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.

A Word for the Wise

Today I learnt something interesting about wisdom.

Wisdom, many of us think, comes hand in hand with experience. Some may argue that it doesn’t, and that it only appears to because some of us were blessed with hindsight or insight, or some of us were just lucky to have heard something wise that day and thought we would like to share it. Lord knows that’s happened to me many times.

But perhaps we are missing the bigger picture here. Isn’t wisdom only seen as such when it is relevant? A piece of ‘wisdom’ might not mean anything to Sheila, for example, but to Robert, it might mean the world. Wisdom is not applicable to each and every person, it is tailored specifically to people’s different perspectives and situations in life.

What, fellow bloggers, do you think wisdom is?

 

Art: David James Cannon, wildlife artist.

Wise elephant photo.

On Pines

What I really like about winter is the fact that if you live in a pine studded estate, you do not lack for lush greenery. There is something so pleasing, so soothing, about the dark green splash against silvery white, against dull brown and grey, swaying with mighty force through torrents of winter wind. Pines are the trees of winter. They master the season, like the fiery cascade of death masters autumn.

I’m gonna really miss this ole place.