back in the saddle again

Year's End
Richard Wilbur

Now winter downs the dying of the year,   

And night is all a settlement of snow;

From the soft street the rooms of houses show   

A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,   

Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin   

And still allows some stirring down within.

I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake

The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell   

And held in ice as dancers in a spell   

Fluttered all winter long into a lake;   

Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,   

They seemed their own most perfect monument.

There was perfection in the death of ferns   

Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone   

A million years. Great mammoths overthrown   

Composedly have made their long sojourns,   

Like palaces of patience, in the gray

And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii

The little dog lay curled and did not rise   

But slept the deeper as the ashes rose

And found the people incomplete, and froze   

The random hands, the loose unready eyes   

Of men expecting yet another sun

To do the shapely thing they had not done.

These sudden ends of time must give us pause.   

We fray into the future, rarely wrought

Save in the tapestries of afterthought.

More time, more time. Barrages of applause   

Come muffled from a buried radio.

The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.

*********************************

In twenty years, when my husband and I look back on our homeschooling journey, we will remember this fall as "the sick one."  The seven of us have all had stomach bugs (at least once, but some twice), we had one case of pneumonia, several colds, and a few "only" fevers.  It's not just our family, either. Illness keeps on circulating throughout our community, other mothers tell me. While I rejoice that our general health is good, without chronic illness, I admit that morale has been low, especially as we entered the Christmas season.  I thought that turning the calendar might mean turning the corner on the germs--was I ever wrong!--so one of my projects for the New Year is to sterilize the house.  I even went out and restocked our cleaning tools and supplies last week to motivate myself.  

Still, December was filled with all manner of good.  A little boy turned 6, and wore his new birthday crown all day.  He even decorated his chocolate cake with lots of sprinkles and our family in Lego minifigures.  We tried ice skating for the first time as a family and learned that we all loved it.  Everyone, except me and my very littlest, went caroling. 

On Christmas Eve we hauled all of our decorations out of the basement to bedeck the house.  There were many exclamations over rediscovered treasures.  My favorites are ornaments from my sister-in-law, who has picked up a few for us on her travels, and the special ones from my own childhood.  Z found the German shepherd-and-flock set from my grandmother and fiercely protected it from her brothers, whose running in the house kept toppling it.  One tradition that we've started in more recent years is putting out all of the nativity figures, with the exception of Jesus.  Santa Claus brings us a new figure each year and "finds" baby Jesus to put in the manger.  

The days between Christmas and Theophany are usually reserved for feasting, baking cookies, creating gingerbread villages, and not much else in the way of duty.  This year, though, my older kids had several dance practices to help them prepare for a Greek dance competition in a couple of weeks.  We seemed to be running them back and forth to church.  And we had a stomach bug, so we tried to eat lighter than we would normally.  Reading that all makes our break sound busy and miserable.  It wasn't!  My parents visited for a week, and our dearest family friends dropped by on their way from Connecticut to Virginia.  Their presences were...comfortable.  My parents left on New Year's Day, and with them I sent a stack of knits for my sister’s baby, due at the beginning of February.  I posted a picture of the stack on Instagram, and the details can be found in my Ravelry project page.

On New Year's day we cut our Vasilopita--T got the coin, which was only fitting, as he was ill on that day.  We also opened the presents from my husband's parents while FaceTime-ing with them.  G had asked for a George Washington costume from my mother-in-law, and she was so tickled by the request that she found one for him.  It's one of his favorites,  judging by how often he wears it.

We've returned to our weekly rhythm now, although I came back to it mentally kicking and screaming.  I could have used some more time away from schooling.  Time to be selfish and alone.  Ha.  Three days of rhythm and order, or at least an attempt at it, reminds me that the family works better if we have our days plotted and portioned.  

Happy New Year to you--may 2019 be a year of peace and order.