...(sun)rise and shine...

It is, as my son and I call it, the "season of sunrises".  The time of year when Nature does her very best to encourage us to look up, despite the cold and gray of wintry day to day.

The holiday season has fizzled out and the house seems stark and bare and cold  without a twinkling tree and the cheerful scattering of Christmas décor.  The tree, in a perfect explosion of needles, went out the door on Sunday as Epiphany drew to a close.   We gave it a suitable farewell, and thanked it for its service (because we're weird like that!) before dragging it off to its final resting place in the woods.  I hope it will, as its predecessors have done, become a home to the forest folk...the chipmunks and squirrels and, yes, even the creepy crawlies...as it returns slowly to where it came from and feeds a new life.

As for those pine needles?  I'll be vacuuming them up from corners till June!  

The ornaments have all been packed away carefully, leaving behind just a few glimmers in the form of my reindeer and Kosta Boda snowball candleholders.  (I'm perhaps a wee bit too proud of myself for my ever increasing collection of them...every single one found at a thrift store!)  Green and red and gold, replaced now with silver and blue and snowflakes.  And all those bits and pieces of detritus that we had hidden away, tucked into the closet to make room for holiday décor, have inched out bit by bit to take over every crevice and cranny.  Back again, the paperwork and the Transformers...the schoolbooks and the scratch-builds.  Back again, the permanently half-finished drawings and projects and books.  Back again, the disorder and dysfunction of our too-tiny abode.

Back, as well, is the schedule.  The drill-sergeant of Time and Order.  The early school mornings and overwhelming work loads and all the catching up and making up and responsibility.  The sucker punch, after a slow slide into rest and relaxation, of a full calendar and alarm clocks. 

Here we are...here we all are...but a few days into January, and I am already weary of it.  I'm already counting down the days until spring...ticking them off in my head and on the kitchen calendar.  Planning ahead...way ahead...and trying my damnedest to ignore the here and now.

It's cold and wet and grey outside.  There are far too many windows around me, letting all that gloom inside.  The picture window in the front room...the very one that looked so festive a few days ago...looks out on a world that's barren.  Empty tree branches, empty bushes...nothing but sharp edges and thorns and brown.  Even the poor garland I've left on the window casing seems to be fading away.  And the only relief comes when I've a pot of something simmering in the kitchen and the windows fog up with steam, temporarily blocking the view.  

I make the best of it.  I think so.  I try.  I keep the kitchen warm and bubbly with casseroles and soups and warm beverages by the gallon.  (I'd chance a guess that we're better hydrated this time of year than any other, simply because I'm forever making tea to chase the cold away!)  I pull out all the stops, comfort-wise.  The softest blankets re-emerge from storage.  Throws hang at the ready for shoulders to snug.  The fuzzy socks and slippers wait for tired feet or chilly toes.  Candles puff up cheerily on the tables, scenting the air and chasing shadows.

I make the best of it...or at the very least, I try to keep the cold and gray outside where it belongs.

But sometimes, in this month that never moves past gloom, it seems the cold and gray sneak in when I'm not watching...following me in as I latch the door behind me...finding the perfect hiding spot deep within my very bones.  I, too, become cold and gray.

I, like those barren branches, grow sharp edges and thorns.  I start to become brittle.

By end of day I feel wrung out...lifeless...sapped of energy and purpose and colour.  Something about the sharp bite of winter air just drains me, no matter my efforts to fill up on happy.  The early darkness signals a turning-off in my brain.  Creativity, off.  Productivity, off.

T.V., on.

(No, seriously...what's that about?  I know full well the house is full of all the same engaging entertainments...books, boardgames, craft supplies...now, as it is the rest of the year.  But come January it's as though my brain blocks it out.)

Too. Tired. Must. T.V.

So we slump into zombie mode, staring at the screen, bundled up and bored.

So I close out each night, laying in bed, wondering what's wrong with me that I didn't push harder for something more active and engaging.  Disgusted that I let the cold get the better of me.


And then morning comes.

Not with the alarm that shatters the silence of a still-dark room.  Not with the coffee made in the dim glow of the stove light.  Not with the cooking of breakfast or the laying out of clothes, or even the rousing of son.

No.

Morning comes with the sunrise.

It sparks in the far horizon, glinting off the glass of that picture window in the front room.  It draws my attention from the manufactured brightness of the lamps and ceiling lights I've turned on.

Morning calls me over.  And I direct my son's gaze toward its arrival.

"Oh.  Look. Look there.  Isn't it beautiful?",  I whisper.
Most days he murmurs in assent and stops  a while to look with me, before returning to the siren call of hot breakfast and strong coffee.

I'll stop a little longer there, wherever my tracks were halted.  Stop and breathe it in...chest expanding to draw in the fresh air of a new day...shoulders rising to attention...turning to bask in the glow and feel the warmth that my eyes tell me is just a little bit further down the mountain.

Nature boasts, showing off with a blaze of glory.  Flying in the face of all that darkness and setting the world on fire.  She forces her way out, one flash of glorious colour after another.  They settle in and paint a watercolour against the stark relief of black tree trunks and branches.

And in those moments...those few minutes of sunrise...She energizes us...She wakes us up and gives us reason to find the colour in the day...She reminds us to shine...

~Leanna