December in Vermont is the true bridge between fall and winter. While we often have cold temperatures and some snow in November, it remains autumn in our minds. December often arrives quietly. A week or two before Christmas, winter weather commences. This can mean icy rain and/or heavy snow. One year the wet snow caused a week long power outage, explaining why we now own a generator. One week to the holiday and we hold our collective breath. Everything looks beautiful, temperatures are below freezing, kids are sledding. Bring on Christmas!
Two days before Christmas, there are no partridges in our pear tree because it has become fifty degrees, raining and there is no more snow. Because we are Vermonters, we sigh, spread sand on the walkway and turn on the Christmas tree lights.
Not this year.
In part because of the flooding that devastated our state on the same day two years running, we have learned to temper our weather expectations. But we are due. Imagine our great joy when six inches of fresh, sparkling snow remained as we opened our curtains Christmas morning.
Two days later, fifty degrees with rain.
I’m not someone who makes New Year resolutions. Saving a large pile of regrets and things-to-be-fixed doesn’t make sense to me. I do however believe in clean slates and fresh sheets.
I don’t need to struggle to make midnight in a pointed paper hat. It is the flip of the calendar, the opening of a new date book; its white squares perfectly empty, waiting for me to decide what is important enough to scrawl.
Sitting at the cherry bar in the kitchen, feet warmed by the nearby wood stove and Bronte laying beneath me, I wait before beginning to write in my date book. Looking out the window, I reflect on the year past. I think about floating in the lake: sons, like baby ducks, circled around me. joking. Smiling at music performances, laughter at rehearsals. A new grandchild being held by our child.
But as always, light is balanced by dark, life by death. Like turning soil, events rise to the surface; friends get ill, loved ones die. Grief remains a visitor, although less frequent. I accept all of it as part of the fabric of our lives. Each piece perfectly woven and necessary for the creation of the whole.
Ruminating on the blank pages, I am able to see possibility. I carefully mark off dates in April when Paul and I will travel in Scotland, and anticipate the trip. I ink in dates for Michael and Emerson’s summer visit, imagining new ice cream shops to discover together. The not-knowing lifts the level of excitement for what is coming.
We don’t know who we will lose this new year but we also don’t know who we will find.
I won’t plan on snow for next Christmas but I also won’t plan on a flood in July.