Fivers

I just caught Swirl chewing on an actual dog toy instead of trying to eat my Christmas cards. Rather than taking this as a change in course, I’m looking at it as an accident, a mistake, a random landing of his open jaws on something appropriate. I’ve learned not to put much stock in a single episode of deviance from deviance.

It’s taken nine months but I do believe my seemingly limitless angst may have bottomed out. Of course, this could be just like Swirl chewing something appropriate and shouldn’t be mistaken for a permanent state of affairs. It does seem, however, that I have at least some cellular memory of what it feels like to be normal. That’s nice to know.

When I look up from my computer screen, I see the full moon. This is the great benefit of winter. It is only 5:30 and already dark. Some lament this; I will in a few weeks. But right now, it’s lovely. What luck is that, I say, to see the moon in its round glory in the late afternoon?

Our Congresswoman, Gwen Moore, who is remarkable and progressive and an old friend, has Covid-19. She says in her public statement that she feels well but that’s what they all say. I hate the idea that in her representing us, flying back and forth to Washington, doing what she needed to do, that she got herself sick. She’s my age, well, a bit younger, but our birthdays are around the same time, and every time she gives a speech when my husband and I are in the audience, she tells the same insanely endearing story about him. So we are praying for her, something we don’t do a lot but are doing now.

My Christmas earrings are of the Aurora Borealis with Denali in the foreground. They make me remember the night in Fairbanks when we stood on a country road at 3:00 in the morning to see the northern lights like it was a light show projected from a drive-in theatre down the road. You have to be willing to get out of bed to see the lights. They don’t come when you are sitting on the porch in a comfortable chair nursing a cocktail. I know that much.