Love List: January

gentle romance | homesick & haunted | omens

Sometimes, a month in one particular year comes to represent that same month in all the years that follow — for me, January will always mean frost, mist and ice, as it was back in the locked down season when we couldn’t leave our little town. Memories concertina time and in my head, that January was cold every day. The world certainly wasn’t perfect, but the weather was.

I looked over the town from my loft room window into silvery mist, the hills and fields that surround us were heavy with hoar frost, sparkling white. My children, swaddled in puffer jackets, hats, scarves and gloves, walked out with me into the morning. Puddles had frozen over and in the field above the stream, the sheep’s water butt had a coating of ice half an inch thick. The boys lifted this disk into the light, peering through its iridescent surface like a window, before delightedly holding it high and dropping it, smashing the smooth circle into jagged shards.

Last night, storm Chandra rattled the windows until, deep in the witching hour, I heard a wrenching crash. The wind had torn down the climbing rose from the front of my house, pulling two sides of metal guttering with it — in the morning, we found it splintered on the lawn. Rain fell in torrents, obscuring my vision as I drove the teenagers to school. January raged on and I poured myself a coffee, grateful for the calm of the kitchen. I thought, then, of the disk of ice with its fragile clarity, remembering how I had looked through it to see my son’s smile on the other side.

Here’s what I’ve been reading and loving this week: