December dawns gray and cold. A new month. I began the last one in an old house by the sea. I begin this one in the two-story suburban home I’ve lived in for decades. A garbage truck trundles by as I write. It’s the third garbage truck I’ve heard this morning.

Ah, the suburbs! The beauty and the bane of them. I love the trees and solitude. I deplore the sameness and isolation.

But that’s an old story. The new story is this: Here I am.