A Love Letter to January

Dear January,

You’re almost over, and I’m going to miss you. I know most people don’t feel the way I do; I’ve seen several posts on social media citing that they feel as though you’ve lasted 93 or 437 days. For me, you’ve gone quickly by. Too quickly, it seems.

I feel inclined to begin this letter with the words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways . . .” For I do, I love your slow, white-crowned days, days of flurrying flakes and roaming whitetail deer outside my windows, days of bright blue skies and moody gray ones. I love beginning each of those days shrouded in darkness, a flickering fire my only light as I sip hot lemon water and then coffee. I feel embraced, snuggled close, in your early morning hours.

I love your quiet after the hustle and bustle, the scurrying to and fro of the holidays. Christmas gets put away, and I’m always ready to clear the clutter and restore a clean slate, a foundation of serenity and quiet peace. I love resetting the fireplace mantel with favorite pieces in shades of blue, Pewabic pottery and Delft houses, old books with blue covers and odd bits of china. Blue makes me feel restful.

I love snowy strolls across our land, through the orchard of gnarled apple trees, over the rolling hills of our pastures, past the sleeping raspberry patch and the bluebirds’ empty house. I love that the girls and I can wend our way across the hollow of the vernal pond, now dry and awaiting the spring melt that will begin to refill it.

I love feeding the birds, especially the cardinals who make bright splashes of red against the brown and white of the thicket that hugs our old farmhouse on the north. I love the bright yellow beaks of the dark-eyed juncos who arrive to spend the winter with us, and the woodpeckers, downy and pileated, who feast at the suet feeder with such succor. It’s so much easier to watch the birds and their antics against your snowy backdrop.

I love how your chilly days call for a London Fog or some other tea latte, or a pot of Yorkshire tea served with milk—and of course, cocoa for the girls. I love the warmth of homey soups and stews on the stove or in the slow cooker scenting the kitchen, the aroma of sourdough bread rising under a floursack towel.

I love the quiet of evenings by the fire with my people as I knit a row or twenty, or as I read a chapter of something that brings me pleasure.

I know some people may try to remind me that February will be much the same, but it somehow never is. I grow tired of the cold and damp in February. I become weary of driving in the snow. The newness of the year will have worn off. Soon, I will be ready for spring to arrive. But I will look forward to when next we meet, friend January, to more of these quiet, blessed days of slow stillness.

Until next year.