The cruelest month

Hint: It isn't April

Photo by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash

December is my birthday month, and my husband’s, and my son’s, and it’s when the early dark feels friendly because the neighbors’ lights shine out, and I love the sound of the word, the sweet sibilance, the warmth of it—and every year I forget how difficult it is. Every single year.

Not just the shopping and the holidays and the end-of-year chores. It’s the way I want to curl up and read, just read, nothing else, okay maybe a nice walk to work up an appetite for more reading.

Practically speaking, December is the worst month for reading—I mean, it’s so extra. December is all the layers of your regular life plus a whole other cable-knit life on top, like when Heidi had to toil up the Alm wearing all her dresses one on top of the other. I seem to remember a heavy pullover as her outermost layer. I’d look it up but I’m too busy reading.

Reading, or fighting the urge to read so I can get life handled, you know.