winter is its own perfect palette

It was a weekend of many things—a race through every lit hour, the mind awake at 2 AM, the body running (again) two hours on. Don't forget. Do. Go.

Then, mid-afternoon, today, I was walking back to the car, having taken a very tiny Italian pine tree to my mother's grave. Having reset the wreathe my father had planted there. Having had a quiet conversation.

I had parked, deliberately, at a distance. I had wanted not to hurry through this visit with my mother at Christmas. She has been gone eight years. We talk, still.

It's easy to think of winter as leaching the color from things. Today, returning to the car, less speed in me, more calm, I stopped to see how winter is (in fact) its own quite perfect palette.