The Dying, Day by Day

The light came late this morning, and I struggled to leave bed, burying myself deeper in the down as I resisted the inevitable:  the dogs must be fed.  In the spirit of a heavy sigh, I wriggled into warm clothes, my suburban version of “barn wear”–thermals and sweats–and plodded down to the dog castle, already enervated by the weight of the last days of the year. 

As the dogs munched their water-warmed kibble enthusiastically (light or dark, summer or winter, their joy never seems tempered), I shivered morosely in the wet air and stared at a sky the color of pewter.  From a thicket of blackberry and alder out beyond the front yard, I heard a sound like a piccolo–clear and sharp as an icicle.  Some winter bird had decided to ignore the realities of too little food and too much cold and sing joyfully anyway. Surprising myself, I smiled, then thought, stupid bird.  Go ahead and make me feel puny–at least in character.  I have a fireplace and homemade turkey soup–what do I have to complain about?  The loss of light, the dying, day by day, of the year–what grief do those deserve?  Are not these waning days the prelude to the sun I love so desperately?  Kill a year and a year is born; it’s all so essential.  Why can’t I swell with song like a winter bird?  Instead, I glower and pout, damn dark days.

Later, staring out the kitchen window, I noticed that a few degrees colder would set our home adrift in a sea of hoar frost.  I’d be in an inside-out snow globe.  But 34 gets you drips not ice crystals, an emotion of difference.

As days do, this one ran out, quicker than yesterday and promising even less tomorrow.  While I smiled and laughed and furrowed my brow at the spontaneous moments the day offered up to me, I am not grateful as I should be.  I stick out my tongue at the notion of cherishing every minute.  The next three weeks will feel like the closing of a clamshell, and I’m in there, in the cold and wet, in the dusky dark, and I crave light, dammit, bright light.  I refuse to find solace in the cycles of life on earth.  Perhaps a trip to the equator is in order.