goodbye 2015

I watched the sun rise this morning from my favorite spot in the house. We live on the  corner of the street and it's something of a fishbowl effect in our front room. But if you sink into the big comfy chair, the street disappears and you look out on trees and a climbing rose draped across the window.

My Christmas village is set up right by that window - and the sun rise over this little forested kingdom was beautiful this morning.

I'll be packing up all of the Christmas things today. Putting away Christmas feels like a first brave step into the unknown of a New Year. I trot out the familiar, the comfortable, the memorable things each Christmas. They serve as a comfort to assuage the grief, the shocks, the unforeseen events that hit me over the past 11 months. Then I put away those things and face whatever may come in the next 11 with a somewhat soothed sense of "the more things change, the more they stay the same."

I wish for you, a fresh hope in this New Year.