I LOVE JANUARY

I love January: a time of renewal, of promises, of new beginnings, and new resolve. Something I've put off for months gets done in January. I can rearrange a bookcase, cart a complete set of travel books upstairs, and return downstairs to fill the now-empty shelves with boxes of fabric and art supplies. My intent is a little nudge to myself to begin working on various projects that I have put aside. The travel books now in our bedroom open up a dream of traveling again.

I love January: in California, it is our month of California winter -- crisp days of blue-sky sunshine, which follows the hibernating season of December, especially this year with our torrential rain and gloomy days that made it hard to get out of the warmth of the pile of quilts on our bed.

I love January: what better way to start a year than with a parade--the Pasadena Rose Parade with its amazing collection of young musicians who still march in close formations while tubas sway and flag girls prance. Those marchers have changed little from my high school years in Arcadia when we sometimes worked to stick flower petal after flower petal on our town's float. Watching the parade on the first day of the year reminds me of my senior year in high school when seven other girls and I shivered in the early morning air in our short, gold Native American-styled dresses and flamboyant feather headdresses in front of our high school band waiting to march down Colorado Boulevard in the Rose Parade.

I love January: what better time to talk ourselves into skiing at Tahoe again as we did for twenty years almost every weekend during ski season. In January the snow could be deep and we could be skiing where it was so cold that we could feel it when we breathed. It is dry enough that the snow kicks up behind us, and ice crystals form in the air. I remember when we finished a day of skiing with a walk around the village, our cheeks and noses glowing red with the cold. We'd look up to see a million stars that startled us by their numbers. Then we would open the door of a cafe and the heat from the room would blast us warm.

I love January: the warm sun right after lunch excites the birds and confuses a few bees that venture out looking for Spring. I sit in a white rocker in a protected sunny spot in our backyard and breathe in the sun. When I hear the small bell above my head chime as the first breeze fluffs the leaves, I know it is time to go inside to stay warm. My body, though is still full of the sun.

I love January.

Thanks again to my husband Bill for his photographs.