Somehow it snuck up on me this year. I bought egg dye and a bag of pre-filled eggs earlier this week, then on Saturday realized we didn’t have any Ostara baskets or much candy or fun stuff like that. We went shopping and bought seed packets, felt baskets in bright colors, chocolate rabbits, and a box of festive spring cupcake mix and frosting with sprinkles. By the time we got home, it was late, so we filled the baskets and moved the celebration to Sunday.

However, I woke up grumpy Sunday morning, and in no mood for silliness or egg-dyeing. I made the cupcakes, but I handed the baskets around with no ceremony, and resisted anything to do with my actual life. I spent most of the day morosely watching HGTV and picking paint and appliances for the house we don’t own quite yet. (We made an offer on a bank-owned house, went back and forth with the bank once already, and are due to hear an acceptance tomorrow.)

I would say it’s not a big deal to have one down day, but it seems different when the day in question is a holiday. There will only be one Ostara 2010, and I stood a strong chance of missing it, candy and cupcakes notwithstanding. But, I reasoned to myself, I spent these last two days in an interminable limbo, worrying about the house, just waiting for the balance to tip one way or the other. Surely that’s one thing equinoxes are about.

Then the negative self-talk started up: On one hand, it seems like I could grow up to be a shitty priestess if I can’t get past this morass and do what’s gotta be done. I need to learn to put my personal crises aside, just long enough to get the ritual done the right way at the right time, if I can’t deal with my crises beforehand. (There are different schools of thought on ritual timing. I’m not taking a side in this post. I just know that if I chose to put this off another day, I’d continue putting it off until I felt like it was too late, and I’d wind up not doing the ritual at all.) On the other hand, I’m only a priestess for myself right now; no one else’s ritual experience is hanging on my ability to get through my brain muck. When my covenmates are actually present and waiting for me, it’s a no-brainer to say “This needs to wait until later,” center myself, and refocus on the ritual. When I’m talking about theoretical future covenmates or students, it’s harder to understand that tonight’s solitary ritual paves the way for solid, regular group ritual next year. I go back and forth between thinking “it’s OK if I can’t do it, if I softball this one and write a post about feeling the seasons change instead of holding ritual, since I’m just by myself” and “if I can’t do it by myself, how do I know I can do it for someone else?”

Tonight was hard. Some sabbats are super-fun, all-day group events, and it’s easy to get into the spirit of things and look forward to that night’s ritual. I tried, this time, but I couldn’t summon a whole group’s energy by myself. My family is supportive, but they’re not my coven, and the two structures don’t work in the same ways. And all day today I had been eaten up with worry about this house, even though we won’t hear until sometime tomorrow and nothing I could do today would make tomorrow come sooner.

Nothing, that is, except hold this ritual. It’s funny; with my solitary rituals, there’s a point at which I realize I’ll be holding this ritual, and I might as well get on with it. It’s like finding yourself awake earlier than you meant, and knowing that even if you lay there all morning, you won’t get back to sleep, so you might as well get up. So I got up, pulled out the altar box, and held ritual.

Turn the Wheel; feel the balance begin to shift; tip things so they fall the way I want. It helped. And the baskets and the cupcakes feel like they had a point, after all.

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