Midwinter
Tonight, I convinced R and J to walk down to Peacock Lane to see the lights. A little fingernail moon was hanging in the southern sky, and the Big Dipper scooped up a bit of the east.The sidewalks were packed; families, young adults, toddlers, teenagers, women in hijabs and others in miniskirts and so many languages other than English being spoken and two hotdog vendors and men selling ligthed ballons on sticks. I am not a crowd person, but we live nearby and it's a Portland tradition and because three out of the four of us are home, it seemed the thing to do on Christmas Eve. As we walked through Laurelhurst, we saw families sitting around tables eating Christmas Eve dinner, bottles of wine being passed around the table, dinner smells and woodsmoke smells drifting into the night air. J has been home, in his room, for a week now. It's been a hard term for him and I'm incredibly proud that instead of thinking he had to sit out his anxiety and loneliness in his apartment, ...