Calling all January babies – three quarters of my household. And my twin. This one’s full of questions and it’s for you, happiest of birthdays.
Candling:
V. intr. The habit of taking stock of your life on the occasion of your birthday – letting it serve as a kind of internal referendum so far – as if you’re standing before a parole board that convenes once a year to adjudicate your release from childhood. (Ref. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, John Koenig)
Last week, I got a letter from the HM Courts & Tribunals Service. It was a jury summons for this spring. They sent me a grainy Guide to Jury Service, explaining that about 200,000 names are randomly chosen from the electoral register every year. My chance to play a tiny, critically random role in “a vital public duty” had arrived.
Someone much wiser than me once said, “Spend time with people who understand you, who understand your context.” (Ref. Search Engine, Is there a sane way to use the internet?)
I wonder if the defendant’s full context will be clear. Whether they’ll be granted the liberty (or luck) of an objective, empathetic turn out. First day visions: grey carpets, black trousers, pamphlets, passports; security cameras, strange formalities.
Back in our own, hypothetical courtrooms – in the ambivalent, low light of January – will the candling boards judge us worthy of adult validation? And ‘on release’ is adulthood really, so different from childhood – exploring, sometimes destroying, and at the end of it all, turning back, scanning the horizon, and seeking home again.
the meantime:
n. The moment of realisation that your future you is never going show up, which forces the role to fall upon the understudy, the gawky kid who spent years mouthing their lines in the wings before being shoved into the glare of your life, which is already well into its second act. (Ref. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, John Koenig)
Who is to judge? Just yourself and those close enough to know your context.
Beyond that, it’s just a roll of the dice.