All Around It Was Dark

The anxiety leading up to this day, Christmas, has now abated.  Though soon enough I'll find something else to worry about.

Christmas Eve. I had a German lunch in a Polish immigrant town and thanked the waitress for working Christmas Eve so that the likes of me had a place to be for an hour. She was about 30, maybe a little younger, well-pregnant with her second. She said the last time her job gave her a stool to sit on sometimes, but not here,  and all the standing is rough on her back. Another woman enters and sits at the bar with a friend she has come to meet. Maybe my age, very pretty. Our eyes kept meeting, but I could not be sure if I was welcome or intruding. They were warm and brown and somehow made me feel sadder and infected. When I stood to leave, I said goodbye to Kate, the waitress, shook hands with her and wished her well, while the beautiful woman at the bar held my eyes steadily this time and wished me Merry Christmas. I stood there for a few seconds wondering if I should talk to her or if she was only offering pity to a man alone on Christmas Eve and then left believing the later to be the case.

I crossed the Connecticut River- flowing water, ice and rock, red brick buildings.

Driving home tonight, I saw the brightly lit side of a peeling white chicken house. All around it was dark. It triggered memories of other lonely sites I wish I'd  photographed and catalogued as if they were significant and one day their significance would be made known to me.