Be a Bell Ringing

We Saved Elizabeth Street Garden!

For a few years now, I’ve been closely following and financially supporting the legal fight to save Elizabeth Street Garden from being closed down and turned into a development site for affordable housing. Though the community space is a bit far from my neighborhood, I try to visit seasonally to enjoy it while it’s still there (just in case). Tonight, I visited again for their Winter Solstice Celebration.

I did invite friends to join me tonight, but as I texted them only an hour or so before the event, they couldn’t come, which is perfectly okay. Having no one to go with has never stopped me from going anywhere.

So I’m here dictating voice to text as I wait in line for free hot chocolate. We gathered in a circle and rang bells to ring in the new year. There was a nice comment about the ongoing struggle to save Elizabeth Street Garden from demolition, and an announcement that we had succeeded.

Thanks were given to the patrons and the lawyer, and it was really wonderful. Over a loudspeaker, they played a poem collaboratively written by a group of writers in the neighborhood. The trees and statues around the grounds were strung up with string lights, glittering rapidly and then slowly like fireflies in the summer. Wind chimes hung from the branches so even the cold winter wind could join in on the bell ringing.

This is one of those spaces in the city where I truly feel like I’m surrounded by real people, real community, pets, children, poets, musicians, hot chocolate enjoyers. The event organizers lit a bonfire in the corner, and people gathered around it for warmth. There’s something primal in this small community gathering, something that feels very natural and correct and healing. It was BYOB—bring your own bell. I brought the dollar store jingle bells that I had hung up on the front door of my apartment. Some people had brass bells with a handle, others brought other varieties of jingle bells. I wonder how many people already had jingle bells or hand bells, or how many people purchased bells specifically for this night. I wonder how many people reused the same bell from last year. I’m going to keep these jingle bells for next year, just in case.

They ran out of hot chocolate by the time I got to the front of the line, but it’s okay because I got a free gingerbread cookie that was actually really delicious. White frosting and sprinkles coated his chest, and the dough was soft and sweet.

Naturally, I went to the bonfire to eat my cookie near the warmth. I stood first on the outskirts, then slowly inched closer as people shifted and moved and walked away. Soon, I was chit-chatting with some girls next to me, talking about Prometheus and how magical fire was, how he was punished for gifting it to us.

One girl asked me, “What’s your favorite story about a man getting punished?” That was a great question. It made me laugh. I told her that I’ve been thinking about Sisyphus a lot. Her name was Sandy. As we talked about mythical stories, we watched people fold pieces of paper and throw wishes into the fire. She turned to me and asked if I wanted to throw a wish into the fire, because she had some paper and pens in her purse. I very gleefully accepted that offering.

We had previously spoken about the 12 Yule Wishes: a Winter Solstice tradition where you write out 12 wishes on pieces of paper, and then one by one, during the first 12 nights after the solstice, you take one at random and burn it in a fire, bury it in the ground, flush it, or get rid of it somehow. And then once you’ve reached the last one, you look at what it says, and then you kind of use that as a guiding light, or an anchor, for the rest of the year, and that’s the wish that you will focus on manifesting. I like to believe that all the other wishes do come true when you bury them or burn them.

So when she gave me a piece of paper ripped from the back of her notebook and a pen, I wrote out 12 lines of present-tense statements of things that, whether they are already true or not, I hope will be true in the next year. I individually tore them into even strips. I might add it was really satisfying how I didn’t accidentally rip through the words. I picked one at random to fold, and threw it into the fire. Then somebody turned to me and said it sparked when I threw it, and that means it came true.

After standing by the fire for some time, warming my hands with my gloves off, I decided to go back to the shed to see if the hot chocolate had been refilled. Sandy came with me, as we were already exchanging contact information. The second batch of hot chocolate was also all gone, but that’s okay. I don’t need hot chocolate. I got a gingerbread cookie, a new friend, and to be a bell ringing on the Winter Solstice.