on donner and blitzen

What are those numbers again, 73° 71% look of distant fog out there, a prototypical Florida moment. Thick cloudy, no stars. Cool breeze.

Trinity, Apalachicola parishioner and friend Mary Virginia loved no weather more than Christmas Eve of chill, damp fog. Living there those years, I grew to love it myself, though my sharpest Christmas Eve memory may be of driving through deep snow ruts on the way to midnight mass at a little “high church” in a small town near Harrisburg. Deep, crunchy snow, car slipping on icy roads, 1976, bitter cold, quiet, Christmas lights shining on the glistening white. I was alone, driving alone that night. We were newly there, first Christmas in Pennsylvania and I’d not quite made up my mind between MountCalvaryParish into which the family’d settled comfortably, and St. Luke’s where the bells were clear and the incense thick. Memories invade and pervade, don’t they, and my mind was on loving the previous Christmas, 1975 in Northern Virginia.

So, how long ago was that, Bozo, forty years, in biblical lingo, a long time. It isn’t chill out here on 7H porch this morning, damp and a cool breeze, but not chill. Maybe next month. The mind does it to me anyway.

Neither diary nor journal, this daily morning blogwrite&post nevertheless goes on as morning muse. Somehow the nonstop week has exhausted, mandating a day off, thinking Donnerstag until Linda said “haircut.”

Second day in a row the lights have been off in the city park next door, giving a different air to dark, predawn early morning. Quiet out here, the sea monster isn't even splashing and feeding below.

DThos+