a moment in the day: one

Quiet, I bend down and lift Nicholas out of his self-heating doggy bed and carry him through the dark morning house. Past the Christmas tree whose lights, with their automatic shut-off, turned themselves off somewhere in the night. The whirr up from the heating vent. Through the kitchen to take him out for a first pee.

As I go to step down the back stairs I remind myself that my Christmas doggy socks with Nicholas' face all over them are a little slick on the bottom. I remind myself it's still 2020. 

Be extra careful. You can make it one more day.

Silly to lay so much significance on a number, to pretend a curse can be contained inside a year.

Still, my brain has always been fond of games and if I'm to play a game on this last morning of double twos and double zeroes, let that game be that what's to come, when that last zero turns to a one, will be better.

I step slowly down, push open the back door. Coming in with the cold is the keening rise and fall of an emergency truck siren.

a moment in the day: ghost

Christmas Day, and I'm taking a break between bouts of fabulous food to sit at the computer and scroll social media and give likes and hearts to friends' holiday greetings. Their photos of bedecked trees, of special breakfasts, of happy children.

Here's a photo of a family party, obviously too many people to live in one house. Big grins, no masks.

I scroll past. 

A photo of a snowy backyard. Like.

A photo of a little girl making a beautifully sloppy gingerbread house. Heart.

A photo of a cat curled up under a Christmas tree. Heart.

Another Christmas Eve party, this one a series of photos, people at a front door, grins, hugs. The caption says we sure surprised them, how wonderful to see them, we hadn't seen them in so long.

I scroll past. 

It hurts a little to refuse to give happy kudos to this post and others like it. It feels a little rude. A little too Ebenezer Scrooge.

No.

Bah.

Humbug.

Not reacting favorably to posts about gatherings that go against the constant pleas for public safety that our governors, our mayors, our media, our citizens have been making as our hospitals fill up, as we hear reports of ambulances parked and waiting outside California emergency rooms for hours, that's not about Scrooge. It's about the Ghost of Christmas Future.