A Quiet Winter Season

These have been days wrapped around holidays, celebrations, and observances of the natural turning of the seasons.  As we've passed through the winter solstice,  Chanuka, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and approached the beginning of the new year, I have found myself not knowing what I might say.

I am aware that it is the custom to share greetings and good wishes of the season -- and I do.

I am aware that, culturally, this spate of winter festivals engenders a shared mood of joy and merriment, and that we really are all expected to join in the singing and gifting and feasting.  To hold oneself apart from all of that is seen as, well, Grinchy.

I am aware that, as we turn the calendars from December, 2011 to January, 2012, the sense of having a fresh start is compelling; that the making of resolutions is our traditional way of acknowledging the simultaneous acts of reviewing the year just past, and anticipating the year yet to come.

Day after day, I find myself looking at this blog, and wondering what it is that I can say about all of that to those who read here...

• Would it be good to recount the pleasures of gifts given and received?  Surely, we have done that, and felt happy and amazed at the abundance of good things in our lives.
• Would talking about the pleasant afternoon spent in the company of the youngest of our, now grown, children, convey how very special that one has come to be in the life of our family?
• What about the bounty of holiday movies that we've been to see?  We've enjoyed a remarkable crop of intelligent, provocative, and thoroughly enjoyable films lately.
• Does it make any sense to talk about the luxury of time together?  The days of the winter break from school have coincided with the time that T had off of work to recover from her surgery, and so we have had a rare space when we were under very few obligations outside our own little household.
• Is it even possible to catalog or delineate the changes we are experiencing emotionally or "spiritually" or intellectually as we move, day by day, to live the life that is now ours?  I don't think so... not yet.

Our lives have become quiet.  The storms are, at least for now, moving off into the distance.  It is oddly still in our world.  We've learned not to look back at what was, and we are not inclined to look very far into the future either.  Small pleasures, and quiet joys, and fragile-seeming moments of laughter and happiness are treasures that we hold close.

It is as if we have come through a dense woodland into a small clearing.  The darkness and terror of the passage is still fresh in our memories, but the clearing is open and light, and it is less scary than what we've been through.  For now, we are content to hang onto one another, and we are reluctant to test the edges.  Life, here in the clearing, is gentler than the dark and twisting paths of the forest.  We are resting -- and we wish you seasons of gentleness and rest as well...

swan