Winter just started officially yesterday, but I already feel like I’ve been sitting in winter for months now. This season once held a lot of magic for me – glittering snowflakes swirling down through a starry sky, and snowmen and skiing, and pie-baking and caroling through the neighborhood. And there’s still magic, I guess – but… the last few years have also brought tragedy in winter, and now I find myself growing a little wary as the dark and cold relentlessly approaches my part of the world…

Christmas lights on the tree –
sparkling through the cold
and dark – and I wait
for daffodils.  Wait to see
their sunshiny flowers
filling the fields again.
But daffodils need to go through
winter to bloom, and if we want
to see them so do we.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell