The mountains wave goodbye to our tail lights. Thank you, come again. The sun tiptoes out of sight so no one will notice he’s taking the daylight with him.

Whoa, when did it get so dark?  
Good question, and by the way, have you seen Sun? He was just here a minute ago.
Sun snickers from his hiding place – it’s a good one, we won’t find him till morning. 

The car warms quickly and we wiggle our toes because now that we’re free from our boots, we can. At the coffee shop off the highway, we order three different coffee drinks. A man with an inflated face and an unfortunate mustache asks me where I got my track jacket. I tell him I work for Facebook and he tells me, ugh! shoulda sold. I glower and start to argue, but excuse myself when the barista starts listing off our adjectives, medium, peppermint, mocha … Back at the car we have to swap drinks three times before ending up with right ones. Sip, swap, sip, swap, sip, swap, sip. sip. sip...  

Once, after I’d run farther than I’d ever run before, my legs didn’t feel strong so much as my arms felt weak. I had the urge to retrace the course walking on my hands just to achieve balance (ironic, since I can balance for fewer than no seconds upside-down). I felt something similar as we drove down from the mountains and I watch the Colorado landscape whizzing past. My whole body is exhausted, I try to cross my legs once, but can't and my arms are too tired to lift my latte, but my mind is moving so fast I have to struggle to keep it in the car. Don’t you think you’re going a little fast, brain? Someone could get hurt. Are you even wearing your seatbelt?

I am thinking about happiness, and the number of unsuspecting things that can trigger it… 

Snowboarding, obviously, Frisbee tournaments, summiting fourteeners, running farther than I’d ever run before…in summary, the limits of physical exertion. And brain exertion too. I miss math. In grade school I used to curl up in front of Saturday morning TV with the math section of the GED. x = y!  y = 42!  The trains pass in St. Louis!  The donut has more frosting than the cupcake! Colonel mustard killed Ms. Peacock in the pantry with the lead pipe! Victory! For everyone but Ms. Peacock. Or the cupcake…

Unexplainable patterns, see: the golden ratio…
Explainable patterns, see: the digits of the multiples of nine summing to nine…
Perfect squares, see: today we rode chair number 4, number 25, and number 121…
Word play, see: eat shoots and leaves…
Personification, see: the sun peaking back up over the mountains to see if we’re still looking for him.  We’re not, we’re sleeping. It’s safe to come out now, Sun…
Coincidences, see the assassinations of Honest Abe and JFK…
The meta, see: our ability to comprehend evolution…
The miracles, see: little emily’s recovery…
Accidents that turn out for the best, see: some broken condoms (you know who you are)
The unexpected see: Mili Vanili and Lance Bass. Ok, not Lance Bass.
The expected. See? I just knew you were going to say that…

***

The family welcomes us home, so glad you’re safe, and heads out to the Christmas Service.  Tony and Dan fall asleep in distant corners of the house and I don’t see either again for hours. Until now, the house has been accomodating two parents, two grandparents two cousins two uncles and two aunts (the ants go marching two by two) Now it’s mine, all mine! Hurrah, hurrah.  The silence sings to me. I start a bath, I light candles, I soak, I hum Christmas carols, I relax into my own exhaustion. After I dry off, I dress in flowing silk and cotton, it's not really like me, but neither is moving so slowly, so deliberately. I feel so light tonight I want nothing weighing me down. Just give me a sleigh and a couple of reindeer – I could fly.

On a couch by the fire, I settle in with my laptop and a blank document entitled “Resolutions.” 1. Restart piano lessons. The fire isn’t reaching my toes, so I slip off the couch and stretch out along the rug, belly down. 2. Stop using the word “should.”  Now I feel the warmth on my back my neck, my toes, my combed wet hair. I’m a cinnamon stick floating in hot cider, I’m a chestnuts roasting, I’m a happy cat. 3. Give up meat, for real this time. It’s not often I’m this warm inside, it should be more often. 4. Read twelve books. I put my laptop off to the side, and open book number zero: short stories by Dave Eggers. I have one story left, it’s told from the perspective of a dog:  Through the trees I love to run with my claws reaching and grabbing so quickly like I’m taking everything. damn, I’m so in love with all of this. I decide right then that I will have a dog one day, it will teach me. As well as my own fire place, it will warm me.  

I finish the book, and close it. I let some tears fall. The dog from before has hit his head and drowned, but discovered some news in the afterlife: Of course God is the sun. Why would there be a God and also a sun? I’m not sad-crying for the dog, I happy-cry for the book; the beauty of the story itself, and my own sense of completion, also for sleeping cousins, for Christmas traditions, for my mom’s feast warming in the kitchen, for my Jewish dad singing his heart out in the church choir*, for being simultaneously independent in this big house and supported by this big family, for snowboarding, for math, for words, for knowing for certain I want to write, indefinitely. I pull my laptop back to jot that down, 5. Write. Just then the front door opens.  We’re home! Let the festivities begin!

damn, I’m so in love with all of this.

 
*At some point during the evening someone slipped a box of chocolate stars of david into his suit pocket. Accepting diversity is out, embracing it is in.