|
Slim Randles' Home Country
Drawing deep on January
Send a link to a friend
[JAN. 14, 2006]
There's something a bit magical
about a January evening. Despite the cold, January days end with a
faint tinting of splendor in the skies. |
|
It isn't just because it's time to go in and get warm, either.
There is always that. January makes us glad people invented
insulation and gravy. The nights are the sweeter for knowing that we
did without a significant measure of sunshine today and were still
able to forego turning postal on some idiot the state blessed with a
driver's license. We know the days will be getting longer now, and
little by little the sun will return to bless us and our homes and
dogs and families.
We once again sharpen our skills by getting to know each other by
sight just by the color of the parka we wear. It's winter, when the
smoke from the wood fires is like incense to us, when the smell of
coffee takes on that special deep-down meaning. This is when coffee
smells the way it used to early in the mornings at our grandparents'
house.
We don't seem to do January mornings as splendidly as we did in
warmer days. There's just something about having that quilt over us
for that extra 10 minutes that is a delicious morsel of
self-pampering to take with us throughout the day to remind us that
we are truly special.
[to top of second
column]
 |
But when the sun goes down, that's when the magic happens. Off in
the west, the sky sends its burnt orange to us. To get the full
effect, we need to stand so that a deciduous tree is between us and
the sky. And then, there it is -- the jewel of a winter day. With
the bare-branched tree against the last fall of light, we see the
branches give us a filigree of Spanish lace against a magical sky.
For a moment -- one bare moment -- we are back in our memories to
paintings of pirate ships on the sea, to blue and white plates our
grandmothers had from Japan, to some beautiful snippets of our past.
It is our daily pay for tolerating the cold.
[Slim Randles]
Brought to you by "Ol' Max Evans." See it at
www.slimrandles.com.
|
