worth noting.

When the sun broke through the clouds on my last day at home, my Dad and I took a practice-walk down the street that I grew up on. He had his hip replaced at the end of December. The pace was steady but marked with stops - mostly to talk to the neighbors. One showed us a Steelhead he caught from the river bank. Another was unloading a truck-bed stacked with wood, cut from the blow-downs on the coastal highway.  These were relationships built on twenty years worth of Saturdays - taking down christmas lights or laying mulch on the flower beds, depending on the season.

 Towards the end of our walk, the clouds rolled in. I commented on the cold and My Dad responded:  "Oh, I like it when the air's like this. If I breathe in until it almost hurts ..." he drew in deeply to demonstrate "it makes me feel like I could levitate."

There was an orange tabby cat sitting in an overturned patio table. There was a hedge of early camellias. Coins of rain clung to the waxy leaves and collected where the petals gathered. 

And there's really no reason for me to be telling you these things, other than that they happened. But god, I'm so glad for this New Year. For a line to mark "then" and "now".  I'm so glad to be on the side that's beginning. To be possible, again.

(photo) iPhone | camellias, winter's roses.