It isn’t just because it’s time to go in and get warm, either. There is always that. January makes us glad people invented insulation and gravy. The nights are the sweeter for knowing that we did without a significant measure of sunshine today and were still able to forego turning postal on some idiot the state blessed with a driver’s license. We know the days will be getting longer now and little by little the sun will return to bless us and our homes and dogs and families.

We once again sharpen our skills by getting to know each other by sight just by the color of the parka we wear. It’s winter, when the smoke from the wood fires is like incense to us, when the smell of coffee takes on that special deep-down meaning. This is when coffee smells the way it used to early in the mornings at our grandparents’ house.

We don’t seem to do January mornings as splendidly as we did in warmer days. There’s just something about having that quilt over us for that extra ten minutes that is a delicious morsel of self pampering to take with us throughout the day to remind us that we are truly special.

But when the sun goes down that’s when the magic happens. Off in the west, the sky sends its burnt orange sky to us. To get the full effect, we need to stand so that a deciduous tree is between us and the sky. And then, there it is, the jewel of a winter day. With the bare-branched tree against the last fall of light, we see the branches give us a filigree of Spanish lace against a magical sky. For a moment – one bare moment – we are back in our memories to paintings of pirate ships on the sea, to blue and white plates our grandmothers had from Japan, to some beautiful snippets of our past.

It is our daily pay for tolerating the cold.

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