Fragments From Floyd

January is the month named after the Roman god of portals--Janus, the two-faced good who looks toward the future and back toward days just past. And yet I find in my life, the sense of crossing that threshold in the year happens earlier than that winter month. It often comes to me when the leaves have fallen but it isn't quite winter yet, and I turn inward in anticipation of those months of short, brutish days when life comes indoors.

"Janus is the Roman god of gates and doors (janua), beginnings and endings, and hence represented with a double-faced head, each looking in opposite directions. He was worshipped at the beginning of the harvest time, planting, marriage, birth, and other types of beginnings, especially the beginnings of important events in a person's life. Janus also represents the transition between primitive life and civilization, between the countryside and the city, peace and war, and the growing-up of young people."

My semester will end soon, and because of staffing changes at the university, I may never teach this 'environmental' biology class again. I'll not be teaching at all from December until August and life here over winter will take on new rhythms and a new center that I cannot fully know until it arrives. I may become involved again in my all-but-abandoned profession of physical therapy and will know about that change soon. And our son is getting married in less than a month and there is an ending and beginning here that Janus would surely notice.

So, pardon my ruminations. As I look back over fragments past, this turning inward happens to one degree or another every fall. This farewell for our son, from the fall of 2002, seemed especially fitting to the mood of the morning, and I add the link more for the purposes of tying my thoughts together than to expect readers to follow me into the wayback machine--though some of you who are experiencing "the growing up of young people" may appreciate where I am this morning.