turning toward the morning

Sunlight drifting through bare trees and finger-smudged windows and wood stove dust motes onto the sticky pine floor where it glows, golden. I’ve been inside for way too many consecutive days. I’ve been inside my head (or in the fish bowl circus act that is family life with four) for way too many consecutive days. Get me a sled! Make this drat cold go away! Get me some wood and some nails so I can make that chicken coop or that fence or that tipi or that arbor or dream writing shed! 

In other words, cabin fever. It’s hit. It always does. It hits the cat first and then the husband and then the children and then me. The day starts off ridiculous and goes to bed ridiculous. The husband wakes up singing and bouncing and snapping his fingers and the daughter picks it up in a jiffy and the baby starts screeching and bouncing his legs and the mother, me, thinks of the time when I was nineteen and lived alone in the desert.

I would wake up at five, make a cup of coffee, and climb up on the roof to watch the sun rise over the Santa Catalina Mountains.

In the afternoon I would go for a four-hour hike in the mountains.

What??

But no regrets. These children make me much happier than I was then. Much less concerned about the state of the world (ironically). Much less lonely (to put it lightly). Less worried about dying or succeeding or being loved. And they laugh. Lord do they laugh! Which makes me laugh. Which is something I didn’t do a lot of when nineteen and living alone in the desert. And so…onward we go, into the heart of cold and sometimes-sunny February. The world is always turning towards the morning.