2002-01-10-11:26 a.m.

I love it when November comes. The light touches the trees from a different angle and the outline of the fence around the garden is sharper. You can distinguish every leaf and every blade of dry grass. It's almost like winter comes and cleans up the air so you can see through it better. It might start getting cold in November or it might not, but either way you know it's winter because of the light.

If it does get cold you can do all the neat winter things like bring wood in and start a fire or lie on the sofa curled up under a blanket. It's fun to bake things because you don't mind heating up the house and you can take nice, hot baths without feeling guilty, because you've set the thermostat low to save money and you're just warming yourself up so you won't be frozen when you get in bed.

When I take a bath, I round up all my bath stuff and drag it into the kids' bathroom and then I go to the bookshelf and look for a book. I stare and stare, but I never can find anything good enough because what I really want is to be in the middle of a really good book, but I'm not, so I just get something that looks like it might not be too boring and I sit in the tub full of hot water and read the first paragraph then throw it on the floor away from the water puddles and sit there and think about stuff. Every time I think, why do I need a book anyway? I just have to have one even if I don't read it. Maybe I think better when I feel I should be doing something else. Maybe that's the attraction. I don't know. But it doesn't matter because I do some real good thinking in there.

If it doesn't get cold in November then I can still do things outside. I can still dress the little ones in shorts and take them with me to do errands when they're barefooted. I know it will get cold sometime, but in Texas there might be long periods of warmth even during winter - days when you wonder whether you'll need a sweater or not. You might have to change your clothes in the middle of the day because all of a sudden it's humid again just like summertime.

There's Thanksgiving and Christmas and I see people I haven't seen in a long time and I always get surprised by how someone "turned out." I think, wow, my family really is pretty neat. I get to sit and talk and learn new things and wonder about how the new year will be, and whether anyone is surprised at how I've changed or maybe how one of my kids has turned out.

I like winter most of all the seasons. Even if it's not cold like it's "supposed" to be, the light hits things differently and it's a good time for thinking.

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