~from Ami

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I guess there's no escaping the whole fall/winter thing now. I'd give up Thanksgiving and Christmas and any other holiday you want to throw in, if we could just go straight from October to April.

I went out for a walk today, I don't shop or do anything remotely suicidal the day after Thanksgiving, so I stayed home and cleaned the house, then watched the Razorbacks lose to LSU in an absolute heartbreaker of a game. Should have walked much earlier in the day. By the time I finally left the house, the clouds were low and heavy, gunmetal gray. Cold and miserable, the funk of losing that game hanging over me. The air was milky and the ground the color of sand. I was dying for a punch of color, anywhere. I did find some red: my husband's Montrose Indian Baseball sweatshirt- which I wear when it's cold, it has spots of paint on it in the color of every house we've ever painted. A neighbor's orange-red Christmas lights outlining their rooftop. Shards of my son's taillight scattered across the road from his wreck- unnerving, seeing that. There was a rustling in the woods when I made my way down the hill. Deer? Coyote? So desperate for company, I whistled until the animal bounded out- Boomer, the chocolate lab from down the street, with a bright red collar on.

The absence of color is the worst part of the winter. But I noticed more once I got to the bottom of the hill: Crimson berries on a bush, the stripes of the flag spotlit in someone's yard, a colorful nativity scene being laid out on the ground.

I came back feeling better, ears freezing, breath short from the steep hill. The house was glowing with light, the porch lights piercing the gray mist, showing me the way home. I stopped and collected the pieces of my son's taillight.