Thursday

Welcome, December! Can I give you an award for trying the hardest under adverse circumstances? Dark days -- but so much light and color in our homes! Cold weather sweeping through -- and still there's the hope of snow! People singing, music playing, bakers firing up the ovens, mail delivery with delightful messages from friends who may be far, or may otherwise not write you and yet, here we are, updating each other, because we care.

I know not everyone celebrates Christmas. I live with a person who doesn't celebrate Christmas. And I myself pick and choose what from this holiday fits within my worldview. [My religious beliefs are amply documented in Like a Swallow, so if you have read it, you'll know where I stand on those issues. A hint: just because I come from a country that to this day has 93% of its people self identifying as Catholic (NYT, November 2022), and that's a drop from the 99% of Poles describing themselves as such in my youth, and just because I love listening to O Holy Night, and I was moved to tears at age twelve by the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, it does not mean that I am one who would ever complain that Christmas has become too, well, secular. I truly believe that people should celebrate the holiday, any holiday, however they want to. If for some it means crazy shopping and holiday partying and singing jingle bells all day long -- why, isn't that better than losing yourself in the gloom of a month that is, well, rather gloomy? I write as a Pole-turned-Wisconsinite. Gloom, I tell you!]

So, welcome, December! You are at once dark and gloomy, but, too, the most deliberately colorful, delightful, and playful month of the year. (Well, for me anyway.)

I wake early, because Ed opened the door and "accidentally" let the cats into the bedroom. I do not like cats in the bedroom at night. I do not sleep well with cats in the bedroom at night. So I growl and fein deep displeasure, though honestly, it's the nudge I needed to get up and get going.

He asked, as he does each morning -- what do you have to do today? I tick off the list: animal care, tree care, tidy the downstairs, mail first batch of (international) cards, grocery delivery, bakery visit to celebrate our return to normal eating, first wrapping job, Snowdrop sitting, daughter chat, dinner prep.

In other words a pretty quiet day? -- he says. 

I forgive him his comment because when he comes down for breakfast, and I turn off the holiday music -- an automatic gesture acknowledging the fact that Ed loves quiet, he stops me: you like it. who was that -- Frank Sinatra? And it all ends when, December 26? You want it on, you should keep it on.

Sweet, sweet Ed. 

I pick up a bouncy Snowdrop. But she is not a girl who wants to spend any time outside these days. She allows me one photo...

And in she goes.

A friend of mine sent her a little advent calendar card and she gets right to it. A December 1st prerogative. 

And in the evening, I drop her at her Thursday activity (Mathnasium, which she loves) and continue to her home for a visit with her mom. The funny moment of the day comes when I lose the car keys at their place. Not in my bag, not in my pockets, not on the car floor (Ed's suggestion), not on their floor, not on the grass outside (searched with a flashlight), not under the car. Gone! But how could that be?

Many, many searches later, I find them. They had slipped out of my pocket, down between the cushions of the armchair in which I had been sitting. 

At the farmhouse, as I chop veggies in the kitchen for a supper of a hearty soup, I think -- maybe Ed was right. Maybe it was, in the end, a pretty quiet day. Colorful, musical, and busy. In a quiet sort of way.

(A much better place for cats to sleep, rather than the bed upstairs, don't you think? To the left -- meet Friendly. To the right -- Unfriendly. So named because she once was that. These days, Friendly adores Ed and Unfriendly adores me, and they're both, like the rest of the cats, terribly spooked by strange noises and strange people.)