Sunset adoration from Liber Resh at the bus stop, facing west, as discreetly as anyone can make the sign in public. A small girl in a dinosaur raincoat watched closely, then copied it exactly. Her mother and I exchanged a nod of mutual professionalism.
Planning a tiny Samhain dinner with my roommates next weekend. Nobody else is a witch, but everybody misses somebody, so it works. The plan: one empty chair at the table, a photo of each of our grandparents on the windowsill, LED tealights (approved by the RA, in writing, I have the email), and my grandma's pumpkin bread, which I have failed to make correctly three times so far. We'll go around and each share one story about the person in our photo. That's the whole ritual. I think it's enough.
Saturday morning, so the porch got swept: back of the house to the front door, front door to the steps, steps out to the street. Then a bucket of warm water with lemon, a handful of salt and a splash of Florida Water for the steps and the doorframe. Psalm 23 the whole way through, twice. Grandmama always said never sweep after dark or you'll sweep your luck out with the dust. I'm fifty-eight years old and still not brave enough to test it.
Samhain is a week out and I've already started the ancestor altar, because if I wait I'll be doing it at 11pm on the 31st with a flashlight again. This year: Nan's reading glasses, a tin of the butterscotch she always kept in her coat pocket, my uncle's terrible fishing hat, and a photo of a friend from my old coven who crossed in spring. One white candle in a deep glass holder on a ceramic plate, well away from the curtains (lesson learned in 2011). For the night itself I'm planning a dumb supper: one empty chair, that plate served first, and the whole meal eaten in silence. If you've never done one, it's stranger and gentler than it sounds.
Sharad Purnima is almost here, the night the moon is said to shine with all sixteen of its kalas, and in my house that means one thing: kheer under the moon. You make rice kheer slowly, with full-fat milk, a little cardamom and a few strands of saffron. Then the bowl goes out on the balcony for a few hours in the moonlight, covered with fine muslin so the moonlight gets in and the insects don't. It's offered first, then shared, and everyone swears it tastes sweeter. In Bengal they say Lakshmi walks the earth that night asking 'Ko jagarti?' Who is awake? My grandchildren are determined to be awake this year. I give them until 10:30.
My grandpa died two years ago today. My family isn't religious and we've never really marked it. Tonight I put his harmonica on the windowsill, lit a candle (in a jar, on a plate, I read the safety threads here), and just told him about my year, out loud. It felt silly for about thirty seconds and then it didn't. I don't know what I believe. I'm not sure I need to yet. I just wanted to tell someone it happened.
Before pumpkins took over, Irish children carved turnips for Samhain. Big knobbly swedes, hollowed out with a spoon and a great deal of muttering, a face cut in to frighten off anything wandering the roads that night. So this year I did it the old way. It took ninety minutes, two blisters and most of my patience. The result looks like a potato that has seen things. I adore him. He's on the stone step by the front door with a tealight in a little jar, nothing near him that can catch, and I'll blow him out before bed. The barmbrack is cooling in the kitchen with a ring baked in, so someone in this house is getting engaged this year, or at least a fright at the dentist.
In about a week our sosyete in Brooklyn celebrates Fèt Gede, and the prep has officially taken over my life. Purple and black fabric on every chair. A shopping list with coffee, peanuts, cassava bread, a frankly irresponsible number of hot peppers, and sunglasses. The Gede like them with one lens popped out. Don't ask me to explain fashion to the dead. Because it's October and everyone is watching horror movies, a gentle bit of myth-busting: Vodou is not pins in dolls. That image comes mostly from Hollywood and tourist shops, not from our temples. The Gede are the spirits of the dead, with Baron and Manman Brigitte at their head, and they are honestly the funniest, most irreverent guests you will ever host. They tease the proud, they comfort the grieving, and they remind everyone that death does not end a family. What I can share of the day itself: a lot of singing, a lot of food, everyone in purple and black, and time set aside to honor the dead of our own families too. My grandmother in Jacmel used to say the Gede make you laugh so you remember you're still alive. That's most of the teaching, really. The rest stays in the peristil, as it should. But if you've only ever met Vodou through a movie screen, I hope this gives you a truer picture. Bon fèt Gede a little early, everyone.
Morning routine on the balcony, now that Melbourne spring is finally behaving. I light a dry bay leaf from the stove, carry it to the sink, and drop it hissing into a bowl of water, then wash my hands and face in it. That's khernips, the purifying water the old Greeks used before approaching the gods. The hiss is my favourite sound of the day. Then the first flame for Hestia, a small oil lamp on the kitchen shelf, and a splash of watered wine into the potted olive for the household gods. The neighbour's lorikeets judge me loudly. I read ten lines of the Odyssey aloud, badly, and the day can begin. Small rites done every day beat grand rites done once a year. My yiayia said the same about phone calls.
My shrine is a bookshelf with little cabinet doors, and every weekday morning it opens like a tiny shop. Wash hands and face, light a battery tealight (I work in an archive, real flame near paper makes me itch), and offer cool water and a slice of bread to Bast and Djehuty. I greet them in clumsy Middle Egyptian, then in English, because I'm fairly sure they prefer sincerity to grammar. After ten minutes I revert the offerings, which just means I thank them and eat the bread myself. Nothing is wasted in this house. Bast gets first look at the sardines on Fridays; the cat gets the sardines. Fifteen minutes a day. It has kept me steady through two job changes and one very long winter.
