A New Year

"Kiva probably won't be here next Christmas," A said seriously. "Mom told me."

At fifteen, Kiva is an old dog, a survivor and a loved family member.

I see her and remember the puppy who bounced and bounced like a ball from spot to spot in my niece's first Brevard house. I see her and remember the mountain house where my niece and her husband lived and where her son was christened and where her mother, my sister-in-law, died. I see her and think of my old cat Lucy, who didn't make it to Christmas this year.

And when C spontaneously cuddles with Kiva on her pillow, it's hard to take the picture.

The Way Legos Connect

That snap, when brick fits brick just so, making a lego castle or fox chasing rabbit, that's the way this family fits, the parents (builder and flower artist) and the children (nature lover and crafts maker) complementing and enjoying each other.

No better way to spend an afternoon than this: a Christmas-gift trip to Michael's, lunch at Moe's, and a stroll through The North Carolina Arboretum.

"Let's find the koi," says C, and we do.

"Pops loves koi," says A, and he does.

"A butterfly!" says A.

"A swallowtail," says C.

"Yes," I say, "an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail!"

"Look at the detail," says E, and I do, and all of them -- plastic brick art, red- and yellow-limbed dogwoods, giggles and skips, smiles and silly faces bloom into one garden of joy.

Drive-by

Today, on the way to see my niece and her family, I stopped three times -- once for gas, once for food, and once for love.

I have long loved the mountains of North Carolina -- the low lumpy ones and the high peaked ones, the silvered and grayed ones, covered by clouds, and the blue ones like these, receding and bluing into the distance. Their beauty never ages.

Show Us Your Best

Alex Wild has invited readers to make a Best-of-2013 science or nature gallery and share the link. Here goes, one for each month, beginning with December.

December

November

October

September

August

July

June

May

April

March

February

January

Visual Obsession

I have 20/20 vision. At a distance. I can see a tiny bug or dust mote and follow its flight or float. I can read road signs. I enter a big box store, and I can find the right aisle.

But with clarity provided by man-made lenses, I have also lost something I loved, but never knew before just how much: I cannot shift my eyes out of focus. 

I don't remember learning to tie my shoe laces or to read, but I remember stumbling upon that trick as a child. Once I learned how to let my eyes shift, I'd do it again, and again and again. I wanted to see the world in shapes and colors, let them swim together and apart, meld and separate.

In the last two weeks, I have asked my camera to do what I can't. I have, as is my wont, become obsessed. Everywhere I look, I aim and shift myself and camera settings, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, but always with childish pleasure.

It's a silly thing, but in a time of stress and worry, of endings and beginnings, a small thing can weigh much. And this discovery does.

Before leaving, time

for reflection at Kelly Ingram Park

and for thanks to sculptor Elizabeth MacQueen, my childhood neighbor.

Christmas Gifts

When everyone droops with gift-giving, even the dog Betsy, we take to the outdoors.

One walk with my niece and her youngest takes us past my childhood church, now a dancing school. "I wish they had dance here," my niece said. "The studio is so beautiful." "Oh yes," I say, "I can well imagine."



Another walk takes me and the older of the two Birmingham great-nieces to the filling station for AA batteries. We're on a mission: to take a few snaps. We photograph reflections in windows and doors, feet and each other, bricks and stones, and water. At home, I edit one of her photos, and her sister V exclaims, "Did E take that???" "Yes," I answer. "Wow," E says. I hope this is the start of something.

On the last walk, just before we take the turkey to the in-laws' house for Christmas dinner, my nephew and I stroll through Birmingham's Botanical Gardens. We marvel at ferns and names of hundreds of iris (I'd like to see them come up), walk up and down hilly paths, admiring crape myrtle bark aglow in late afternoon light, and stopping at the Conservatory entrance to read the plaques memorializing members of our "second family.

On our way home, we pass my father's childhood home and my two childhood homes, and I think of all those who aren't here now to enjoy Christmas -- my parents, my aunt and uncle, my second family "aunt and uncle," and one first cousin.

Their gifts live on in the season of giving.