In my daughter’s geometry homework, she’s struggling to take a flat diagram and turn it into a three-dimensional object – harder than might be imagined, even for an art-minded kid. In this holiday break, with a teenager and a savvy ten-year-old, we talked with my brother about who we know and how their lives shape out, and the choices people make in their lives. That clarity of hindsight notion…

Sometimes it appears as though our lives unfold into myriad geometrical shapes, complex beyond any imaging. Walking in the garden this afternoon, around the beds banked over with raked leaves, we saw two fluttering moths, blooming johnny jump-ups, and purple ground ivy flowers in the hoop house. Those petals are a dimension not so long ago I would never have imagined in the month of December. What way will this story bend? All around us appears this mighty world, seemingly all-powerful, greater than any of us: and yet, here we are, a handful of people – my family – walking in our kitchen garden. Who is the folder of this shape?

Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.

– Madeline L’Engle

Christmas Eve, December 2015, Woodbury, Vermont