Christmas Week

I am typing this in Kelowna, as Christmas Week continues. (Really, it's not just a day is it? Unless you have to work, Christmas stretches on until the New Year's Eve hangover subsides.) 

We go for walks: Dad, Louise and I. Or just Dad and I if Lou is working. We take our cameras-

Dad is trying to forgive me the unpardonable sin of now using a Nikon- and we try and find colour in this monochrome landscape. Nothing is browner than Kelowna in early winter. 

Grey skies, snow-skiffed mountains, steely lake.

We bond through eating, wine and photography. It's what we do together, not what we say. 

I flew up here on the night of Christmas Day, a short, smooth flight. Cheaper than the bus. Up here I am a kid: sleeping, snacking, watching movies and reading. Waiting for news, waiting for the next job, always waiting. Soon I'll fly home and take down the Christmas tree and life in 2014 will begin. What will it bring? What will I bring to it? But for now I am grateful to be a kid, to travel from one parent's to another and be loved and taken care of. I am old enough to know that it can't last forever.