This time of year always carries memory for me.
Today, on a date that was already marked quietly in my calendar, a robin arrived in the garden.
He wasn’t dramatic. He didn’t stay long. He simply landed on the fence while I was planting bulbs — small hopeful things pressed into cold soil — and looked in my direction as if to say, I see you.
I stood very still.
There is something about robins in winter light that feels like a whisper rather than a shout. A presence without spectacle.
And in that moment, I felt the familiar mixture of things: warmth, ache, gratitude, longing. Joy and sadness sitting side by side, neither cancelling the other out.
Grief is an ever-changing companion.
It does not leave. It shifts.
Some days it is sharp and loud.
Some days it sits quietly beside me while I plant bulbs.
Some days it arrives in the shape of a small bird on a fence.
Jo is not here in the way she once was.
But she is here in memory. In shared laughter that still warms my chest. In the stories that continue to shape me. In the joy that refuses to disappear just because she did.
I am learning that joy does not replace grief.
It sustains it.
Or perhaps it sustains me.
An Unplanned Card
This card wasn’t part of the original Turning of the Year plan.
The series began as a lunar rhythm — a gentle walk through moon phases and seasonal thresholds. But this one arrived unexpectedly, outside the structure, on a day already held by memory.
It felt right to make space for it.
Grief does not always follow the calendar. Sometimes it steps outside the pattern and asks to be acknowledged.
So this is an extra card. A visitor. A pause within the wheel.
The Making
The robin began as a photograph — round, upright, steady against a soft winter background.
I sketched him first, simplifying the form and finding the balance of the body and the tilt of the head.
Then I worked onto the gel plate, using the process I’ve been learning recently. The first pull was textured and imperfect. Some areas lifted cleanly, others held on. I allowed the “visual noise” to remain — those layered marks that speak of process and patience.
I worked back into it with paint and acrylic paint pens, deepening the red breast, strengthening the outline, adding small flashes of yellow and blue.
The blue marks weren’t planned. They came instinctively. A kind of halo. A vibration. Something felt rather than seen.
Like memory.
Robin – Holding Both
This card sits slightly outside the lunar rhythm, but perhaps that is fitting.
Life does not unfold in neat cycles alone. It interrupts. It arrives. It asks us to pause.
The robin feels steady. Upright. Balanced.
Holding both.
Joy and ache.
Presence and absence.
What was, and what remains.
The bulbs are in the ground now. They will rise when they are ready.
The robin may visit again, or he may not.
But the love remains — steady, round, grounded — like that small bird, balanced on the edge of winter.
Intention
To stand steady in memory and presence.
Practice
Recall one joyful memory.
Let it fill your chest.
Stay with it for a few breaths.
Ena Green Designs 