​January.

Cold and grey.

Always a chance of snow.

For us, January comes with the continued holiday rush.

Christmas has barely ended, and it’s New Year’s.

Then it’s my daughter’s birthday. She wants the tree down, and I do not. There is no compromise; not yet. There’s birthday dinner, birthday cake, birthday snack for school, presents, and there are still birthday parties.

Before we have a chance to take a breath, it’s Martin Luther King Day with the Super Bowl right around the corner, and then we can almost see Ash Wednesday peeking at us.

There is no respite despite this being the time of the year that we need respite the most.

Snow days are a double edged sword, and there’s a randomness of not knowing how the day will go.

There is a bittersweetness. Next year, both of the little ones will be in middle school. Right now they still want to cuddle and tell awful kid jokes and laugh at everything, but they also like the television and their tablets, Lego and books. They cook a little for themselves, something I hate on many levels. One, they’re growing up too fast. Two, I become my mother and think it’s too dangerous for them to use the stove. Three, I feel like I should be the mommy, and do it all. I don’t want to be Martha Stewart; I want to be Ann Romano or Florida Evans or Frankie Heck, but really I want to be me, just with more energy and less anxiety.

January.

I will sit.

I will drink tea.

I will write and listen to music and read.

It is grey out, and grey means deep breaths and goal setting, and art, and resolutions. It is time to regroup, whether that means career or hobby or writerly things or politics.

Regroup.

January’s reward is a cup of hot tea in a cozy too big chair with a scarf around my shoulders, my Kindle resting on my knee as I read the next book or the magazine subscription.

January.

We begin.