Plans

“What will you do for Christmas?”

“Where are you going this winter vacation?”

A month of the same two questions without an answer that satisfies my coworkers.

This Christmas I’ll be staying in Izuhara. I imagine I’ll be cooking a steak and eating some Christmas cake after work. Just like my college years, there’s no reprieve from work on holidays. The difference is now I’m halfway across the world.

The past week has brought the first gusts of bone-chilling winds. The temperature in the schools hovers around forty degrees and my feet have long since turned to icicles. I’ve been sleeping with my heater set at seventy-four degrees and two comforters are laid on top while I sleep. Still, it seems this winter is determined to dig its gnarled, white fingers into my skin.

I laid in bed and read the beginning blessings from the book I’d bought. Sleep levied it’s strength against my attention, but this line stood out, “The quiet loyalty of breath.” It’s in the first chapter of the John O’Donahue book about blessings.

As I drifted off to sleep— all I could think about was that line. “The quiet loyalty of breath.” All that it meant— wrapping up everything in such a small sentence.