I wonder where you are darling, have you flown off somewhere again? I think of you... It's pouring out, I hear the rain pelting on the other side of the windows. Pitch black, damp, chilly. I've just come back from stepping into my bedroom, where I laid out and admired my new lingerie. Like a trousseau - too good to wear - except for very special occasions. Beautiful stuff, I'm really enjoying it, all the lace, and black, and in other sets, delicate ivory & white.

I confess, I'm having a hard time this week with the holidays. I try hard to not let them get to me, but it seems they do. I will be very glad to break out my brand new Botanica desk calendar for 2012, just get through this week.

I've been thinking about how I seem to have accoutrements about me for a certain kind of domestic life - one that might suggest lots of friends & family all the time, but it doesn't happen, hasn't happened. As though I wish for it to happen, by providing some of the props - that is, I suppose, feathering a nest. I have some beautiful things, mostly bought at sales over the years. Tonight's dinner will be leftover Oriental shrimp (as described yesterday, only I'd neglected to mention the protein). Last night we had it on beautiful porcelain bowls, decorated with a vintage pattern of scattered roses; since those are in the dishwasher now, unwashed, tonight our meal may be on dinner plates of a gorgeous ornate floral semi-Persian (again, "Oriental") design. I have some beautiful china, a collection of mismatched, yet pleasingly coordinating sets, bought over the years - mostly for - no exaggeration - a dollar apiece, at a semi-annual tabletop sample sale in town. These various dishes & bowls, mismatched as they are, add wonderful decorative touches displayed on my open kitchen shelves, and look like a million dollars - such lovely objects (obtained, by good fortune, for a song) make every meal beautiful and special.

I wonder - would I have been happier - this holiday week, just for example - if I'd had children, if I had a child or a brood around me? I can't honestly say. Or what I can honestly say is -- well, I think I would enjoy them at times, but at other times I'd wish my space. Could my life, had it gone differently, been focused around children? I don't know. Maybe. Or not?

I don't know.

All I know is that I don't much like being so much by myself, day in, day out, all year long. And it's hitting hard this week.

And I'm not part of a tribe, not my own, and not another one. And so that was hard the other day.

I went for a walk today and found myself voicing (to the pines, and the crows, and the sky) very angry words towards my deceased mother. Unfair and horrible to the extreme - one part of me felt - and yet I unleashed it, as I walked by a tiny old random cemetery in the middle of that stretch of road.

And so I do have a home... or the props for one. Without going overboard. Just a nice place, and I have good taste - that I do believe I got from my mother - well, so okay, I mellow, I soften, just now thinking of that.

Dearest, I wish I could summon you if for just a moment, and if I could I'd clutch your hands, and look at you, and I would love the way you look at me, and then we'd break off corners of that wafer and exchange bits, and - I was all forgetful and confused about that ritual - it seems to me that one should feed the other, as a bird might feed a baby bird, or a priest dispensing communion wafer - popping bits into the other's mouth. But I guess that's not how it's done, it's all privatized... well just as well -- goodness knows I don't want that ritual getting too heavy...

Dearest, wherever you are, I'm thinking of you, and kissing you, and I hope all is well, and you are a very great comfort to me, and a wonder, and so - wherever you are - all my love