limbo
In Catholic theology, the term limbo refers to a space in between heaven and hell: when I was a little girl, my mom described it as a sort of nowhere space in the afterlife while you await judgment. In more general usage, however, being in limbo refers to being in a place of uncertainty, a sort of will-it-or-won’t-it state of being. I suspect the word is etymologically related to the concept of liminal space or liminality: the feeling of standing at the threshold of something about to happen.
Limbo is the time between finishing your exams and finding out how you did.
Or between high school graduation and going off to college/starting your first real job.
Or between knowing who won a presidential election and Inauguration Day. (Ahem.)
My point is, limbo involves a feeling of uncomfortable anticipation. An awkwardness. A not-entirely-knowing. And while I usually feel vaguely in limbo during the week between Christmas and New Year, I realized this weekend that I’ve been feeling in limbo for a while now.
Part of it could be that we don’t have our Christmas decorations up like we usually do by this time of year, but we’re waiting for Alex to come home from college to hang everything. But it also might be this new life of traveling to the UK and back more often, knowing that at some point, the UK will very likely be our permanent home. Or it could be that I turned in the last in-depth round of edits last week for my new book, but it won’t be released until Fall 2025 — a long time of waiting to find out how it will be received. Hell, even my hair is in a weird in-between growing-out stage.
Limbo.
But I come from the land of limbo: the limbo dance was invented in Trinidad and Tobago. Far from being the simplistic childhood game on playgrounds, Trinidadian limbo involves the dancer going under an increasingly lowered horizontal bar, while bending backward to an impossible degree. In true limbo dancing, no part of the dancer’s body is allowed to touch the bar, and only the dancer’s feet can touch the ground. And sometimes the bar is set on fire. When you watch an authentic limbo performance, there’s a moment when you catch your breath: the dancer slows completely down, and you wonder, will she make it? Will she touch the bar? Will she collapse? Will she burn herself?
And then — and then! — the euphoria when she makes it through! The celebration!
As I was thinking about limbo this weekend, it occurred to me: aside from the obvious hours of practice, even the most accomplished limbo dancer slows all the way down to make it under a bar inches off the floor. The slowing down is part of the skill. The concentration and focus on the immediate moment is part of the skill. It’s how you make it through the limbo challenge, in dance or in life.
And then — the celebration!
So to that end, I’ll be taking the rest of the year off, to slow down, and to concentrate and focus on what’s immediately in front of me: my family, and the holidays. I’ll be back on Monday, January 6th, hopefully rejuvenated and ready to make as much light and love with this wonderful community as I can.
And so my wish for all of us during this in-between time: that we all take moments to slow down, concentrate and focus on the light around us.
Happy holidays, lovely people, from our house to yours.
a reminder of cadence.