The Hibernate

From 25th November 2024

Here’s a story based on two photographs. Where the lead role is played by the one of them that’s a photograph of me. There are very few photographs of me, because I’m more usually the one taking them. But there’s one in here I didn’t know was being taken at the time, that’s got me thinking. And it’s the thinking I want to write about.

The Garden at First Snowfall: photograph by Clare Melhuish

Audio version:

The photograph of me is one of two taken by my daughter Clare soon after we’d arrived at the allotment one day last week, to see how it had weathered the winter’s first frost and first snowfall. She’d taken a first one of the garden in its wintry morning’s sunshine then, when I thought she was sending me a copy of that, she took the one of me. Sitting in the ice-covered polytunnel, holding my phone, and looking like I’m thinking about something. Which I was. About the time of stillness that’s almost here and how much I’m looking forward to it. Thought about some more once Clare’s photo arrived. A stillness of this time of the year I’ve since decided to call “The Hibernation” or maybe “The Hibernate?” I think that’s better, more definite. And as well as that I’ve been thinking of a stillness and a change in me I haven’t thought up a name for yet. But I probably will.

First then, my thinking about this Hibernate.

I was reading how somewhere, I forget where, people have names for seasons within the main ones. Names they use to describe to each other how, though it’s still say winter, it’s moved on to something they might call “Snowdrop Time.” Meaning it’s not spring yet, definitely not, but that it’s certainly a different phase of the winter from this hibernate that’s beginning now. The first and darkest part of winter this, lasting from shortly after the equinox, when the dark arrives and is soon enough followed by the first frost, until some time late in January. By when the light is visibly returning, and there are probably snowdrops.

For the next two months then this will be a time of, let’s see, coming in from the cold, being glad for the new warm overshirt Sarah’s made me and lighting fires at the allotment. A darkling time of short afternoons, long evenings and longer than usual sleeps, in these months either side of the winter solstice. When the earth beneath our northern feet, tilted away from the sun as it is, pauses like we do, until the light begins its return.

Waiting & Thinking: photograph by Clare Melhuish

I like this pause time, always have, and that’s an element of the approaching stillness I remember thinking about when the photograph was taken. But there’s also a thought I’ve had of how this year’s pause is different. Being as it is the first one when I could decently call myself a gardener. Meaning my priority before the pause this time has been about getting everything done and ready before it. The spring bulbs well in the ground and any other late plantings done too. All needing to be in before the first frost and this first snow, and leaving only winter maintenance for afterwards. Like the turning over of the compost, some fixing of compost bins while that’s happening, and getting used to the lighting of fires to keep myself warm, when I come here for a read or a look round over the Hibernate. Because I will still come here, obviously. Like it’s an elemental need in me now. With Clare, and with Sarah sometimes, in the almost silence of hardly anyone else around.

So yes, and without its being said in all those words at the time, that’s what I’m seeing now in Clare’s photograph of me. Looking forward, deeply, to the approaching stillness. This preciously quiet time of year when choral music sounds great, even longer books than usual get read and crowded town’s not gone to because, I was about to write, Sarah and I don’t do all that Christmas stuff. But actually we do, sort of. And for over half of each of our lives now, this is how we’ve done it. In versions of stillness. Where we hibernate, walk, read, light fires and probably love our time of stillness just as much as others like their tinsel, turkey, midnight mass, presents and families gathered round their tables. Which we don’t do.

So I’m thinking of all that. But there’s also something else. Beyond the now or the soon, that’s about me, my life and a change that’s happening.

In the photograph I’m holding my phone flat in my hands waiting for Clare to send me the photograph she’d just taken of the garden. And it’s while I’m waiting she’s taken her second one, of what I look like when I’m thinking. And where I seem to be looking at something. That I’d now say is looking through and beyond this year’s Hibernate to the longer approaching stillness of the rest of my life. Where I’m seeing, now all my slowing down and stopping of work is done - and here’s the word I couldn’t find earlier - seeing how I’m becoming what I’ll call “seasonal.”

Remembering, that when I had a day job I lived in a rhythm of twelve cycles of budget returns and board reports. Then, as Sarah and I became self-employed as A Sense of Place that pattern changed to invoice-chasing, tax returns and annual accounts. Now, I’m becoming seasonal.

What’s that then, “Seasonal?”

