Dear December (in 2020)

Hello December.

You dawned frosty this year.

Coating the cars in a thin icy layer. Spreading over the grass and roads, hardening the mud that loves little hands and somehow gets into little wellies and smears itself on little socks.

Pretty, pretty frost.

Some say Jack Frost has been.

Others watch the morning clouds scud by, the steam rising from people’s pipes, cars, breath visible in the air.

Life, really.

But the sun has not risen yet.

It’s only dawn.

People still lie dreaming in their beds.

I drink your icy air, December, in the pitch blackness of winter dawn. The sunrise is in 1 hour and 24 minutes, and my fingers will freeze and my toes will fall off, but I will welcome this first sun of December… that’s if the cloud allows me to see her.

The first sun of the last month of a strange, strange year.

Did we think we would get here in one piece?

Did we think we would have our lives tipped over and tumbled out?

Resolutions made in 2019 froze 9 months ago, and now you are helping to usher in a new year. A new dawn. A new …. or not?

I won’t rush you December. I refuse to. I know how hard it feels to be rushed.

You must be feeling it this year. Many people are counting on you. People began decorating their homes and trees months ago in anticipation for you. They think you’re going to be some sort of saviour from the evil that has infiltrated the ranks of humanity.

But don’t worry, December.

You take your sweet old time. It’s not your fault you herald the turn of the year. You just keep on being you, frosty, twinkly, candy cane you. We will manage.