It was the long day to disappear. Leaving the latch fastened, the blinds drawn and all that was undone, simply undone. Padding around in toasty slippers on this second day of the New Year…a tired mingling of the old and new. Piles of ribbons, discarded chocolate bling-a-lings and bits and pieces…we find ourselves back at the beginning of the strand.
The air is thick with memories of gingerbread and peppermint soaps, winter fig candles and eggnog coffee. The season of hibernation beckons, come and stay indoors just a bit longer and relish the frozen silence…as quiet musical chords drift languidly out over frozen New York ground.
The afternoon stirs and stretches…heating up with lemon tea, shrimp and garlic and the tangy promise of an old Merlot. The plow comes and goes…others will work today as we linger in notebooks, novels and lists…for we are in no hurry to take apart the carefully woven joys of December…for an untried and snow covered path.
We revel in this strange in-between time…the twenty-four hours of neither here nor there…for the old ways and days are gone and the cracked door is not yet fully opened…not yet flung wide with frosted portals. This is a snowflake day…no hurry, no flurry, just carved silence. The mail is not yet delivered and the cupboards are full. We eat from the larder and avoid the television. No news is good news.
We rest curled up in the longest of cords, a woven rope of memories of Christmas past, stacked boxes and crispy pies…gifts from the apple porch stuffed with all things good…fruity orbs delivered long ago in peck baskets.
The cold creeps in under the door. It is the season of whites; robes and towels, snow drifts and pearls, soaps and doves…ice and white leather. January drains all the reds and greens with a bitter wind…and twining twisting continues from the womb, winding around countless trees and snow mounds and in and out of seasons, and cake plates and cookie tins and porch doors.
We follow, must follow the pearls out the iced portal…but tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow…not today. For today is the snowflake day and we surround ourselves with memories, candles and ginger stillness. It is cold and we ready ourselves for what lies ahead…basking in the final strains of Celtic music and Spanish guitar wafting out over crystal barren plains and the breath on the window pane…on a frozen New York day.
690 Saint Paul 