I was born in the Year of the Snake. In the Chinese zodiac, a Snake year comes around every 12 years, with January 2025 heralding the start of this one.
I'm neither Chinese nor astrology-focused, but I still take note of certain beliefs that have been around for a minute, like since the 5th century B. C.
I digress.
I asked my former husband to leave our home in 2013, also a Snake year. Coincidentally, my snake sightings back then came fast and furious: A black snake as thick as my arm coiling up the topiary on our front porch, its tongue flicking in and out to reach the three turquoise eggs in a robin's nest. Or one sliding smoothly through the thick grass of our yard as I narrowly missed stepping on it, and another fat, five-footer sunning himself on the driveway.
They also appeared in my dreams--I'd be captive in a roomful of writhing snakes--and thrash around 'til I awoke in a slick sweat, head buzzing with anxiety in my pitch dark bedroom.
I told Paul, my trusted therapist, that this must be a sign of a sad and ominous future, that my life was surely encapsulated in the cunning slyness of the snake AND the end of my marriage, all wrapped up into one fiery, serpentine ball. He smiled, as he often did when I went straight to the doomsday theory.
"Snakes are actually a symbol of renewal--shedding the old skin that no longer fits to produce a new one," he told me. "You've seen the medical pole with the snake encircling it?" He explained that the rod represents Asclepius, the ancient Greek god of medicine.
With that bit of good news, my shoulders began to relax. And when 2014 came round, the Year of the Horse, I was ready to ride the hell outta dodge. I left the Midwest and headed straight to my desert escape for five months to renew myself, shedding the labels of wife and Mrs. that I no longer claimed.
By the time I returned home in May, I was tanned and somewhat clearer in my mind about what brought down my world as I knew it.
But the wind came out of my sails when cool spring weather greeted me after months of CA sunshine--plus, my washing machine was on the blink. While I was away for the winter, it appeared a clever mouse crawled eight feet up the outer wall of my house and through the dryer vent, chewed a hole in the flexible exhaust duct, scampered out into the laundry room and scrambled up the side of the washer like a Peruvian Sherpa--and proceeded to build a nest in the machine's control panel. He happily chewed the wiring, adding bits of dryer lint to it, until his home was as cozy and comfy as a high-end condo. The day the repair guy came, he helped me set the trap that ended the mouse's idyllic existence.
Turns out the little guy was a sucker for peanut butter.
By Memorial Day, thinking all was well in the wild kingdom, I was barefoot and loading clothes into the machine when I saw a movement to my left, just under the laundry room door. I carefully pushed the door open wider, and saw a snake like an "S", a gray diamond pattern on its back, dart toward my foot. I took off running through the house, screaming, until I realized if I lost that thing in the house, I could no longer live there.
I raced to the garage and got a shoe box and a shovel.
The next few minutes in that laundry room were pure agony and ecstasy -- the snake somehow had my ex's face on it's triangular head --and with every chop, I was one step closer to removing both of them from my life.
The snake never had a chance. The bloodbath ending with my prey in about 10 hacked-up pieces, I called the non-emergency number at the police station and asked for animal control. In my suburban community where the worst that can happen is a cat up a tree, the officer came right over.
Still shaking, I told him the snake was clearly poisonous with that diamond pattern on its back. "You might think so," he said, calmly cleaning up the crime scene with a few squirts of household cleaner and some paper towels. "You actually killed a young black snake; that pattern is to trick its enemies into thinking it's poisonous."
He handed me a card in case I had another animal emergency and went on his way.
I'm happy to say my snake sightings ended about the same time the divorce was final.
This year as spring arrived amid a riot of pink and lipstick red blooms at my desert home, I thought back to what I've learned since the days I snuffed out the lives of those unfortunate laundry room visitors. I'm able to welcome 2025 for what it is: A time to embrace the ways I've filed down my sharp edges of anger and resentment from a decade ago.
Now when a situation makes me feel like I'm wearing a sweater that's too tight, I stop and say, "No," which in my world is a complete sentence.
Circling back to the past gives me confirmation, making it easy to see I've shed what no longer defines me -- the husband, my marriage, our forever home and a naiveté about just how broken my life was. I was as blind then as the months before my cataract surgery.
Developing new skin, however, comes with a caveat; it feels thin and fragile at first.
But history tells me this skin is really tough as a boot.
So with each new year, snake or otherwise, I try on the very thing that shields my bones and blood and breath to see if it still fits.
And if it doesn't, I can calmly make changes for what's ahead -- or run and find a shovel.