Think ... Write ... Thursday! Hello, December

Hello, December,

You snuck up on me, just like every year. One moment it's Thanksgiving, with too much delicious food and not quite enough time with family, but as soon as I finish washing the Thanksgiving china and vacuuming the crumbs from under the table, I turn around and you are knocking at the door. Your stress-filled days of Christmas shopping, crowds, cleaning, decorating, attending work parties when I'd rather stay home and knit just wear me out. You've given me too many instances in which I desperately miss my far-away sons, and then have to pretend that I'm not sad so I don't spend our video chat time with tears in my eyes, making all of us sadder. Thoughts of what lies ahead when you whisper that this is most likely the last Christmas for several ill family members are almost too much to bear.

But ... you've also got some warm moments in your cold days. An empathetic, understanding, and pragmatic oncologist that I love and just want to hug (and I might even do that tomorrow). Cookie Day with all the women in my family is a real highlight. Enjoying the fact that Ryan is becoming a creative cook, who is able to use his chemistry and math backgrounds to come up with a delicious new quiche that I am taking to John's boss' party. Appreciating that Justin is an incredibly responsible and forward-looking young man, working long and hard towards a permanent position so he doesn't have to be an intern forever.

December, your gift of Christmas is what usually comes to my mind first when I think of you, but this year you are presenting me with something I will appreciate even more - your solstice. That day with the fewest hours of daylight reminds me that yes, there is plenty of darkness, but minute by minute, more light is returning with every new day.

So hello December, with your good and bad, light and dark, happiness and sadness, but always love.

Yours in warmth,
Bonny

Read other Think ... Write ... Thursday! posts here, and sign up for Carole and Kat's great idea here. 

Reflecting

As I reflect on NaBloPoMo 2016, I'm so very grateful that you have taken the time to read my ramblings. Time is an incredibly valuable commodity for all of us, so I truly value that you have used some of it to read what I've written, and maybe even comment. I started writing as a way to record my thoughts when my life changed with my oldest son moving to Colorado from home here in New Jersey, and while my blog still serves that purpose for me (especially with my youngest son now living in Texas), I'm also astounded and gratified by the wonderful people I've met. Readers have provided me with support, humor, affirmation, knitting help, book recommendations, opportunities to learn, and just plain friendship, and I'm thankful for each one of you.

So with this last post of NaBloPoMo 2016, I say congratulations to everyone that managed to post daily; congratulations to everyone that posted at all, and a gigantic thank you to all the readers and commenters.

See you sometime in December, but after 30 consecutive posts, probably not tomorrow.

(Whoops. I forgot about Think Write Thursday, so I guess I will be back tomorrow!)

Tree ID

Last Wednesday I was returning from the grocery store after picking up the final few things I always seem to forget for Thanksgiving and I took the scenic way home. I drove by some trees that were so interesting I had to turn around, park, and get out to take a better look.

It was the incredible bark that attracted me.

They were growing in clumps of two, three, and four in front of a doctor's office building.

Most of them had brown, horizontally peeling bark, and then I saw this most intriguing one at the end of the row.

This clump of three brown-barked trees and one white-barked really captivated me, so I gathered a few leaves to try and identify them. That one white tree looks exactly like chocolate crinkle cookies, but I resisted heading back to the grocery store for those ingredients. 

The leaves I collected along with the Trees of North America told me that the trees were most likely yellow birches. There was just one more piece of information that I needed; how did the twigs taste? My trusty tree guide said that "slender twigs have a wintergreen flavor", so I went back to taste a few twigs. Sure enough, they did have a faint but distinct wintergreen taste. I even found out that I could make wintergreen extract, but since they aren't my trees, I don't think I'll be snapping off twigs to try this. (I'll just drink the called-for vodka instead.)

I still can't explain the chocolate crinkle tree (maybe a regular paper or white birch?) growing in the same clump with three yellow birches, but a little tree mystery doesn't make them any less beautiful. I think I'll go back in the spring to get a better look when they have new green leaves and maybe even taste a few more twigs.

I Wonder ...

Why Turkey Trotters can't walk from the town's huge municipal parking lot but instead choose to block my driveway (every year, for 27 years)? It's a Thanksgiving tradition! My thought is that if you're running 5K, you can also manage an extra 528 feet.

Why a Turkey Trotter left us a snow shovel? I saw a runner remove it from his trunk before the race, and it's been leaning against our wall for three days, so I guess it's ours now.

What to say to the women behind me in line at the post office wondering "why they have to sell Diwali stamps? It's not even an American holiday!" Their conversation went downhill, and I never did call them on their prejudice, mainly because I didn't know what to say. I'm only good at thinking of things to say hours or days afterwards, so next time I'm going to be ready and say that even though I'm not Hindu, I welcome anything that celebrates "the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance, and hope over despair."

And on a lighter note, I wonder why Christmas cactuses bloom at such different times and in so many ways? I have a large plant with only one lonely bud, one that started blooming around Halloween and still has a few blossoms left, another hanging one that seems to be blooming all at once, and yet another that is just developing buds. I do love the flowers and am quite happy to see them bloom any way they want to, at any time of year.

Sunday Selection

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry, from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1998.

Saturday Sky

Another gray November sky, but much better than seeing snow falling from those moody gray skies.

Please Don't Interrupt! I'm Watching ...

Gilmore Girls: A Year In the Life. Watching and knitting is so much more enjoyable than Black Friday shopping.

Nice knit hat, Lorelai!