Christmas in Colorado

The cold.

When it falls at night you can look straight up at it and it feels like you’re sinking into the center of the universe. It involves your bones. It smells like a star, or a planet, spread with butter. It’s still.

Christmas time can be onerous. It seems like everything around me is unwinding, moving slower and slower by the second. The light, the time, the flowers- and I resist and reject the change in pace with an unwavering fierceness. So many December days feel like a crappy circus. Around the holidays I often feel like my head is loose, spun, and unraveling. Maybe it’s just the sun.

I’ve never had a Christmas like the one I just had. It seemed softer than all the others.. or maybe slower. Some of it was a little sharper too.

I’d like it to keep getting simpler, December. Or perhaps I’ll need to get simpler.

We sled for the first time, on these giant orange discs. Oh I just loved it. I wished the snow hadn’t been melting, but it kept melting, I could have frozen out there, still giggling and with a giant grin.