farewell ode to the pink christmas tree

there's something so wonderfully zen about putting away christmas. i think it's the calm and order of wrapping up ornaments, sorting through christmas cards, assembling boxes of angels and glitterly stars jenga-like into labeled bins. but there's this spring-cleaning kind of renewal that happens when you redecorate the mantle into the colors of everyday living. i know, that all sounds so martha and i confess that the new pottery barn catalog was thrilling reading--finally! my greens and yellows and twigs and leaves are part of a color revolution (of course ikea has been urging us all along to banish beige!). and birds, birds everywhere. before the storm came i found myself in a most peaceful frenzy pruning my rosebushes and there was no more satisfying mommy-and-me moment than owen and i sifting through terra cotta pots of disused soil with plastic shovels for river rocks to cover our plants. i'm a christmas junkie, no secret i know, and i have an obscenely high tolerance for jingle bells (and all of its versions from jingle bell rock to the boogie) and get giddy over garish displays of holiday light shows. and i believe steadfastly in a christmas spirit--how else do you explain inexplicable bouts of weepy, thankful, joy and the strong desire to hug everyone and infuse everything with cinnamon? but i love the peace that follows. i love the shuffle that comes after you try to find places for all of the christmas "loot" because it demands a kind of purging as well. or at the least a reshuffling, an inclination to minimalize. and the peace is a key accompaniement to the quiet this year--because it is really really quiet right now. m. is starting back to work on the other side of the globe--probably riding the ferry right now in the darkness of the norwegian morning; owen is sleeping like a big boy in his bed and there are no carols playing, just the rain of the long awaited storm. i miss m. already, i missed him already last week when we stayed up to watch the talksoup countdown and groan at the local news, and i missed him when owen showed him how to put together a racecar from his gearsgearsgears toy. but i miss him in this in-between moment, the quiet between holiday buzz and newyearsresolution momentum. soon the buzz will fade and then the gears will move on their own--but for now, a little poetic melancholy and thankfulness.