stair. well.

i used to love to read Nancy Drew mysteries.

my favorite was my first: "The Hidden Staircase."  it wasn't so much the character of nancy drew--who, truth be told, was a bit of a snob--or her friends bess (the "plump" one) or george (the "boyish" one, perhaps with a long-standing quiet love for nancy herself?)-- nope, for me, it was really about the cases themselves.  and that hidden staircase?  what could be cooler than that?

my favorite scene was the one where the girls tried to figure out how to climb up the old staircase without making a sound.  they started at the bottom and kept track of what stairs made noises in the middle, on the sides--and then charted a course up to the top that eventually was soundless.  i was so enamored of this.  i think i've tried a version of this on every single creaky wooden stairs that i've come across.

this vacation home, i've realized that that sidestepping, that dodging and ducking and finding the right place to put your feet in order to remain quiet--that, my friends, is what it is like to be with family during the holidays.  

i have to find my own footing, tiptoeing on the balls of my feet, using my toes for balance.  i have to hug the walls and stop whenever i feel a break is coming.  i literally have to freeze myself; make myself colder than the 40 degree air outside.  i have to stand and breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe.

on and on and on i breathe.  

i try to make the breath go all the way down to my thighs.   i want them to feel the oxygen, to sturdy themselves again by the circulating cells and air.  

i breathe and breathe.  and breathe.

and i love the stairs.  i really do.  i love how cranky and fussy they are, and i love how much i know them.  how i skip a certain step each time.  how i know that deliberately pounding down them gives my body the knocking-around it needs.  how i can hit my head on the lower steps if i don't pay enough attention.

i love the stairs.  the boxing-dance that i do on them is my annual choreography.  i've got nothing to do but find the right places to land; and land with grace and gentleness, if at all possible.

it's not always possible.  the stairs are tired, and so am i.  but we do the best we can.

upon turning 43.

yesterday i took a walk in the morning.  it was my birthday.  i was by myself, hustling along rural streets in massachusetts.

i was in heaven.

as i walked, i thought about how it felt to be another year older.  how i thought so much about making my birthday day so full of things i love, of people i want to be with; how even though i'm an adult my birthday always feels so important.  monumental.  as i say each time, "this year is a really big deal."

and yet it's not.  it's just another day, another moment in what will hopefully be my long and meandering life.  

but still, it feels right to celebrate when i was born.  yesterday i figured out it had to do with being an xmas baby.  i was brought home on xmas day, wrapped in ribbons by the nurses (back when moms stayed in the hospital for three days).  present.  gifted, even at three days old.  my parents drove me home in an old car, me in my mom's arms, and when they arrived at their third-floor walk-up apartment my newborn lungs took in the freezing cold air around me, and my position as a advocate for cold winters began.

i adore wintertime.  i've written here before about how it chips away at my soul, not living where we get a true winter snap of weather.  i've come to terms with it lately, but it doesn't mean that i don't immediately engage that part of myself when we come back for the holidays.  the fact that my birthday is inevitably part of that reinforces it to me; welded to my soul yet again.

winter is about rest.  the wide world around me is resting.  the trees stand stock still, devoid of accessories--except for the ones who proudly strut their needles year-round.  the ground smells wet and marshy.  the air that escapes from my mouth as i walk can be seen--can be seen, i tell you--and i get to participate in circulating oxygen to all.  

everything is quiet, and if it isn't, it should be.  

even with no snow in the forecast (60 degrees on Christmas Day--i'm so sorry), i find ways to dig deep into winter.  the world around me seems surreal, made-up.  nature is tired.  so am i.  

there is inevitable ugliness in the decay and dirty snow, and it is there that i find such beauty and hope. i am like that pile of dirty snow, it seems.  i stick around.  underneath the top layer there is a purity, a sincerity, a cleanliness that offers truth.  forty-three years later, i respond to dirty snow, to piles of mud, to broken-up ice near the edge of the pond.  there is nothing resplendent in these images, but to me, they are the simple proof that winter is gorgeous.

by proxy, i am too.