January is Rough

I think I just need to accept that January is a difficult month. As I look back over my blog, I find that again and again I am at that place during January. It's a time of saying goodbye to people who have been here for the Christmas break, and it's a time of thinking about loss. It's a time when I think more than usual about people I love who are no longer in my life. The anniversary of the earthquake - the ninth one - is coming up, and my mind is constantly circling around that. We're starting up the second semester, and it's great to see the kids again; everything has begun well, but I keep thinking about that second semester in 2010, those first few hopeful days that were cut short by the earth shaking on January 12th.

There's just a heaviness about January days, even though the weather is gorgeous - breezy and bright, sunny and blue. My heart is sad. It's sad whether I try to think of other things or whether I focus and reflect on memory.

Here's what I wrote last year about January, the dead season.

And here's a little collection of my earthquake poems that I assembled last year for the eighth anniversary.