We stayed up very late last night and thus I have arisen very late. The house is still very quiet, and outside a high fog tangles in the tall white pines.

Christmas was sweet-tempered and messy and a walk by an ice-skimmed pond. It was games and books and panic over how to operate a new oven. It was dishwashing and dishwashing and dishwashing. It was, as it always is in this house, a deeply secular holiday punctuated by good cheer and silly competitions and extravagant meals. It's an easygoing day, except for the cooks, and that's the cooks' own fault.

This morning, after a late breakfast, we will head back to Maine and plunge back our own lives. Tonight we'll be inundated by the grievances of the cat. T will go to work tomorrow. I will wrestle baskets of laundry. But it's been good to be here, in the land of beef tenderloin and grasshopper pie . . . to hug one big son and talk to the other, to bask in the company of my long-beloved in-laws. Hurray for laughter.