Monday, December 27
Cozy in flannel sheets, in the dim, gray half-light of morning in rural New Hampshire, I inhale the earthy tones of coffee, the crispness of bacon and the sweetness of pancakes rising from the kitchen below. Children’s cries and the murmurs of adult voices float up the staircase, reminding me that it’s time to get dressed. The room’s chilly air, however, is not inducing me to slide out of the fuzzy sheets. I think back on the night before-on the lego sets, the FAO teddy bear, the homemade crafts adorned with three-year-old touches–on the roast chicken and mashed potatoes and handmade cranberry relish. Little girlish faces wide-eyed and laughing, brightly colored pyjamas bouncing up and down–to the tree, to the couch, to the computer, to the tree–gap-toothed boy smiles in an animal-paterned onesie, excitement and creativity overflowing from one energized moment to the next.
Then later in the evening, the glow of a christmas movie illuminating the now-darkened room. Little people asleep upstairs, adults snoring gently on blanket-covered couches, empty glasslets of wine perched around the tissue paper and ribbon debris. The silence of a wintry nightscape.
The delighted cry of a child brings me back to the chilly morning light. Outside the window, a blizzard sweeps the woods-horizontal flakes stream past the panes as though gravity has redirected itself. White birch, white ground, white air.
And though I am older now, I feel small again, with all the delight and wonder of those giggles in the kitchen below. And now there is no time to lie in the fuzzy sheets; pancakes and coffee and sliding await! And with a swishing of snow pants and the scratchings of wool, I am down the stairs and into the melee.