The park near me stretches between the city and Lake Michigan – a wide swatch that has become increasingly green in the past few weeks. I’ve been walking there more often than I ever have this spring, pulled out of my apartment by the poultice of warm days and colors returning to the trees. Partly this is devotional, an act I’ve taken on to deepen my connection to Hermes. Partly it’s recuperative. This time last year my walks were growing shorter and further between, the park too crowded and uncertain to feel safe.
This year, a lot of things have changed. Strangers keep their distance more reliably, wear their masks – and I feel safer. That’s the crux of it. A year has passed. In that much time, things start to seem normal. The mind gets used to whatever situation presents itself, given half a chance. There’s still fear of the virus that moves among us, but it’s muted under habit and routine and all of the other tools I have. I can’t change this circumstance, this new goddess of death that moves among us. I have simply learned to deal with it.
Today, as I went walking in the park, I watched a kid ride his bike down a hill. It was a steep incline, and by the time he hit the bottom he was whooping with delight. It was impossible not to catch the joy coming off of him. It was contagious.
Tomorrow, I’ll drive across town and get the first part of my vaccine. I am afraid, but not of the medicine. Watching the world go green again, I’m realizing that what scares me is what comes after I am safe again.
A cluster of crocus flowers bloom in a canyon near near Drumheller, Alberta [Julianne Crombie, Wikimedia Commons, CC 4.0]
I have been thinking a lot about death. This in itself isn’t surprising. Death has run as a thick red undercurrent in every conversation I have had in the last year – mourning it, fearing it, avoiding it. This spring, as the vaccine has rolled out and all of the holidays of rebirth have passed by, the juxtaposition has highlighted that for me. There are too many myths and metaphors of death in the springtime.
For me, the painfully obvious one is the myth of Persephone. It has never been one of my favorites. As a kid, I thought it was too straight forward and backwards, a relic of a culture with different understandings of morality. Then, as it gained in popularity, I got tired of seeing new interpretations: musicals, comics, even erotica. Every retelling was different. The symbols seemed too flexible, too open to interpretation for me to grab onto.
This year, though, it keeps suggesting itself. I’m interested in Hades – the third son of Cronus, who rules the space below the earth as Zeus rules the air above it and Poseidon rules the water. In my understanding, Hades is not “death,” exactly. He is the god of things that come from under the ground, and things that go into it. I’m interested in how that interacts with Kore and her mother, who grow things from the ground. But mostly, this year, I’m interested in the pomegranate.
The bones of the story are simple, up until the pomegranate enters the picture. Hades rises up from the earth and captures young Kore. Not knowing where she is, Kore’s mother, Demeter, is inconsolable. She is the goddess of growing things, and in her misery the earth suffers. Eventually the Olympians intervene, sending Hermes to bring Kore back up into the world.
The twist, of course, is that he cannot. While in Hades’ realm, Kore has eaten six seeds from a pomegranate, and she can never return fully to her old life. After some arbitration, it is decided that she will spend six months of each year with Hades and six with Demeter – and thus the seasons are created.
The question, though, is why she ate the seeds.
A statue of a woman in Greek garb at Cleveland’s Lake View Cemetery [L. Babb]
This motivates every retelling of the myth I’ve ever seen. Romances say that she ate the seeds on purpose, choosing to tie herself to Hades out of love. Authors with a philosophical bent say that it’s symbolic, and wax poetic about the cultural meaning of that particular fruit. Erotica lingers over the fact that pomegranates are difficult to eat, leaving bloody stains on the hands and mouth, and the rough way that Hades pulled her into the dark would leave bruises, wouldn’t it?
What’s certain is that she did it on purpose, whether or not she knew the consequences. As I’ve heard it, she was young and beautiful Kore before entering into the earth, and upon leaving, she was Persephone, wife of Hades and queen of his realm. Taking those seeds into herself changed everything else.
For me, this year, this is a myth about trauma – the ways it is inflicted upon us, the ways we move through it while it is happening, the ways we make it parts of ourselves in order to live again, the ways it manifests throughout our lives. I think of the summer I spent in my apartment, missing my loved ones, bones heavy with fear. Soon my body will learn that it is no longer in danger. As I prepare to move forward, I wonder what unexpected weight I’ll be carrying with me. What seeds have I swallowed, here? How will they grow?
Autumn fruit of the Palestinian pomegranate on the trees of Khalil Rahman [ديما مهدي ابوزينة, Wikimedia Commons, CC 4.0]
Knowing that something is waiting for me doesn’t stop me from moving, but it slows me. It was hard to make the appointment, hard to convince myself that I could want it. As my friends shared tips and compared Pfizer to Moderna, I felt myself freezing, avoiding the topic. I told myself it was regret, knowing that I was in a later phase and wouldn’t be able to celebrate at the same time. I told myself it was exhaustion. I wasn’t exactly lying. Even now, planning my trip to the grocery store where I’ll get my vaccine, I tell myself that showing up late, not getting it, will still work out if traffic is bad. There’s always another chance. I can always stay a little longer.
This week, on the first afternoon that broke 80 degrees, my partner and I biked out into the biggest field we could find. It was filled with people – all at a distance, all basking in the spring. We pulled down our masks and talked, and then, for the first time in a year, I fell asleep warmed by the sun.
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