Thursday before dawn: cold, dark, but the house is cozy and the little tree is bright. I'm glad to be home, glad that I won't be on the road again until mid-December, two weeks in my own bed, no weekend classes, a chance to finish editing projects, get Christmas shopping done, settle into winter.

This morning I'll be at my desk, then a walk, groceries, housework, and tonight I'll go out to write: a sturdy, steady sort of day. I've caught up with my Donne homework, I'm immersed in the Trevor stories, and my brain is pinging after a bubbly day with my smart, excitable students.

While I was making dinner last night, I had a long phone call with a son, silly facetiming with his new kittens but also a busy conversation about a teaching project he and I are hatching: co-leading a scriptwriting session with my Monson kids next semester, which would also give him a chance to share what it's like to be a recent high school grad from central Maine who's trying to make a life in the art world. We're both very excited about this: I mean, what could be sweeter than co-teaching a writing class with my own kid?

So here I am, sitting in my couch corner, in my little house, in my little northern city by the sea, thinking mildly about rejection letters, about laundry, about fixing myself a cup of tea . . . about the poetry of Donne and the stories of Trevor . . . about my faraway sons and the sound of my beloved opening a dresser drawer . . . about the thunk of cat feet as they hit the floor . . . about the suffering of friends and the wobbling of democracy . . . about cranberry-nut bread and warm hardboiled eggs . . . about maps and clues and streetlights . . . about the secrets of children . . .

And meanwhile the mind is a midnight city, a summer pasture, a thunderstorm, a matchbox-- 

A cold morning here in the north country: 18 degrees, with a high of 25 forecast. Last night, as I trudged back from dinner, the black air swirled with snowflakes. Outside the fire station a pile of guys were gathered around a broken-down firetruck, all of them gleaming under the streetlight. I walked from one end of the brief downtown to the other; and where the houses stopped, blackness suddenly dropped, like a stage curtain.

I've been carrying around William Trevor's short stories, carrying around John Donne's Holy Sonnets, thinking about winter, wrapping myself in lamplight. All of this rereading I do--the longing for reimmersion, for existence inside; to become story, language, character . . . Sometimes I stand back in wonder. How is it that I can't relinquish the familiar, the deeply known? The tales are etched on my bones.

And still time wanders forward; the men in their Carhartt coats lean forward to peer under the firetruck's hood; snowflakes spin and leap; I turn pages toward the same hard ending.

I've got a new poem out today, "Ode to the Haverford Park Apartments." When he accepted it, the editor noted a certain Frank O'Hara tone to it, an idea that has amused me ever since. I was not thinking of Frank when I wrote it, but I'm happy to have him floating through the lines as a ghost.

This morning I'll be at my desk; in the afternoon I'll be driving; in the evening I'll be trudging up Monson's dark Main Street. Teaching all day tomorrow, with the theme of imagination--an umbrella notion that covers not just the minutiae of figurative language but also straight-up lying, both of which we'll be playing with during class. And then home again.

These days I settle for a very small tree, one of those grocery-store table tops that holds about six ornaments and tucks behind the passenger seat of the car. Nonetheless, they are always far chubbier than any trees we cut from the Harmony land, which were nothing but bones. So, despite the smallness, this little one feels substantial; it holds lights well and swans cutely into the living space.

Everything inside the house is comfort: a small lighted tree, a tidy room, furnace growling, hot coffee poured. Outside a storm is raging--gale and rain--though it's milder than it was last night. Whenever I woke from my long dream, I would hear wind battering the windows, and then I would fall back into the long dream . . . escaping from someplace to someplace else, changing one set of clothes for another, wandering along a railroad track . . .

But now I am awake, and today, after my long sabbatical as holiday housekeeper, I will return to my work life. Compared to the demands of Thanksgiving, a day spent editing feels pretty mild. Holiday housekeeping is a complex task, requiring much juggling, organization, improvisation, and calm, in addition to many hours in soapy water. My hands are rather beat up, and my thinking-of-others focus needs a small break. It will be refreshing to spend an entire day alone in the house, in my small study, with my small concerns.

