From a comfortable chair in Colorado I watch the house fill and empty. Cousins enter the room, play, read, and leave. Aunts, uncles and parents call questions and advice from the kitchen. Groups bundle up and head out into the cold, to shop, play, walk the dogs and shovel snow.  These are good days, filled with long mornings and multiple pots of coffee shared by all. The dogs, happy to have attention from all fronts, spend the early hours sneaking from room to room and bed to bed, taking several minutes of snuggles from each occupant before moving on. Eventually they demand release into the yard, where they bound back and forth in the fresh powder, hide beneath the pine trees, and bark at passers-by. In good spirits we can not be too stern, and instead usher them back indoors with smiles, coffee in hand. For the first time in months “good morning”, is an earnest welcome.

My hands are weak as of this writing, dry and cracked from the climbing gym and the mountains of Colorado. One new habit for twenty twelve and one family I’ve become comfortable with. The weakness and torn skin are a good feeling, a sacrifice I’m becoming used to.

In the span of a few days we ease into ourselves and into our families. Cousins sit on the same couch though they live thousands of miles apart. They relax with the comfort of having nowhere to be, no schoolwork to finish or reports to complete. These are the compromises of the holidays, a lack of privacy and a lack of urgency, the comfort of a warm home and the chill of the snow.

The gift of rest is that it comes in different ways to each. To the father napping in a chair near the fire while his children play cards, to the boy asleep on a bed in the afternoon sun while the house is quiet, all others having gone shopping. It comes to the younger cousins unbundling after building a snow fort for hours. To the same boy after an hour’s basketball at the chain-link netted courts of the local elementary school.

At the end of another year, in groups or families, by oceans and on ski lifts, quietly and with great laughter, we come together around the celebration of survival. For at its heart the ticking over of the calendar is a reminder that we are still here, still alive and awake. We will go farther, and make new memories, leaving behind this old year and those lost in it. For a few days though the holidays are a time to remember, and to let go.