Pea soup with scraps of leftover ham bubbled on our stove all day — a weekday more like a Sunday. Walking through town, I met no one.
At the end of the holiday school break, I head out before dinner to empty the compost pail in the bin. Amazingly, the afternoon is light yet, not dim as the afternoons were not long before the holiday. I stand there for a moment, watching wet snowflakes twirl down, the snow and I heedless of any time.
A radiance rises from the snow-covered town cemetery just behind my garden, bright despite the granite stones.
More so than other years, this holiday my daughters and I seemed to have rounded that bend from the divorce. Maybe it’s nothing more than the distance of time and physical space. Maybe it’s simply that time doesn’t cure, but it does scab over. Oddly this season, I kept thinking of Mary Oliver’s line about her box of darkness, and how that, too, was a gift. Maybe that’s part of this whole holiday season, too: that light does, inevitably, come of darkness, always.
Happy wishes for another decade of living: 2020.
Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness.
— Mary Oliver
Stony Soil Vermont 
Your true life infused blog has decanted into our minds these pearls in the past:
1. Tolstoy- “Patience and time are the mightiest warriors.”
2. “The wound lets the light into you.” Unrecalled haiku or tanka, I think.
Glad to hear from the above post that 2020 has both truisms working for you and your family. GT
I love this Tolstoy line. I hadn’t heard it before. I think the line is actually from Rumi: The wound is where the light enters you.
Hope this nascent 2020 is working for you and your family, too.
I love your line about the cemetery “bright despite the granite stones.”
One of the perks of living beside cemeteries is that you’re able to see them through all kinds of seasons and light — in addition to the terrific open space 🙂
Lovely post, Brett.
Just wanted you to know that I read your blog each day but there’s no longer a “like” button for letting you know I’ve read it and, indeed, liked the blog. Happy 2020 and look forward to catching up with you, friend.
Hey Heidi! I removed the like button (for FB-driven reasons), but now I realize I really don’t know who’s reading my blog, unless readers comment. A pleasure to hear from you, always. Let’s see more of each other in 2020. 🙂