I need to catch up on those concerns: my Donne homework, for instance; my own writing, which has languished all fall. But I am healthy, finally, after weeks of illness. I had a magnificent holiday with my children. I'm full of energy, and full of affection, and my house is in order. I think I'll figure out how to get something done.

A brilliant orange dawn shimmers up from the bay, casting long fingers over the quiet neighborhood, over business-like cats trotting briskly up the sidewalk, over frosty parked cars and my withered garden, over the almost-bare maples etched against a paling day.

The house is Sunday-morning quiet . . . T is abed; the cat has hustled back inside to join him. The furnace mutters, the clock ticks, yet the house's low clamor casts a spell that is like silence.

Today is the last day of the holiday week, the first morning since Monday that I've awoken without my children in the house. I spent much of yesterday resettling our space: washing guest linens and reorganizing storage areas, reaming out the attic under the eaves to make room for the portable mattresses. We've only been in this house for seven years, but nonetheless the attic was filled with child-related clutter: college-era bins containing never-to-be-used-again dorm sheets; boxes of middle school paperbacks. I left the books (who am I to sort through another person's indispensables?) but ditched the dorm detritus, and now the attic is actually useful and mostly accessible. It's also reminded me that I'll need to tackle another winter chore: the maw of useless items known as the basement. But that is a story for another day.

For the moment, the house is tidy enough. The upstairs guest room has returned to a teeny-tiny study. The downstairs guest room has returned to a teeny-tiny den. Today I'll go grocery shopping (my family consumed a shocking amount of bread, Kleenex, and toilet paper this week), and then I'll spend time at my desk, mulling over student pieces and prepping for my upcoming Monson class. I might work on a poem. I might rake leaves. I might make turkey soup. I might watch the Bills game. I will read William Trevor's Selected Stories and drink tea and fold laundry and do the crossword puzzle. My life feels too spacious, but I know that's a temporary condition. In a day or so I'll be as overwhelmed as usual. 

 And now the quiet house.

Furnace murmurs. Tea kettle sighs into silence on the stove. Cat, feeling bereft, curls on the couch between Tom and me. He is sad, and not sorry to be quiet; none of us is sorry to be quiet. It is the best medicine for this kind of sadness. Two mornings in a row I have cried after partings, tears leaking down my cheeks as I drove away from the bus station. It is terrible to watch my children walk away from me, and it is wonderful to watch them walk into their own lives. Both things are true, and that is why I always cry.

Well, it was a glorious week, and now it is over. Today I'll wash piles of laundry, stow away beds and bedding, refit my study, learn how to be two people and a cat again. It's a good life we have here. I am reminding myself of this. Inexorably, we construct our patterns of space and dependence.

I love my children so much. I am so happy that they are finding their own aeries. If they lived around the corner, maybe we would annoy one another more . . . who knows. As it is, there is no friction. We spent a week together, six people in a small house, without an eye roll or a cross word. The ease of plain affection: that is a kindness in itself.

It's cold outside. It's warm inside. I'm drinking tea and sitting under lamp-glow as the sky slowly brightens. My children will travel into sunlight.

Thanksgiving was everything I'd hoped it would be. Yes, the food planning all came together, and on cue too: not one single cooking mishap or appliance fail. Yes, the table looked pretty and everybody fit around it. But the biggest success was an entire day of good cheer: kids bundling up for a long noisy walk together; silly family game playing; enthusiastic potato peeling; goofy jokes and joy. It has been one of the best holidays ever.

But today we're breaking apart. The Chicago children will catch a bus to Boston this morning. Tomorrow morning the New York children will catch their bus. The good times are coming to an end, and by this time tomorrow I'll be moodily washing sheets and remembering how behind I am on desk work.

At least today we'll still have the NYC kids, and I think later this morning we'll probably all drive out to some chilly salt marshes and stare out at the Atlantic. And then we'll come home and take giant naps, and organize some leftovers for dinner, maybe watch a movie or play a game . . . 

I'm the luckiest person in the world. But I'll still cry when they're all gone.