Every October our parish leaves a book at the back of the church for All Souls. You write the names of the people you've lost, and on the evening of the 2nd they're read aloud at the requiem, one by one, while a candle burns on the altar. Today I wrote my mother's name for the fifth year. My handwriting has got steadier each time. This year I added my old choir director, who taught me to breathe from the belly and never, ever to go flat on a descant. There's something about seeing her name on a page with a hundred others, in a hundred different hands. Grief is so private, and then for one evening it isn't.
Monday. White flowers and a clear glass of cool water for my eggun, a cafecito poured the way my abuelo liked it (far too sweet), and their names said out loud. Five minutes. It anchors the whole week.
Hedge-laying season has started, which means three months of mud, hazel stakes and the good kind of sore shoulders. Before the first cut on any new stretch, I do the same small thing: hand flat on the oldest stem, three slow Awens, and a plain request out loud to lay it well and let it grow back thicker. A splash of water from my flask at the roots and a "diolch" to the hawthorn. No robes, no audience, just me and a nosy robin. A laid hedge isn't killed, it's renewed. The cut stems keep living and send up new growth all along the line. Every winter I'm reminded that most of the good things in my life came from something being bent, not broken.
Winter Nights blót this weekend. Oregon delivered its usual sideways rain, which honestly feels right. The old calendar marks this as the turning toward winter, the time to honor the dísir, the ancestral mothers, and the land-wights who put up with us all year. We kept it small. Me, my wife, the two kids, and my brother-in-law, who isn't heathen but has never once missed a meal. We stood at the edge of the back field under the big Douglas fir. I forged the stand for the horn myself this summer, so of course it leaned. We hailed the land-wights first, since it's their place and we're the guests. Then the ancestors by name, as many as we could remember: my farfar Olav who fished out of Bergen, my wife's grandmother Ruth who taught three generations of her town to read. The kids poured apple cider from their own little cups and each said one thing they were thankful for. My daughter (8) thanked the wights for the blackberries. My son (4) thanked them for "the mud." Can't argue. The mead went round the horn once and the rest went onto the roots of the fir. Afterward we had a fire in the iron bowl with the hose already uncoiled beside it, because a blacksmith who disrespects fire doesn't stay a blacksmith long. Nothing dramatic happened. Nothing needed to. The rain eased right as we finished, which my daughter has decided was the wights saying "you're welcome." I'm not going to correct her.
The 1st and 15th are when I change the sakaki on my kamidana. In Nagano my grandmother cut it from the bush behind the house. In Seattle I drive to a grocery in the International District that gets it maybe half the time, and the rest of the time I ask the neighbour's camellia hedge to stand in, very politely. This morning: rice, salt, water and a little sake in their white dishes. Two bows, two claps, one bow. Rain loud on the skylight, the cat sitting under the shelf like a small guardian. It isn't a big ceremony. It's more like opening the window in a room you love.
The community orchard had its last picking day on Sunday. When everyone had gone home with their bags of apples, I stayed behind with the old Bramley in the corner, the one that leans like she's listening. Poured a cup of last year's cider around her roots and thanked her for the crop and for shading the picnic table all summer. Left the highest apples for the blackbirds, and for the fieldfares when they arrive. Then I sat with my back against her trunk for a while and watched the light go gold. Wassailing is in January, but I don't think trees mind being thanked off schedule.
Quakers famously have no rituals. Which is why every First Day I sit in the same creaky bench, by the same window, beside the same woman knitting, for exactly one hour of silence. Entirely unritualistic.
The twins have decided they're in charge of the home altar now. This morning each of them offered an orange to Amitabha, rang the little bell much harder than necessary, and bowed. Minh bowed so enthusiastically he bonked his forehead on the shelf, then looked up at the Buddha very seriously and said, 'That was a really big bow.' We chanted Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật ten times, then had the oranges for breakfast. Some days practice looks like a candlelit temple. Most days it looks like this, and I wouldn't trade it.
Navratri started last night, which means our living room is no longer a living room. It is a golu. For anyone who didn't grow up with it: in many Tamil homes we build a set of steps (always an odd number, we do nine) and cover them with dolls. Gods and goddesses on the top step, then saints, then people going about their lives, then animals and little village scenes at the bottom. The idea, as my paati explained it, is the whole of creation climbing toward the Divine Mother, one step at a time. My marapachi dolls, the carved wooden bride and groom, came from my grandmother's house in Mylapore in a suitcase, wrapped in my old school uniform. They go up first, every year, before anything else. This year my husband built new steps out of shelving because the old cardboard ones finally gave up. He measured three times. I love him. Every evening for nine nights we light the lamp, I recite the Lalitha Sahasranama (slowly, the 7pm version, not the heroic 5am version), and whoever visits goes home with sundal and a little bag of betel leaf, kumkum and a bangle. Our Canadian neighbours come every year now, and their daughter has formally requested a cricket player doll for the bottom step. She has been told the cricket player must sit next to the cows. If you keep a golu, post your steps. I want to see everyone's dolls.
First day of the ninth lunar month, so incense for the ancestors before work. Three sticks lit from a match, held to the forehead and bowed three times, then planted in the bowl of rice my mother taught me to keep for exactly this. I open the window a little and I never leave the room while they're burning. My mother used to say the ancestors do not want your curtains as an offering. Then I tell them the news. My son started his first job. The persimmons are ripe at the market. The bus is late again. Ordinary things. I think they like hearing the ordinary things most.