Christmas March

Normally, when I head out for an afternoon walk on Christmas Day, I enjoy the peace of the seemingly deserted neighbourhood, an oasis of winter quiet in the centre of the pleasant, but slightly excessive sensory overload at home.

However, this year, Christmas Day seemed to have slid into March. Rain throughout Christmas Eve had been blasted out by a nighttime gale. The Resident Fan Boy said it sounded like the house was coming down. After an evening of frantic gift-wrapping, I had slept through it.

The afternoon brought strange yellowy sunshine and brownish-grey clouds rolling on gusts of damp wind. It resembled late winter/early spring in Hades - never my favourite time of year.

I tried to take comfort and joy from the Christmas lights clinging to stripped branches.

I thought a stroll by the Rideau River might do the trick, but I quickly realized that wet melting pewter-coloured ice with muddy puddles and my street shoes would be a perilous combination, and the Accent Snob and I turned around and made our way back through the bleak streets.

On the last side street before home, I saw bright globes in the gutter glaciers.

They had been whipped from this tree. (You can see the uppermost ornament being blown outward.) I rescued the baubles from the street and placed them in a porch corner, before continuing on to prepare Christmas dinner, feeling rather depressed and disappointed.

Oddly enough, when I headed out this afternoon on Boxing Day, taking the same route, the air felt gentler, the light softer. I exchanged pleasantries with my fellow dog-walkers (pretty well the only people abroad), and, booted this time, made my way along the riverbank where ducks hopped up onto the parts of the water that were still frozen over. I felt a whole lot better, and so lucky that there are twelve days of Christmas.

So many opportunities to get it right.