Notes from a Winter Solstice Party

On the balm of levity after four years of heavy...

Party spread: Banh mi with blackened tofu and coconut curry chicken; Italian tomato pie; lentil pate; caramelized onion dip. Tins full of cookies, including Dorie Greenspan’s World Peace Cookies.

We had a party last night. A gathering of the every-inch-of-the-first-floor-is-taken variety.

It’s a first in this row house, in this town that, four years later, still feels like the moon. It’s the first time since Seattle we’ve hosted an evening expressly for merriment.

Boy did it feel good.

The reason: winter solstice. My favorite day of the December calendar. The day that marks the return of the light — in the sky, and maybe even in our hearts. A day that has inspired ancient cultures to stay up until the dawn. A day in which the planets are in charge. Not a man in a red suit or a baby in a manger.

When we lived in Seattle, we loved hosting parties. The winter solstice gatherings were among some of my favorites. We’d gather around a fire and Steph led a ritual, inviting us to jot down on little pieces of paper something to shed from the current year, then toss into the fire.

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Our first two years in Lancaster were spent mostly holed up, pandemic style. Our friends were few. I talked to my plants in the back yard. The feral cats in the alley. We stayed healthy, thank goodness. But our hearts were yearning for the community we had built on the other side of the country.

Even when the world reopened, my loneliness did not abate. I wondered why we were here, what I was supposed to learn from being in a town where I felt like I didn’t belong. Even as a reporter for the local paper.

For much of this year, I dug deep into my origin story, learning about ancestors I didn’t know existed. Many of them, I learned, are buried in the same cemetery as my father. One O’Donnel, an executive with the Pennsylvania Railroad during the Gilded Age, lived in downtown Lancaster, about a ten-minute walk from our place on Plum Street. His house is still standing on Lemon Street. (Yes, there are lots of streets here named after fruit trees.)

None of these discoveries would have happened if we had not moved to Lancaster. I am sure of it.

As I dug into my origin story, especially around my mother and the trauma she inherited from her own mother, I discovered how much healing there was to do. How much unlearning of old, embedded patterns. How much loosening of the strings. How much release in order to move forward.

For so long, I focused on everyone but me. Why can’t they get it together. Why they don’t call. Why they don’t follow up. Why why why. So much time and energy focused on other people’s stuff, not my own. Outward, not inward.

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At the onset of this year, I asked the universe for more levity.

I got my wish last night.

I haven’t heard this much sustained laughter in nearly five years. Sounds of revelry from front door to back. Strangers making friends. Journalists, artists, chefs, makers, corporate and nonprofit. Retired and just starting their careers. Bellies full of banh mi. All under our roof.

A little after eight, we headed outside where Russ had made a small fire in the Weber grill. We threw our papers into the flames, letting go of what no longer serves, just as Steph had shown me years ago. The air was crisp. The moon beamed.

This little row house, I reckon, has never been so full of life.

Today the sun sets at 4:43, one minute later than it did yesterday. The light is on its way. I can feel it smack dab in the middle. An open heart. No more surgery.