this month

december is the prettiest month.

this i am fairly sure of.  it may have to do with all the lights about and the sparkliness of the season, but i feel that it goes deeper than all of that superficial stuff.

i think its more about the quiet of the nights, the ease of the blackness that sneaks earlier and earlier into the daytimes.  there is deep beauty in the stillness of the cold air.  there is majesty in the breath of air that i can actually see.

i won't speak of snow yet, or the bracing cold that shivers my skin down deep, because i am only speaking of the december that is here with me now.  soon enough i will visit the december of my childhood, and that is an entirely different experience.  the prettiness becomes laced with the emotion of back home, and there is more bittersweet there than i can properly speak of at this moment.

this december is bringing me a momentous number to claim.  my fortieth birthday is a few weeks away, and the days are passing by while i cross them off on the calendar, knowing that my own personal countdown is both buoying me up and sinking me fast.

i'm determined not to go too deep with the sinking, i promise.

i keep telling myself that this time should only be filled with celebration for this life well lived thus far.
i keep telling myself that i deserve a kick-ass tattoo to commemorate the day.
i keep telling myself that i am worthy of the number, and yet that the number is nothing to notice.
i keep telling myself that i am what forty looks like.
i keep telling myself that i am almost halfway through, except that i'm planning to live until i'm 100, so that's not really true...

it really doesn't matter.  i know it doesn't.  it really doesn't matter at all.

i am thankful that i am here right now, in this early december evening, knowing that there is something about wintertime that makes me glow from within, something that is illuminated behind my eyes throughout this entire season.  this is true.

december is good to me.