On a wintry January evening, I come home after a hard day at work.
The house is cold and dark. The night, chilly and damp and entirely appropriate for a winter evening. I enter through the back door. For a moment, I wonder if something happened to my cat because he didn’t greet me as soon as I came through the door. But before the thought can turn to worry, Quiet Rustle appears and brushes his greeting against my legs.
I make my way through the darkened house. Normally, I would be turning the lights on as I moved about in the dark. But on a mid-January night like tonight, I go through the rooms turning on the Christmas lights that still hang in the windows. There’s just something wonderful and uplifting seeing the festive lights dispelling the bleak, cold darkness.
And this year, like last, there just seems to be so much darkness to dispel.
Copyright 2021 Christopher Donahue