Cold, grey, foggy,  the damp slithering between the bricks and behind the buttons and zippers, the day still sparkles with small joys:

• My 11-year-old son hollering "Bye Mama!" and turning to blow me a kiss when I dropped him off at school. For a moment he isn't my sometimes sulky, ever-growing preadolescent, but My Best Boy Ever. And to think he mustered this much cheer AFTER getting a flu shot.
• While shopping in a small English-language bookstore for Christmas books for the kids, I discover The Oxford Book of Christmas Poems, a book for me.  It includes two of my favorite poems, Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot, and The Oxen by Thomas Hardy. Each time I flip through this book, I fall between the pages and dream between the lines. 
• At the library, discovering all the Christmas videos have not been checked out after all. Visualizing an evening tucked under the eaves and a fleece blanket, watching White Christmas.
• Pulling into the driveway, seeing the postman has left his bike leaning against my stone wall and is at the main door with a brown-paper parcel. A parcel!? Sent to my Belgian address?! (We get nearly all our mail through a special U.S. post office box). I retrieve it from him with a big smile and a Merry Christmas, and take it inside. Eagerly I unwrap it and discover a tin of cookies and a card from Martina. She and her friend Sylvie rescue cats in Brussels, and she is the source of our latest adoptee, Petey. I am deeply touched by her thoughtfulness and kindness, to give homemade cookies to a new aquaintance. I hold the tin to my chest and savor generosity of spirit.
• A hot cup of tea and I click over to Citizen of the Month where Neil is hosting a blogger holiday concert. I smile, I laugh, I comment too much, and when Qatherinn sings "A Christmas Song," I close my eyes and feel I've been transported to another realm entirely....

Today, this grey day, everything is illuminated.

December 20, 2006