standing at the crossroads

a full moon and an eclipse last night puts me in mind of hecate, goddess of witches, crossroads, and garbage. she is traditionally celebrated after the first harvest festivals because her preferred offerings are compostable trash. she is the Original Recycler, the one who turns old stuff into something new.

tomorrow my youngest daughter begins high school. tomorrow my oldest daughter will be seven weeks away from her due date. tomorrow i will begin the third draft of my new novel. today i will work on the white wooden chairs i brought from my grandmother's kitchen.

my dear husband was appalled i wanted to bring them, let alone do anything with them. they were filthy, covered in the same greasy pall that layers all my grandmother's things. "they're garbage," he said. "don't even bring them in the house... leave them in the garage with the trash."

i sanded and scraped them yesterday, sheering away years of paint, layers of grime and dust and history, imagining as i did that i was also dissolving years of anger and acrimony in the scream of my sander. i forgot to wear a mask - which was dumb because the paint was old and most likely full of lead. i saw colors i didn't expect to see - dark blue, bright red, leaden green, startling sunflower yellow.

today i will put a new coat of paint on them, a very pale green to match the little table i painted and stenciled for my grandmother's new place. i might even stencil a strip of blue checkerboard across the backs so that they match the design on the table.

today i will dedicate my work to hecate, goddess of the liminal times and places, where things are not quite one thing, and not quite yet another, of endings and beginnings, of twilight and of dawn. tomorrrow i will begin to refinish a dresser, a mirror and chest of drawers for my first grandchild. i will take the "new" table and chairs to my grandmother, and i will thank and bless the Goddess for this most amazing view.