Scribbling One's Way Along

In the middle of the night, one awakens with a truly chilling thought.  What if she has forgotten something or someone, neglected to carry out some holiday task or other?  What if her free range organic Christmas turkey breast (and all the stuff that goes with it) is a complete fiasco and does not turn out as hoped?  What if ice and snow prevent guests from getting out of their homes, if they fall or have an accident on the way over to the little blue house in the village?  In predawn darkness, one's unsettled mind worries, frets, ponders and spins like a tiny unknown planet somewhere beyond the rim.

Well.... there is a fine and noble list, clipped to the refrigerator with a magnet and getting longer by the hour.  There is a telephone to use in contacting guests and offering to provide alternative ways for them to get to our threshold.  There is e-mail.

Somewhere in the midst of all the toings and froings, I looked down at my list yesterday and was seized with what can only be described as a moment of fleeting eccentric pleasure, at the lovely thick lined paper I was writing on, at my old Waterman pen and how it felt in my hand, at the color of the ink and the effortless way it was flowing onto the page, even the sound of the nib caressing the paper. In hectic times, such small pleasures are something vivid, graceful and unexpected, a comfort in one's life.  They are also a powerful reminder that things usually turn out somehow, if not as one expects they will, then certainly as they should.