Christmas Calm

 This is my Christmas tree. Today is January 4. The tree has been up since the day after Thanksgiving. As usual.

As you can see, there are gifts waiting, for my sisters and mostly for my grandkids. 

I like looking at these gifts, ready and waiting for the children.

There are no spectacular gifts this year; at least I don't think so. They had no burning desires for anything special, except Warren wanted a real robot. I left that to Santa.

These are gifts that say "I love you." and maybe even "the silliest things make me think of you." Special for no other reason than that.

I had an opportunity to take their gifts to them on Christmas Eve, but they weren't wrapped. And they would be on Christmas break from their schools. Surely we'd somehow get together in that time.

But it did not happen. 

Life got in the way, with all its complications and contradictions. Illness, wellness, work, cars, the current pandemic. (Current for nearly two years now. That's a long time for a "right now" event, don't you think?) All sorts of stuff; the 'stuff' of daily living. 

Life got in the way.

Once upon a time, this would have infuriated me, or insulted me, or any of many intense negative emotional reactions. 

But I'm not mad.

They'll get them sometime.

When life allows.

In the meantime, I can look at the gifts and be pleased that I have gifts for them. There have been times -- many, many times -- when that couldn't didn't happen. 

I can wait for the giving. 

I can wait for the children.

I can wait for life to return to normal, or something approaching that.

Life will never be normal again.

Too much has changed.

But love doesn't.

The joy of giving doesn't.

That is the normal I can wait for.

First? Frost of Fall

 Tonight's the night!

Put on the socks, wrap a quilt around my head and shoulders, wrap my hands around a hot cuppa (for me, coffee) and sit on the porch.

It rained today, so the light is shimmering.

The lowering temperature has the air smelling so clean.

The clean smell of falling leaves and fading greens; of pollen-heavy goldenrod and foxtails, and all those plants. Not so heavy, tonight, the pollen, because of the earlier, settling rain.

of long darkened evenings and darkening days and long nights ahead when warmth is the best aroma and even in our electric or gas or other technology age, the scent of warmth calls to mind woodfires and cooked food and family.

Too soon the coming cold will be tiresome.

Too soon,the wet, dark evenings will be an annoyance.

We'll be over it.

the plants will die, the greens will brown, and the trees will be bare.

But for now, for tonight, we can enjoy the changes in the air.

We can cherish the passing of the seasons.

We can await the coming hours of darkness knowing that, one way or another, the light will come again.

Eventually.

And the cuppa warms the hands, the nose, and the heart as surely as the socks and quilts warm the body