The Shortest Day

R.H. reminded me yesterday that today would be the shortest day of the year; then Ronald Blythe did when I opened his Word from Wormingford when I went to bed last night. He said:

"The shortest day and thus, by implication, the darkest week."

As if we really needed a dark week, huh? To top it off, the winds here yesterday meant a power outage that lasted five hours. Nothing new to us here in the country, and nowhere near as bad as it used to be when we first moved here in 1990 when Zack and Defee were young.

We were on well water back then and lost our water also when the power was off, which happened frequently then. That meant no flushing the toilet unless they hauled water in buckets from the creek.

Ah, the good old days.

What I did in those days was light candles and read to the boys.

In December, the first book I read to them, just as I had read it to their big brother and sister when they were young, was Madeline L'Engle's The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas, although I read it to all of them after the Christmas tree was decorated while they lay on the floor beside it, all lights off except the tree lights.

Back in the 1970s I would check it out of the library each year, and I think it had a different title then. Now each of the kids have their own copy of the Austin family, familiar to fans of L'Engle's many books. I wonder how many times I've read aloud her A Wrinkle in Time?

Or C.S. Lewis' Narnia Chronicles?

Make Way for Ducklings?

All of Beatrice Potter's books?

The Madeline books to Christy?

Holly and the Ivy?

The Little House books?

The other books whose titles have left my mind in a senior moment but whose characters have not--a small boy named Peter, a white dog who leaves home each morning to explore the town and returns home dirty? 

Mike What's-His-Name and his steam shovel? The little house in the country that gets surrounded by the city? The little boy who flies in the night with the snowman?

So many books, so many memories.

Did you ever read Goodnight Moon to your child? Over and over?

I see that smile.

It's the shortest day of the year and I'm going to bed early tonight to read. I think The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas is going with me, for old time's sake.