Christmas Ornaments

   The kids have not yet flown the nest, but nor are they the children who used to wake early on Christmas day.  Full-blown teenagers, they sleep in while they can.  We wake them when it’s time to have brunch with their grandparents, who moved to town when the kids were young and soon will move away to somewhere warm.  Presents for the girls are clothes and music and gift cards. Toys from Christmases past are piled inside the living room cabinets, within easy reach but far from here. 

   After brunch the grandparents go home to nap and KC starts working on our fancy dinner.  I walk down the street to the river and slip along the path in the woods along the bank to the golf course, looking for birds, enjoying the sun and fresh air, contemplating this present slice of life.  Some leaves hang stubbornly on their bushes with a light coating of frost like so many humble ornaments.  But the sun is moving higher in the sky and the frost, like a lot of things, will be gone before you know it.

(2009)