Jo Graham - Winter: Rituals to Thrive in the Dark Cycle of the Saeculum

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

Winter: Rituals to Thrive in the Dark Cycle of the Saeculum 2020 by Jo Graham.

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First e-book edition 2020

E-book ISBN: 9780738764115

Cover design by Shannon McKuhen

Editing by Samantha Lu Sherratt

Interior art by the Llewellyn Art Department

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Graham, Jo (Jo Wyrick), author.

Title: Winter : rituals to thrive in the dark cycle of the saeculum / Jo Graham.

Description: FIRST EDITION. | Woodbury, Minnesota : Llewellyn Publications

2020. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020000797 (print) | LCCN 2020000798 (ebook) | ISBN

9780738763712 (paperback) | ISBN 9780738764115 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Rites and ceremonies. | WinterMiscellanea.

Classification: LCC BL595.W55 G73 2020 (print) | LCC BL595.W55 (ebook) |

DDC 299/.94dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000797

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000798

Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

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Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

2143 Wooddale Drive

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.llewellyn.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

for my granny, Elma, who stood here before me

Contents

: CHARTING OUR COURSE

: A Sailor on the Seas of Time

: Seasons of the Saeculum

: Last Winter

: Last WinterBroadening the Picture

: Where Were You When Winter Began?

: The Gathering Storm

: Clearing Discord

: Preserving the Seed

: Havens in the Storm

: Your Team of Heroes

: The Storm Wanes

: Returning from Battle

: After Long Winter

: Peace

: Breaking Spring

Introduction:
Charting Our Course

Chapter 1

A Sailor on the Seas of Time

The morning of September 11, 2001, I was supposed to go to Washington, DC. I had planned to fly out of Raleigh-Durham Airport, a smaller regional airport with little security, but my partner was squirrely about it. She had a bad feeling, she said, and that was so rare for her that I agreed to take the train instead. At 8:30 a.m. I was in my office checking my email, my luggage beside my desk, ready to take a cab to the train station in an hour and a half.

You know what happened next. Breaking news bulletins, the phone ringing off the hook, everyone under the sun calling and comparing notes. My coworker came in. He was trying to get information, but there wasnt much. A plane had hit the World Trade Center. Maybe it was two planes. What in the world was happening?

I called my friend Liz in DC, the one with whom I was supposed to be staying that night. Should I still come? What was up? Liz and I were talking and then suddenly she said, Oh God.

What? I said.

Somethings wrong, she said. I heard a boom and out my window I can see a plume of smoke rising from down toward the mall. And through the phone I heard it: every siren in DC blasting, every emergency vehicle tearing down the street outside her window, the old civil defense sirens shouting out their warnings of nuclear war or air raid. A plane had hit the Pentagon.

We stayed on the phone another few minutes. I have to go, Liz said. A police officer just came in and said we all have to go to the air-raid shelter in the basement. Bye.

My coworker had found a TV. We watched Tom Brokaw. My partner called. Are you still going to DC?

If the train is running, Im going, I said. Its politics. Its important.

She swore up and down, but she didnt try to talk me out of it. But they halted the trains. They grounded the planes.

My coworker and I watched the towers fall. I worried about Karen, a friend who worked a few blocks away.

At last, we had to stop. He took the TV back into his office. The phone stopped ringing. Im going down to the sandwich shop, he said. Do you want anything? It was one oclock.

Sure, I said. I didnt know how it had gotten so late. I went in my office and closed the door. I stood in the corner window of this old office building, looking out toward the airport at something that I had never seen in my lifetimea planeless sky. It stretched blue and perfect, not a single contrail, not a single flash of silver on approach to Raleigh-Durham. From the seventh floor I could always see planes.

And so I looked down, not at the bright sky but at the other buildings. There was the Department of Revenue building, its art deco faade proclaiming it had been built in the thirties. My granny had worked there, one of many women bookkeepers. Had she stood at that window on the morning of December 8, 1941, that cold Monday after Pearl Harbor? I could almost see her there. I could see her standing in the window, her hair in braids across the top of her head, a black dress because it was winter, her hands on the sill as she looked out across two blocks and sixty years. Could she see me? Could she imagine the daughter of her son, who was then a college freshman, looking back? No; she was thinking of him. She was thinking of her freshman son and war. She could not imagine me here saying, Granny, its ok. He wont be fine but hell come through it and there will be two granddaughters and right now youre widowed only a year and your heart is in pieces, but you will love again and hell be a really super guy, and I promise your son will live. You will do things in the next ten years you cant imagine, and youll do your best to save the world, and someday I will be looking back at you, two blocks and sixty years away.