I always pretend to love January, sidling up to him and saying he is beautiful in ways that simpering June could never be. I want to have learned to love him. I tell myself he is an adult taste. After all, I truly adore December, and February has attractions, brevity for one. January pretends to believe me but he sees through my smiles. Janus is the god of beginnings, of doors that open, and doors that close. He knows I am afraid. And, inevitably, he comes around one gray morning and slices an icicle up my veins.

And then, like so many, I see the abyss and I know it was always there. I know I have cheerily pretended not to see it, selling myself to hope, the cruelest of illusions.

On days like this, people reach out to me with words in the places where I hide. They say they love me and part of me believes them. Part of me can’t believe them. I’m on the other end of the telescope, and I know mine is the true view. They are miles away, on the other side. They are kind and want to reach me, but I can’t let them in. I want to say “forgive me” but I can’t. I war with Janus, that god of many faces, and there is nothing of June about me.

It is all I can do to pick up a ringing phone or hit a few, ungrateful keys, and, for that, I dislike myself and January all the more. On a day like this, I could knock over all the blocks with one swat: I could unbuild everything I have built over the years. Janus always claimed to be passive, to have nothing to do with what came in or out of doors or gates. It was nothing to him if the city was invaded.

On days like these, the last thing I need is my usual work, my writing, my reading, my existential questions. In January, I’m always sick, all month. I have days of elation that lift me out so that I walk on pure air--and then slide even further down the slope on the following day. But I never learn to expect this. I put on no shield. Every year, I think it will be different. Having sailed through autumnal days that bend others to their knees, I somehow think I have become an expert skier and will ride on powder like a diamond, on through until March.

Nothing complex would reach me on days like this. So God sends the unlikely. At treadmill time, I grab a CD I would normally not choose: Amy Grant, Heart in Motion. They used to play the songs from this CD in the supermarkets in Australia; hearing them made me feel at home in strange aisles. And now somehow the words of “That’s What Love is For” come out of the past and give me the tears and fuller remembrance I need. They take me out of myself. I need that most.

"Sometimes we make it harder than it is We'll take a perfect night And fill it up with words we don't mean Dark sides best unseen And we wonder why we're feeling this way. Sometimes I wonder if we really feel the same Why we can be unkind Questioning the strongest of hearts That's when we must start Believing in the one thing that has gotten us this far."

Chorus "That's what love is for To help us through it That's what love is for Nothing else can do it. Melt our defenses Bring us back to our senses Give us strength to try once more Baby, that's what love is for."

"Sometimes I see you And you don't know I am there And I'm washed away by emotions I hold deep down inside Getting stronger with time It's living through the fire And holding on we find"

Chorus "Believing in the one thing That has gotten us this far That's what love is for To help us through it That's what love is for Nothing else can do it. Round off the edges Talk us down from the ledges Give us strength to try once more Baby, that's what love is for That's what love is for. That's what love is for Melt our defenses Bring us back to our senses Give us strength to try once more Baby, that's what love is for. That's what love is for. That's what love is for."


It’s the 28th. February in sight. And once, it was said, Janus loved a city and punished its enemies by raining boiling water down on them from all of the city’s fountains. So, they made their way in, but they didn’t destroy.

posted by Sandy at 5:35 PM