“Everybody loves Nature until Nature rolls up on your ass!” –Tony Baker

Something to Celebrate?

As a city dweller, I ached for a connection to our Mother. Those 4’x8′ beds of staked tomatoes in the back 40 ( 40 feet, not 40 acres!)? Mother! Nature! My heirloom tea roses with the floofy French handles? An homage to Gaia. I boasted one raised bed entirely commandeered by rosemary, because rosemary loved that spot, and I couldn’t bear to restrain her. My housemate built an asparagus bed and trained hops on long guywires from driveway to garage. Feral cats wintered in painted fishboxes arrayed along a southern exposure; I had four big trees on that property: two maples, an immense holly, and a live oak– there was a lot of Earth worship going on in that 70’x 130′ plot!

Emigrating from the outskirts of Fredericksburg to the relatively howling wilds (coyotes count!) of Virginia’s mountainous SW border changed everything. Because I can’t do everything, I can’t change everything, and I can control only a few limited elements in a few very limited ways.

Next month, I will celebrate my 71st birthday, conceptually yes, always, but this year also literally. I am holding a belated housewarming with a dozen or so if my oldest and best comrades. The property is not “ready” for this showcase any more than I am; it, and I, will never be ready. Since my eldest daughter moved here during the plague year I have struggled with how I can help her, and tormented myself over all the ways in which I cannot. The old trailer continues its slow regress into collapse; the cottage, now stuffed with J’s detritus, is sacred to mice, and millipedes. And my forty-five-foot-square garden, though it yields me tomatoes and beans, also sprouts wild plum seedlings with roots of steel and head-high–and my head is very high!–specimans of milkweed, Queen Anne and mullien. And it’s too much–it’s all too much. My ambitions taunt me, bested by Nature’s sinuous primacy, and by the palpable flagging of my energies as I age.

What is The Lesson? There’s Always a Lesson!

So next month we will not celebrate perfection. We will not celebrate dreams come true, or journey’s end. Instead, we will raise a composting party cup to our shared humanness, to dreams and to journeys still in progress, to the old trailer in its garlands of snakeskin and bindweed, a metaphor for our common mortality. What little I have done will have to suffice– the rough old farmhouse with its crooked floors, shaded porches, wet cellar, simultaneously homey and homely, graceful and ungainly, sturdy and askew, incrementally improved but never, ever perfect.

Honoring the Five Elements

Seriously, if you represent all five elements and invite everyone you can think of everything usually shakes down just fine. The people who are supposed to attend–do. Pods and subtribes form: political gossip around the buffet, the fire worshippers tend the fire, wreathed in long shadows, and quests– to visit the spring house, to peer inside the old school bus windows, to look for ripe blackberries– keep the energies stirring. In case you need ideas:

Earth

Although your buffet may not be homestead-to-table, a few of your foods should have roots on the property. In my own case, for example: homegrown basil pesto and tomatoes from the garden. Encourage your co-celebrants to bring dishes they themselves have grown and/or created on their iwn home grounds. That sort of sharing and coming together of resources weaves webs and builds lasting Power.

Air

Make a garland or a banner with a message of welcome or one emphasizing the celebration’s theme. Suspend it from the porch or between trees and let it write in the air! Sing a song– even if it’s just a seriously off-key ” Happy Birthday!” Or being out those guitars, bongos, ukes and kazoos and make some music, and some memories.

Fire

Often the crowd favorite — passionate, hot, volatile Fire! A charcoal grill, a firepit or fire barrel, candles, solar lights, tiki torches, sparklers! Fire is tribal, comforting and mesmerizing. Provide at least one (safe, please!) fire-themed feature at your next gathering and watch it grow a communal group around it.

Water

A fountain if you are fancy, a hose at the very least– water pistols, sprinklers, and super-squirters are great ways for guests to balance out their chi and work off some energy. Hot tubs and swimming or wading pools will create a communal circle almost as effectively as a fireplace or bonfire.

Spirit

This is so open to interpretation! It’s my favorite!

A guest book to sign, a communal spell circle, an incantation including the Mother and any other deities house follow into the celebration (again– as with fire, safety and context is everything. Consider the company and don’t invite Anybody capriciously!), games that involve sharing memories or telling stories– a charm to take home.

So do not–I adjure thee!– wait for perfection to make a celebration. Eventually, the earth takes us all. Eventually, Nature will roll up on your ass, and s*** will indeed happen. Celebrate now– for yourself, for your friends, for the perfectly imperfect Moment which will not come again, I promise you. After our party next month, I’m going honor you and include you by posting a few photos and sharing some stories. I’d love it if you’d honor me with your own experiences and thoughts. Do you have a template for your soirees, shindigs, or partays? Have I missed anything important?