January 05, 2026
For the first time in a long time, at the opening edge of 2026, I can’t imagine what the end of the upcoming year will feel like.
I now what now feels like. It’s 7 A.M. on an early January morning in Seattle. Outside, it will remain completely dark for nearly another hour. Inside, our Christmas tree gently illuminates the living room. My wife and kids did a particularly good job selecting the tree this year. It’s ten feet tall with a beautiful shape. Today, at the tail end of the season, but it had lasted longer than normal. The hundreds of white LED lights wrapped around the tree provide enough glow that we need no other lights in the living room. Our black Lab Charlie is curled up on the couch, sleeping; a fuzzy shadow. The sound of the steady rain on our metal roof makes me glad I’m inside where it’s warm and dry.
What’s the big deal about 2026? This year will mark 30 years since I moved to Seattle and met my wife and 20 years since we started this journey of parenting. What makes the end of 2026 hard to imagine, however, is this fall we will be sending our youngest child off to college. We don’t know exactly where he will go, but a good bet is “far away.” I can’t imagine what our household will feel like at the end of the year. I just know it will feel different.
Later in the day, I drive my oldest son to a friend who will be giving him a ride down to Corvallis. It’s strange to think that, quite literally, I don’t know when I’ll see him again. Will he make plans to travel with friends over spring break? Will he hitch a ride back to Seattle for a long weekend during the winter term? My son takes after me and likes to play it by ear, so: Who knows!
In the afternoon, my wife and I take down the Christmas tree and all of the decorations. Silently, I thank the tree as my younger son and I carry it outside — You got us through the darkness of December. Now the light is starting to return. Our younger son saws the tree into three sections so the city will haul it away on Monday. It’s just yard waste now.
As she vacuumed up pine needles from the carpet, my wife remarked how it’s sad to take the tree down. I don’t remember how I answered her, but later I thought that “sad,” while correct, isn’t specific enough. I thought of something I wrote when I tried to describe the look in our older son’s eyes, that day ten years ago when he found out there was no Santa: “When he woke up yesterday morning, he lived in a world that still had a tiny bit of magic in it, and when he went to bed that magic was gone.” That’s how it feels, the day the tree comes down: This morning, with the rain on the roof and the dog curled up on the couch and the glow of hundreds of little white lights in the dark: This morning still had magic. Now the magic is gone, cut up into three pieces waiting to be hauled away.
You got us through the darkness of December. Now the light is starting to return.
Winter in the Pacific Northwest is more about darkness than about cold, and the darkness settles in quickly as rapidly moving sunsets coincide with the return of persistent, thick clouds. I’m not religious, but the trappings of Christmas and the memories of excited little kids really help me in November and December. In January, though, the days are starting to get longer, and by mid-February the crocuses have bloomed and the willows have budded. Summer and early Fall around here are of course glorious, times to savor. The dark season always comes around again in its turn, but the tree and the lights return with it. Perhaps the better way to think of the way of the world is that its magic is never gone but rather sleeps until needed again.
Perhaps I know exactly what the end of 2026 will feel like.