The Saturn Cycle

 My nephew turned 28 on the 21^st, the day the light began its return journey. 28 is the Saturn cycle, the time it takes Saturn to complete its full cycle and returns to the place it was at your birth. In astrology, it marks the end of an important cycle of your life, which of course, marks the beginning of the next. 28 means the transition to full adulthood and that was certainly true for me. I turned 28 on July 28 on the last day of a year-long trip around the world, an extraordinary year that set the compass for the next Saturn cycle—personally, musically and culturally. Within three months of returning from that trip, I went back to teach music at The San Francisco School, where I taught for another 41 glorious years, got married and pregnant (well, technically, my wife got pregnant), began a family, eventually bought a house—you know the routine. 

The next cycle begins around 56 years old, the first steps into elderhood. And lo and behold, that was the year my Dad died, marking the end of our long life together and inviting me into the next stage where I was the elder in the family (which including taking care of my Mom who needed help). I was in the midst of some 17 years of international Orff teaching, enlarging my life’s purpose far beyond the gates of the school where I was still teaching.  In that period, I gave courses in The Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Scotland, Madrid, Barcelona, Vittoria, Canary Islands, Salzburg, France, in Singapore, Hanoi, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, in Australia, in South Africa, in Argentina, in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and some 15 states in the U.S.— in short, on every continent except Antarctica! (In this sheltered time, it feels exhausting just to think about it—how did I do it?!). 

 

The third cycle (fates willing) will begin somewhere around 84, suggesting that I’m around the halfway point of summarizing my life’s work and (hopefully), continuing to share it as health and pandemics allow. And then begins the turn into leave-taking, the preparation for the next world and the eventual status of Ancestor. 

 

This the long-winding version of saying to my nephew Damion:

 

“Happy birthday!”