I sat motionless on the floor.
A pale light filled the room and, for a moment, kept the shadows at bay. I faced the lone window and stared above the evergreen treetops while light snow flecked against their dark silhouettes. I shoved open the old window and listened.
I heard the hollow sound of wind passing through the evergreen groves and barren oaks standing in the valley just behind the house. The green giants moaned, then creaked. Then all was calm.
The winter air began to fill the room, but I didn’t care.
I kept listening for more sounds; I kept staring at the fading winter day. The pale light turned grey and finally gave in to the shadows pushing it across the floor. Winter’s night had come.
I could hear post-Christmas bustle and banter downstairs. Life moved and chattered among my Johnstown family, my wife’s mother and father and aunts and uncles and cousins laughed and ate, while the dead time of snow and cold quietly put the world to sleep outside.
I was caught between two worlds—the living voices below and the dead voices outside. And in my in-between world of observation and silence, tears welled as I wrote frantically in my journal.
I wrote of my love for my new family. I wrote of my love for my own family enduring the Christmas cold in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on this night of nights.
Each year I republish “The Sound & The Fury,” because it makes me remember. The night of snow and fellowship. The Christmas feeling and the awe of winter darkness.
I’m sending it to you all in hopes that you can find a moment or two of quiet and consider the article’s themes of love and home.
You might notice, too, the birth of a new secret site—something I’ve been keeping for myself for some time: Poietes.com.
It’s my little home for fiction, poetry, narrative essays, and other pieces I love but don’t quite fit on a typical blog. I invite you to look around and share with your family and friends who might appreciate this quiet place on the inter-web.
I’ve been building another new website behind the scenes—in my spare time, my tea times in the early morning and late at night. It’s work in progress, but I think you might enjoy the About page, especially for those of you new to this newsletter.
The website is simply my author site TimothyWillard.com. Soon, I’ll provide another easy way for interested readers to follow all the new things happening on the site.
I’ve also just launched The Daily Grit, a daily (Mon-Fri) short email of spiritual inspiration for men. Many of you have joined, and even some of the ladies! And that’s totally fine. We invite eavesdroppers. But stay tuned, because I’m also helping my wife develop a similar inspirational daily email for women and family called The Daily Brave.
I hope you enjoy this first day of the new year with your family. It’s time to put the past behind us and rage into the new year with a fierce hope that can’t be extinguished. I’m excited to do that with you and thankful that you’ve kept this email in your inbox as a source of inspiration and encouragement.
I’ll see you next week with a very big announcement!
Cheers,
Tim