White and Blue

A winter storm has passed through this corner of the southwest.  Today, a smattering of leftover snowflakes continues to drift slowly down and to add to the thin sheet of white that is draped across the landscape.  It's a welcome reprieve from the usual winter colors of the desert -- grey, brown, dirt. People stay inside and decline to brave the cold and the slippery roads; the world is a bit quieter. We admire the icicles that have sprouted from the roof edge and wonder how long until all the frozen bits have melted away and been absorbed by the thirsty desert earth.

With the snow has fallen the Winter Doldrums.

The Christmas decorations have begun to look a bit crumpled and stale; it is time to remove them and put them away. We are now biding our time until the Offspring return to school and we can resume our regular schedules and activities.  Work continues. Bills must be paid. Life goes on.

We are blue -- though from the letdown of the return to Ordinary Life, rather than from the cold itself.  After the anticipation of the holidays and the New Year, there is a sensation that we now lack a goal:  we need something new to which to look forward, and we have not yet found it.  We are just the tiniest bit lost.

We think of those few lovely days in Big Bend, when the biggest obligations were to remain patient with all the creatures (human, canine, and otherwise) occupying space in the small camper-trailer and to tolerate the chaotic distribution of their possessions; when Herself could cook a few simple meals without being interrupted by the hundred other mundane household requirements; when we explored a beautiful corner of nature every day and played Scrabble every night.

Those moments of happiness are the fuel that carry us onward.