Three big stollen loaves, two small seedy loaves: no meals were prepared, but it was still a two-dishwasher-load day at the Alcott House. The project involved a lot of juggling--proofing times, baking times; glazes and egg washes--but at the end of the day, I had five fat babies and a house that smelled like heaven.

Then, in the evening, T and I went into town, planning to have a drink at a bar and then walk around and look at the light displays along the waterfront and in the squares. But when we walked past Eventide and saw empty seats, we changed our plans. Eventide is an oyster bar and seafood restaurant that is impossible to get into in the summer. Customers overflow onto the sidewalks; wait times are endless. Only now, on a weeknight in winter, does a local wanderer have a chance at a seat. So we took our chance, and ate a beautiful unplanned shellfish feast.

Then we walked--snaking our way through the streets, peering into shop windows, admiring the colors, eavesdropping on snatches of conversations--arm in arm like a pair of courting Victorians, as the cold sea breeze twisted our ears.

And then we drove home, curling along the cove, the low skyline carved against the blue-black sky, the neighborhood windows aglow. So strange that this is my home, this cold little city, this salt bay.

Today I'll mix up at least one more batch of bread (maybe challah? maybe rye rolls? maybe both). I'll go for my morning walk, through the streets, through the woods, through the cemetery. I'll fiddle with revisions, and tonight I'll go out to write, a big stollen tucked into my bag, for sharing at the poet party. I've got an idea for a writing prompt based on Dickens's use of simile. I'm starting to glimpse a hazy future poetry collection arising from these new raw drafts.

This has not been a wasted week. I haven't done as much straightforward writing as I'd planned to, but I have thought. In and among the holiday chores and excursions, I've been reading hard, imagining hard; feeling the sharp, sweet shock of future, present, past. It's the work, just as much as word-to-page is the work . . . the work of being aware of the privilege of being aware--a messy inarticulate phrase, but do you know what I mean?