Well there’s an obvious horticultural winter-time analogy, on my imaginary label from the garden centre, that would say:

“A perennial, though not fully hardy shrub, he will either need to be brought indoors in the winter, or if left outside be wrapped in protective materials. In his case is most likely to thrive if kept warm in the brown duffel-coat, so much like his first ever duffel-coat all those years ago; as well as the new wool overshirt Sarah’s made him; and as long as he remembers to always light a fire at the allotment, rather than freeze gradually while he sits there reading.”

That.

But beyond all that I think I’m becoming seasonal in how I am and how I live through the year. Like now, as the Hibernate begins, I’m mostly still, silent and thoughtful. But when it’s become Snowdrop Winter, later in January, maybe then I’ll lift my head back up and look around a bit. Start to look up from my winter life. And as it gets to whatever winter’s final phase might be called? Perhaps “The Thaw” or in these years “The Warming,” well I’ll know when we get there. Because by then I’ll be a few months more seasonal.

And it’s the past year has caused this change, I’d say. Though I’ve always walked around outside, a lot, and been a reasonably regular visitor to the allotment, over this year and with Sarah’s encouragement I’ve become largely responsible for it. For what’s planted, how the plants are all doing and for the rolling and continuous “what needs doing next” of the place. Which involves such a noticing of every plant that I know I’m now talking to them all when I first arrive. Asking and noticing “How are you then?” Like you would with friends.

And in turn, noticing the same about myself. Like on this morning in the snow with Clare, as we were arriving I’d been telling her how every time I walk onto the allotment site this year I’ve felt deeply well and perfectly at peace with my life, regardless of whatever time and change it might be about to bring me. Because being on the allotment is physically and spiritually good for me, it just is. So I’m feeling all of that sat there, in my duffel-coat, in the ice-covered polytunnel. Feeling that all is well, whatever might be next. That in all my unknowing I’m perfectly at peace in the approaching season of stillness.

A long moment then, as the two photographs were taken. Neither of them of someone turning to smile at the camera or the photographer as would usually happen. But i hope I’ve captured the beginnings of all this thinking. Which has been a lot, and just about enough to have got out of one morning and two photographs. So thank you Clare for the taking of them x

Now I’ll move on. Though some of the same stillness will be in what I’m going to write next, which is about my heart.

“so much like his first ever duffel-coat all those years ago; as well as the new wool overshirt Sarah’s made him“

About my heart

By the time you read this I’ll have been for a second opinion, with a second cardiologist on what’s happening with my heart.¹ Organised for me, with great grace, by my principal cardiologist. “In case I’ve missed anything” as he told me after a transoesophageal scan he’d arranged hadn’t shown a “sufficiently” critical situation inside me for the valve replacement surgery he’s certain, from my symptoms, I’m going to need. The core details of “sufficiently” being that though the circumference of my aortic valve’s opening has reduced from 1.7cm sq to 1.3 in the year and more he’s been measuring it, which sounds like quite a lot to me, that’s still not the critical 1.00cm sq measurement that’s needed for him to refer me for surgery. “Unless I’ve missed something” as he says. Hence the second opinion. Which will include an “Exercise Stress Echocardiogram” and where a second doctor’s findings and opinions might help me get the surgery I’ll need, soon and while I’m otherwise well and fit. Rather than wait for an already known situation to perhaps get increasingly critical

All of which I’m still being stoically calm and generally optimistic about. Watchful and reasonably worried, but nevertheless glad to be so cared for by the NHS. Especially glad about the detailed and regular monitoring by such a patiently thoughtful main doctor. And I have slowed down, by the way, to deal with all this. I know I have. Slowed down all my usual rhythms and habitual urges to gets things done and get them done today. Meaning I’m fine with the new slowness, which goes perfectly well with the stillness, the quiet and my being patiently seasonal in myself. While the doctors watch, and I wait.

An End Piece

My reading since last time has mostly been completing “The Mill on the Floss.” Which I loved despite my slow start, when I’d gone straight onto it too quickly after “Adam Bede.” I do have “Silas Marner” lined up for my next George Eliot, but in between I’ve almost finished a more contemporary novel I found in the University Library where last time’s Quiet came from. It’s by Sue Gee and called “The Hours of the Night.” Which I think I’m going to miss as much as the George Eliot books when it’s done. It’s got a central cast of half a dozen differently interesting characters. All flawed, believable and almost poetically written about. And their stories take place in one of my favourite places that isn’t Liverpool, that part of the Welsh border where you never quite know if you’re in Shropshire, Powys or Hereford. A book full of love, music, poetry, plants, crises, silence, redemption, chickens, children and sheep that’s recommended. A gem.

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1. See “A Heart Story” from back in August for the background.