January brought a warm snap (is it called a snap when it's warm? Can't think of the right word this second...) and I'm gloriously thrilled to notice that the dull winter despair that nearly overtook me last year has not reared its ugly head. And it's nearly February!

I vowed to run, or at least take walks, all winter, even in cold snaps, but it hasn't gotten that cold, and maybe I'm just getting used to it, or maybe it hasn't been as bad this year, but the usual greyness of winter doesn't feel as dreary and paralyzing for some reason.

A few days ago, I took a walk to the water, and saw five wild swans bobbing out on the waves. I have had time to walk downtown with a cup of hot tea as I look up into the bare branches of the Chestnut trees and I have been painting a little and writing more than I have in a long time. Happy happy days.

A new song scribbled in the car:

Waiting for Christmas,
we drive as the sun lights the backs of the hills
blue and gold
The ice on the river looks just like candy, you say
and your eyes slowly close
I want you here with me always
Asleep in the backseat against the door
On this long drive home

The clouds form a line across the horizon
Streaks of pink as the day closes up
A train whistles loud as it passes
And there, the streelights at the edge of town
Oh, I want you here with me always
Asleep in the backseat against the door
On this long drive home

......................

Last night, Ella couldn't sleep, kept calling me from 4 am on. Finally, I brought her into bed with me.

"There's scary music playing in my head." she told me.

I totally get that. The scary music in the dark hours before dawn.

Anne Lamott calls it the jungle drums beating in her head. I settled Ella into my heavy duvet. I was wide awake by then, so went into the kitchen to make tea and realized that I have not had that scary music playing in my head for some time. It used to be a cocophany of cellos and violins sawing out thin lines of grief and sorrow and loss.

You find answers to these things as you grow, get older, crash into a few walls, get too close to a few too many dark holes. You learn that the scary music is just that--music. You can reach for the knob, shut the radio off, or put some new music in your head, happy music about things turning out as they should, about being cared for and seen and loved, despite any inability to prove it.

Ella is not nearly old enough for me to explain any of this to her. I tell her to sing Raindrops on Roses, or Rudold the Red Nosed Reindeer. I tell her to think about Christmas.

She slept in late the next morning, and when I went in to find her awake, she said: Mommy, why was the room purple when I woke up? I told her the sun was shining through the clouds and came through the white curtains and fell on the white duvet and turned the room a litlte bit purple. She didn't understand why, but seemed pleased nonetheless. It felt like a small happy ending. Or, if nothing else, the life lesson that, when all else fails, things do tend to look much better in the morning.

After a few long days, I left the kids with C yesterday and fled the house.
Found myself at the mall where I intended to buy slippers with Christmas money, then wondered why on earth I chose the mall. Such a sad, depleting place!
Wandered store to store until I found some delicious brown, suede slippers at The Bay (40% off!)
Fully intended to leave.
On my way out, passed the MAC counter, where my friend Jenny was working. She demanded that I sit in the black swivvel chair, proceeded to brush all sorts of things onto my face.
Found myself purchasing (what am I DOING?) a set of fake eyelashes, then getting brushed some more - bronzer, turquoise eye shadow, irridescent lip gloss.
Left feeling like a movie star.
Went grocery shopping.
Then home to slip into my new suede slippers.
Felt like a million bucks.

Last night it was snowing, and I sat for a long time at the window before bed, staring out at the snow flying and swirling under the street light. The wind kept pushing the flakes up, then sideways, then down at a rapid, violent rate. I sat there until the noise in my head died away and I suddenly knew (I think maybe I had forgotten) that there was nothing here in my life that shouldn't be here, and nothing that wasn't here that was supposed to be.