Dear December

Well, you are flying by quite fast. You haven't been too cold, and your nights have been crystalline in their clarity. You are a friend to the stars.

In Spain, you show a different face. And maybe I'm too accustomed to your nature in Minnesota, but here it does not feel like winter, just that brief space of time between autumn and winter stretched out, into infinity. It feels as if you've frozen time. There is a sort of limbo-like feeling to the world. Your days are lazy and empty, and yet we walk quickly through the streets. We plan things and put them off to tomorrow. And Christmas will never come, not because of some White Witch, but because the days between the here and the then are many.

December, this time you are unlike any December I've ever known. You are so very different: in place, in texture, in language, in departures.

But I still recognize you. The air feels the same. Crystal and infused with cooking smells. The everpresent bite of chill. The strange way the fire in the stars burns brighter this time of year. The lights and decoration, the shapes of trees and snowflakes.

Every year, I am convinced you are my favorite month. You're the month to end the year. And perhaps it is because I never want the year to end quite yet, but I always have been glad of the strange way you move through time. January always feels too new and abrupt. I am always unprepared for the new year. But the old year. Yes, the old year, I could do with having more time in the old year. There are always more things that changed than I could have guessed at the start. And looking back at January last, well, I didn't even know where I'd be over the summer, I didn't even know were I'd be next year or the year after that. I didn't know what a summer of changes I would have. I had no idea what it would feel like for my friends to go off to separate places.

Dear December, thank you for your long days. Thank you for the moments of frozen stillness when I do not need to look ahead. Thank you for opening up room for reflection in the stars. Thank you for making the world so clear and still. Thank you for making good things come to an end, and bringing new beginnings. Thanks for making us learn to look back and forward. Thanks for being the beginner and the ender of new and thrilling years.