will be heard and seen when we see fit; for now, with the Cailleach, we gather knowledge that is useful, needed. The Cailleach is guardian of the land, she cares for the animals during the long cold of winter - I want to know how better to do this. It is also said that as the Cailleach walks, she can change the very land itself.
So I will fall in behind her, try to mimic her long strides, bring along with me my searing love for my daughters, for my animal/bird kin, for the trees, soil and sky, be a resolute guardian until I too am finally ready to give myself over to the ebb and flow, to become part of her cloak.
Love this!
Thank you so much for the Gaelic Cailleach (pronounced CALL-yuch, for those who don’t know). You’re right. It’s time she had some light.
Here’s to our Cailleachs'!