Skates & Christmas Mittens

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“For the people who were shoveling away on the housetops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball… laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it went wrong.”

~ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

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Good things in December:

December the First — candles, bowls of chili, Christmas decorations, wassail, and Elf

Baking muffins on Saturday for all mankind (well, not quite all)

Hearing Mom sing Elanor to sleep through the baby monitor

After-Sunday-service rehearsals for the Christmas program

Episode 1 of The Wingfeather Saga animated series

Tuesday’s forecast: Fog

Cresting Jefferson Street, headed downtown for coffee, a low, blue fog rising from the river and shrouding St. Francis Borgia’s bell steeple

Christmas errands in the cold mist

Dicing things for vegetable soup in the quiet, dark kitchen

Mrs. Brenda inviting me in and asking about my writing projects in her warm, old dining room

Hanging ornaments with Mema: one for every year of my life (and my favorite one of the singing frogs)

Home Alone and hokey Hallmarks

Sweeping dust out of Papa Larry’s foyer and finding candles and a wooden hat box to take home

Winter paintings over my desk

How the kids bring their torn stuffed animals to me for mending at the “Animal Hospital,” and how I stitched Boink the Bunny’s head back on

A Christmas Carol

Our annual Evening in December program, and playing violin to “In The Bleak Midwinter” along with Trent and Janaya

Meeting Darlene at the doctor’s building cafe

Breakfast sandwiches with Papa

Running into the rain and heavy fog, listening to highland music, grinning like a fool

Lunch with Janaya, coffee, shopping in a coat and hat, tossing bags and gifts into the back seat

Walking up Elm Street, ducking into the Vintage Trading Co. with creaky floorboards and lots of mirrors and dishes

The couple running the old fashioned gift shop, grinding coffee in the back and humming Christmas songs

A line of geese high above the church steeple

Old town St. Charles after dark, cobbled streets, carolers, bookstores, Grandma’s Cookies, and buildings like the Old Post Office lit with Christmas

The clock shop

Cookie, coffee, and Tchaikovsky in the sunlit armchair

The Thing Is — wonderful short stories by my friend, Rivers Houseal

Sunset colors in the pond ice

Snow day, the boys off work, tying strings on gifts, and listening to The Carpenters

Delivering cards to the nursing home on Christmas Eve and finding an old friend, Charlie Varney

Christmas choir all alive with Revelation 19:1

Cinnamon rolls and Sunday morning church and a Christmas Day snowball fight in the parking lot afterward

A chessboard Trent handmade, new mittens, Little Women, and a recurve bow

Pond hockey till dark, snowflakes falling, a bonfire on the shore, Papa and Mema in the window

The sounds of skating: the scrapes and slaps and low wump of settling ice

Hot chocolate and Miss Rumphius

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