Stopping By The Blooming Woods On A Winter's Eve

This is the time of year when we used to have a period of weather the older members of the clan called 'the January thaw'.

This was a period of relative warmth coming after the cold in December. It would have been cold right up to a frigid New Year's Day, then back to work and everyone in the doldrums so no one noticed anything-unless there would be a blizzard-but everyone just plodded along, not looking up...until one day when the sun was out and the tears did not freeze to your face when you gazed up into the blue sky.

The January Thaw had arrived.

It would be followed by more cold, but in the meantime, life was good.

This year I decided to take the Christmas tree down well before the Kaiser's birthday on January 27th.

All the decorations of light came down as we plunge back into the dismal grey clime of the area. Words cannot express how the light of Christmas fills my soul with gladness. Contrariwise, when cleaning up after Christmas, a somber mood prevails.

I do not play Christmas music while taking down the tree. That would be too sad. So I played (1) Cat Stevens (both as Cat Stevens and as Yusuf Islam), (2) The Cure, and (3) Leonard Cohen. By Mr. Cohen I was indeed as cold as a new razor's blade.

Everything came down. Everything went. Except for one wreath.

This wreath was a superfluity. A friend, who had purchased his own wreaths, had received two more wreaths from an open-handed neighbor who did not wish to be bothered by the excess. This friend, in a similar spirit of giving, saw my wife a week or so before Xmas and bestowed the two wreaths upon her...and she heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight, thanks for taking them wreaths off my hands, my load is now light!

However, we are used to such largesse. For Christmas itself my mother presented us with some little gifts such as old candles, half of which had been previously lit. We have resigned ourselves to being the last link in the chain between certain consumers in our lives, their purchases, and the inevitable dust bin and land fill.

We are the trash facilitators.

Back to the wreaths. One of the wreaths was hung on a door. The other was laid upon a large potting urn which contained pansies from summer.

The flowers had not died. Pansies seem to be rather hardy. They had come through a couple cold snaps without any visible discomfort. And in the balmy days before Xmas, they were doing fine.

So the wreath was flung upon them, collaring the top of the urn, letting a few pansies show through the opening in the middle and peeking out from underneath. They were going to go soon anyway, right?

Wrong. They still flourish now in January. This morning, as I write this, I hear the rain falling.

The wreath still hugs the pansies, providing protection in case of cold, and the pansies still bloom.

There is nothing inconvenient about that truth.

picture: Gusta van Dobbenburgh