Happy belated Mabon.
It’s curious, we call our autumnal equinox party “Mabon,”
but we never talk about who or what a mabon is. Where does the name come from?
Why do we use it? Kit told a story once about a quest to find a man named
Mabon, who was the only person able to kill a magical boar who needed to be
killed as part of a long, multi-stage process without which one of King Arthur’s
knights would have been unable to wed the woman he loved. But what that Mabon has to do with Fall, I do not
know.
In any case, happy Autumn. The leaves have definitely begun
to turn here, although we are still at least a week or two away from peak color,
and the goldenrods and asters are in full flower in the fields—everything still
has the look of fullness, of growth, although the insect song has changed
radically—the cicadas are done for the year, as are some others I can’t name, all
we have left in the thin, pulsing music of the crickets. They’ll go until
frost.
I enjoyed the celebration. I always do. This year was a
little different because for once I didn’t have to choose between the Gratitude
Circle and the Thankyou Doll build, which normally happen at the same time, but
this year Allen had to move the Circle up two hours because of an appointment
he had with a therapy client that could not be scheduled at any other time.
That put it opposite Greg’s Higan observance, which was unfortunate, because Karen
normally attends the Circle and of course she helps with the Higan service. But
the good news is that people who always attend the Thankyou Doll build—Charlie,
Sarah, and most of the sprouts—were free to attend the Circle. Of course,
Charlie didn’t come. I’d hoped he would, but Kit attends the Circle and they
are still allergic to each other.
Anyway, the Gratitude Circle meets in the grassy area behind
Chapel Hall, near the outdoor grill where we have Philosopher’s Stone Soup. It’s
almost enclosed by the Hall on one side, the Main Greenhouse on another, and by
a partial and broken ring of tall hickory trees. They’re only beginning to
turn, and the place still looked very green and lush, with plenty of room in
the middle for fifty or sixty people to stand in a ring, me and June included.
The way it works is that there is a big basket of balls of
yarn, rejects from student spinners, and someone takes a ball, gives it to
someone else, thanks them for something, and keeps the end of the yarn so that
a strand of yarn connects thanker and thankee. The next person gives it to
someone else, and on and on, until everyone is connected by a visible web of
gratitude and yarn. Once the web starts filling in, it becomes impossible to
cross the circle to give the ball of yarn away, so a child ferries it around,
tying on new balls of yarn when the old ones finish. For three years Alexis had
that honor, but I’ve heard that two years ago she gave it to Aidan, since she
was getting too big to run under the yarn. Aidan is still little, but this year
he decided he didn’t want to attend the Circle, so he passed it on to my
nephew, Paul.
I’m proud to see a family member of mine getting involved in
that way.
Allen always starts the Circle, since it’s his show, and he
always thanks a member of his family first, in this case, Alexis, whom he
adores. She handed it back to him, to thank him for getting the pet ferrets
(whom she adores and actually had with her inside her shirt), so he had to find
someone else to thank. To my surprise, he picked me.
“Thank you for becoming my friend,” he said. “And for coming
back. We need you.”
“It’s good to be back,” I said. I could have thanked him in
return, but there was someone else I had to hand the yarn to, first. That early
in the proceedings, I didn’t have to use Paul as a go-between (and Allen hadn’t).
I strode across the circle to my wife.
I handed her the yarn, and I kissed her. And I mean I really kissed her. Everyone else hooted
and hollered, which of course was part of the point, and when I let her come up
for air she said “woa!” and everybody laughed and hooted again.
So, who did June give her yarn to? She gave it to me, of
course, and kissed me. And I mean she really
kissed me. Grabbed my ears for leverage and everything (scratched one of them
too, by accident, but I ignored that). More hooting and hollering. So, when she
let me come up for air, I gave the yarn back to her and kissed her again.
“I could get used to this!” I said, to make everybody laugh.
“Get a room!” someone shouted. More laughter.
“We can’t until February, she’s a novice!” I shouted back.
“Screw February,”
June said, with feeling, “I’m getting you alone tonight!” She spoke loudly
enough for everyone to hear her, and triggered more laughter.
She made as if she were going to give me the yarn again, just for effect, then pushed me
away, gently, and said “tonight.” That was for laughter, too of course, but it
wasn’t only for laughter—she kept her promise.
I returned to my place in the ring, carefully trailing all
three strands of yarn between us, and she gave the yarn to Kit and thanked her “for
introducing me to the other kind of magic.” June is learning stage magic from Allen,
but recently she’s started studying Wicca with Kit.
“What, no kiss?” asked Kit, and everyone laughed, and June
kissed her on the cheek. “Oo, I can see why he likes you!” she said,
afterwards, as though that chaste peck had been something else, and the laughter
kept going, while June giggled, embarrassed, into the back of her wrist. From
then on, though, Paul had to take up his duty as Yarn Ferry (Yarn Fairy?) and
kissing did not become a theme of the whole Circle.
Anywhere else but here, on campus, such kissing and joking
would have been out of place, especially with children present, but there is a
kind of innocence to sex here. It’s an innocence very carefully maintained; Kit
would never have joked about kissing me, for example, because it would not have
been a joke to me, and she knows it, and her respect for that boundary is
absolute.
A year ago, I don’t think June would have joked that way,
not with me in public, and certainly not with a woman. She has learned that
innocence. She has become of this place.
After the Gratitude Circle, we went right over to the
Thankyou Doll Build, which June found utterly charming. This year, the Doll was
made mostly of parsnips, with stalks of Setaria grass as hair and a couple of
bright orange, pre-maturely fallen sugar maple leaves as a skirt. Two blue
potatoes served as breasts, very long green beans for arms, and the thin tip of
a parsnip made for a very long nose.
“Those potatoes aren’t the same size,” remarked a young
yearling named Brad, as though the disparity were a comical design flaw. And
indeed, we had tried to find a matching pair and done the best with what we
had.
“Someone hasn’t seen enough women,” muttered Charlie, busily
affixing a pair of tiny, round chilies to the face with broken toothpicks. They
would be eyes. He wasn’t joking. Charlie
is celibate, but he’s not sexless, and he has no patience for straight men who
maintain unrealistic ideas about women’s bodies. Nobody laughed. Brad blushed.
Later, after we had woken the Thankyou Doll (Joyce Anne did
the honors, being a few months younger than my other nephew, Chris. The twins, Janus
and James were both there, so technically James was the youngest one present,
but the twins are late talkers), and given it the traditional tour, we sat down
to the Paleolithic Feast.
Charlie sat down next to me.
“I heard you had quite the Gratitude Circle today,” he said.
I blushed.
“I’m not criticizing,” he added, responding to my blush.
I relaxed a little.
“I heard you talked to Allen.”
He meant, I think, the conversation I had with Allen a week
or so ago about my status as a student.
“Welcome back,” he said.
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