Tonight, I'm making soup. It's easy to be grateful for the little twinkling lights I've strung up everywhere. Do I write about food too much? Do I write about it not enough? 

I thought I heard a whippoorwill this evening through the bare walls of my uninsulated kitchen. It wasn't one, of course, but it reminded me of deep, sweet summer, the sound of a night bird, a field maybe, or maybe just the hay-sweet smell, and fireflies starting to lift up. It's hard to imagine that now in the very start of the dark, bleak cold season, but I could feel it almost exactly in memory, you know? Maybe that's the thing to keep in mind. That there are happy, beautiful things, and even if I can't touch them now, they'll be here again.