Approaching Christmas Eve

A gusting wind is deflaking the trees. Clumps and clouds of snowflakes are being blown off the branches every few minutes. Then the air will be mostly calm for a few minutes until the next gust from the west north west. To be candid, continuing windchills close to minus 30℉ has me feeling oppressed and we’re relatively well off compared to those in wide open wind swept places. A few more days of snow and bitter cold and we enter another December thaw. We’ve reached a point where the weather is almost as volatile as the stock market.

Have you noticed there are few days left in 2022? Even though we’re in the midst of the eve of Christmas Eve I’m starting to figure out some personal goals for next year. I gave up on New Year’s resolutions decades ago when my resolution was to make no more. I’ve decided that I spend waste too much time on social media; that my increasingly diverse interests are feeding into a shortened attention span and that I’m not spending enough time enjoying things I used to do lots more of. Presumably, if I concentrate more on some things I really enjoy, that will go a long way toward resolving much of my chronic dissatisfaction. So, some of the pieces are to spend less time looking at a screen and more time looking at a page, plus less time looking at a page and more time outside, once this insane wind chill tapers off. That should align nicely with next week, which aligns with the year’s end and the start of a new one.

our home grown “Charlie Brown” tree

Photo by J. Harrington

Christmas this year is going to be more chaotic than usual. People went “off list” a lot for presents because many lists were really limited, a good sign that much is well on the family front? Anyhow, I’m pretty sure there’s a bunch of us’ns that are going to get some real surprises come Sunday. And then I get some belated presents when the temperatures climb above freezing next week (the Better Half likes snow and cold, go figure!) The dogs will also cheer, in their own way, as we return to what passes for normal in our weather.

Since it will still be very cold on Christmas, and Christmas comes on a Sunday this year, today’s poem seems like a good fit.

Those Winter Sundays

By Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

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