More Lights in Maple Leaf

12/14/20 Our livingroom, 6 a.m.

For the first time in 30-plus years, we decided not to put up a Christmas tree. It’s always been our tradition to pick out a tree at the lot sponsored by a Boy Scout troop in our neighborhood every year. We both miss the scent of pine in the house, but I’m not sad about it (especially sweeping and vacuuming all the needles afterwards). It just seemed like a good time to simplify.

Instead, Greg hung strings of blue lights around our front-facing windows. In addition to being visible from the street, they illuminate the livingroom in a cheerful, festive way. During these shortest of days when dusk seems to begin around 3 p.m., we need all the light we can get.

The morning after he put them up, I was downstairs by 6 a.m. We had left them on all night, and the lights gave off a soft, cool shimmer. If we had put up a tree, it would have blocked that very same window where I have been making my sketches in the dark (I lower the shade and perch on the arm of that chair). I sketched this from the couch across from the chair, the livingroom warm and quiet.

Sometimes losing one thing means gaining another.