Christmas Day 2020

It is a lazy Christmas afternoon when the kids have disappeared to their respective places in the house to enjoy their gifts and share them with friends through the magical ether of electromagnetic waves.

I have sunk to the basement recliner in quasi-darkness where I hear the hum of the furnace most clearly.  My wife is napping in the lower living room on our red love seat content with the fruit of her holiday labors.  

I’ve read the first chapter of my Christmas present while sipping on some coffee that I dropped a black licorice toffee into in lieu of cream or sugar.  It is a bit bitter at first, taking some time for the toffee to melt.

The book is fantastical and dreamlike and when I fall off into my nap I am still reading it behind closed lids, scanning the pages and knowing that is impossible, but that is how dreams work.  I hear the occasional plodding of the dog roaming the house overhead on hardwood floors.

At some point my son finds me here and touches my nose with his forefinger which immediately pulls me out of sleep.  He laughs and I feel grateful that he is in my world on this snowy day of days when a child sleeping in his mother’s arms transformed the world with love all those years ago.

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