Winter snooze-fest

As my prosthetic memory insists on reminding me, one year ago today I was on Tybee Island, Georgia, in the presence of egrets and skimmers and sunshine and seafood, and two years ago today I was doing about the same on Cedar Key, Florida. But winter break is not all sunshine and shorelines: 17 years ago today I'd just arrived in San Francisco for the MLA convention three time zones away from home, where my paper was scheduled so late in the day that I felt like I was sleep-walking through the whole presentation. Was it a brilliant paper? You'd have to ask the half-dozen listeners who bothered to show up. 

This year I'm at home for the holidays, being entertained by the photos sent daily by friends who are enjoying a cruise to Antarctica. Kayaking amongst whales and penguins and beautiful sunshine looks fabulous, but I am not the least bit envious of their good fortune because I know I could never take such a trip, thanks to a tendency toward severe seasickness. It's hard to watch whales through a constant scrim of vomit. (Trust me--I've tried!)

Yesterday I took my car out of the driveway for the first time since Sunday for a trip to the grocery store. That's about the extent of the excitement going on in my life right now. Not that I'm complaining: I received a pile of great books for Christmas plus a couple of beautiful jigsaw puzzles and I have some low-stakes administrative tasks I need to tackle, so I'm not going to say the days are just packed but I'll admit that they're not without incident. The incidents just don't make for interesting reading.

So I'm grateful for a gift my daughter gave me, a gift that shows how well she knows me. It never would have occurred to me to seek out a rack of Scrabble tiles spelling out THANKFUL, but when I unwrapped it on Christmas, it was exactly what I needed, a reminder of h0w much I have to be thankful for right here at home: word games, family, puzzles, chickens, so much more.

But still: would a little sunshine be too much to ask? 

Father and son working on a puzzle