Winter's Heart
January 2024 || How I'm letting the light in, right now.
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I have a confession: I’m obsessed with a lamp.
Late last year, we did some updates to the living room. This meant replacing peeling faux leather chairs we’d been covering with blankets, pedestal end tables too tall and prone to tipping, and lamps which had fallen to the floor so many times they looked purposefully hammered. It was time.
Desperate for some low-hanging fruit, I went to the bullseye and walked out with what I hoped were a pair of winning lamps. I needed to not spend a million years, or dollars, finding new ones and these I found particularly lovely.
They were also too small.
Their special feature, however — an additional small bulb tucked inside a base covered in diamond shaped cutouts — had me determined to find a way to make them work somewhere. Anywhere.
Wandering around the house for inspiration, I landed in our master bedroom where our slightly larger glass lamps gave me pause.
What if I switched them around?
For a few minutes I fumbled with cords and piles of books too big for my nightstand and, after moving everything around just so, closed the blinds, shut the doors, and reached for the dial.
Click. Magic. I gasped, and the corners of my eyes filled with unbidden tears.
It seems silly, I know. I can’t explain exactly what it was this fractured light spoke — and still speaks — to my soul, but every night of this dim winter that first click1 makes my heart swell.
It’s the same part of me that hunts for the moon and stars at night, even just through our windows, somehow more impacted by splintered, slivered light in darkness than even the cloudless sun in midday. There’s a promise in it, that light in full will come.
I try to bring that energy into my dimmer days, too, that hunting for light, both literal and figurative — and this month has been full of plenty of opportunity to do so.
In every winter's heart there is a quivering spring, and behind the veil of each night there is a shining dawn.
—Khalil Gibran
Where are you seeing light, lately? Click the button below, and tell me about it.
Living
We re-entered the world after sickness just a week before the mid-month snow came which cloaked our tired surfaces in white, fluffy flakes, then deep cold, then ice, and everything got canceled, again.
I can't make sense of what day of the week or month it is and we’ve been home, a lot. Enough that we’re coming in comically under our monthly gas budget. This week, the ground is soaked with rain that’s pummeled us for days and the snow finally all melted on Tuesday.
Needless to say, I’m ready to put some mileage on this foot of mine that leveled up from PT over a month ago. I think I may get the chance, soon.
Writing
On a much needed date night, Cliff offered up the entire next day — just before the snow came in — for me to work on this:
Months ago, I had an idea to break down The Other Side of Hope’s scenes with two colored highlighters (one for present day and one for flashback) and then map, on a trifold, the corresponding scenes, by act, in matching sticky notes. This is what happens when you Pants2 a book, people.
This dissection serves two purposes — to see where, perhaps, there was too much narrative summary within the text (places that weren’t highlighted) and then to evaluate scenes I hadn’t fleshed out as well as I know they can be. It didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it might, but did require a full day of knowing I had nothing else to tend to. It was a really great work day, and I feel like I have a way forward, now.
Reading
I’m moving ahead with the year-long War and Peace and Wolf Hall (trilogy) read-alongs with
of . These have been vastly different but both enjoyable reading experiences, made even better by the communal and almost collegiate-like experience of reading, discussing, annotating, and engaging in further study thanks to Simon’s endlessly helpful weekly posts. My fellow readers have offered invaluable insight, perspective, and quite a few laughs, as well. Who knew War and Peace was funny and didn’t tell me?!All around, my reading this month has been slow and steady, which feels about right. I’ve been reading essays a little more often, as I stumble upon them, and these are just a few (not all!) of the ones I found particularly enlightening, challenging, or inspiring:
- with “You Don’t Need to Document Everything”
- and with “The Hollow Boys, and Girls: Restoring Risk, Efficacy, and the Small Triumphs of Life”
- with “Things on input and output years”
- with “Dear Writer Friend”
Listening
A couple weeks ago I popped into Dig. A Record Buying Event hosted by my favorite local record shop. In the middle of a day with little time to spare, I told myself I had twenty minutes to poke around and see what “called” to me.
That afternoon, I walked out with an original, pristine pressing, circa 1961, of Henry Mancini’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” soundtrack. It’s been on heavy rotation at home much to the delight of the kids who don’t stop dancing once this second track hits (I dare you to try to keep still):
Perhaps even more exciting was the original 1965 pressing of the Sound of Music soundtrack by Rodgers and Hammerstein I discovered. It’s in fantastic condition and holds as much nostalgia as you’d imagine it might. Peggy Wood singing Climb Ev’ry Mountain gets me every. single. time.
Watching
Two Fridays ago, we made a spur of the moment decision on movie night to introduce the kids to the world of Tolkien, beginning with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. We hadn’t anticipated just how special it would be to see them so fully enter into and engage with a story world so dear to us.
As much as I’m ready to have our living room back, I know a part of me will be sad to see this special space go. Hopefully, today.
Enjoying
Per usual, January is the time of year I can be found in a pile of cookbooks from my collection in the pantry, seeking inspiration for the year. I love reading cookbooks anytime of the year, but especially at the beginning.
Looking to try a new recipe for the kids’ goûter3 (a French custom they have happily appropriated), I whipped up these blueberry muffins with streusel from Magnolia Table: Volume 2. They elicited exclamations of joy in our home, so much so that they’ve been made more than once using frozen berries from our pickings last summer. I’ve subbed brown sugar for regular in the streusel and yogurt for the sour cream, and no matter which way you make them, they’re absolutely delicious and gone quickly. I should probably start double-batching them.
The sun is finally poking through the closed blinds in our bedroom, and it’s time to get a move on. What day it is, I’m not entirely sure, but I know — no matter what — there will be light in it.
I hope you see it too.
Until next time,
Functionally, the first click is the only one in which the base turns on. The second turns main lightbulb on, while the third turns on both. Here’s the lamp.
For non-writers, a Pantser is someone who writes a book without an outline. It worked out okay for me, with this first novel, but sharpening this story has meant working backwards to firm up — or revamp — structure.
This 4pm sweet treat to tide the kids over until dinner is a non-exception in France. We usually reserve this around here for days they go to tutorial, but not all the time (though wouldn’t they love that?). Our home days we are more apt to have a sort of high tea situation, though again, not every day.
One year I chose LIGHT as my word of the year. It was one of my favorite choices ever.
I could not agree more about War & Peace. How in the world have I missed out on this joy for 41 years? What fun it is to be reading along side you!
I too am looking for light. I’ve begun to make a habit of shooting film when light astounds me. Can’t wait for the scans.