I love clean slates, new beginnings ... well, new ... anything! And I love January.

One of the reasons I love January is because it is a month of waiting - truly a contradiction if you know me. To put the word waiting or patience and accompany it with love is almost distressing as I am perhaps the most impulsive person I know! But truly ... I look forward to these 31 days all year.

January is the essence of expectation, of re-birth, of silver linings. While we wait for the rain or snow to stop, or for the sun to shine, or for the buds to swell on the cherry trees - the quintessential harbinger of spring, we ... hope.

It is a quiet month of contemplation. For me, Christmas is madness, a most wonderful madness mind you, but hectic and demanding as well as delightful and enchanting. January is the recovery. It is a month where the barrenness of our winter environment resparks my creativity and my hope and my dreams.

Take a moment and listen to ... the silence ... or perhaps ... find silence ... and be thankful for months like January.


Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

by Robert Frost (1923)

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.