It’s misty tonight but not raining, and all the lights have halos from the soft air. Today I slowed down after sixteen weeks of not, followed by a few days of noise–it was all in my mind, of course, but noisy just the same, so this evening I decided to slow down and after standing on the front lawn looking at the moon through the haze in the east, I drove down into town.

I put on some solo piano music from George Winston’s December and rolled slowly past the fish market to the real estate office where Steve and Randy Blue have the best lights I’ve seen. They have music synced with a radio station across the river, and the largest tree in the front keeps beat with the sounds, but I kept my windows rolled up and just listened to George’s deep rendition of Variations on Canon in D. Kids with parents ran through the paths between light displays, and I assume they were yelling, or calling out what they saw, but I heard nothing. Just George and Pachelbel.

I stopped next door at 711 and bought some hot chocolate, talked to Wayne a while in the parking lot, but families started moving past the Nutcracker display to the parking lot, so I drove off toward the bay, pausing in front of Hurd’s Hardware. Jack Hurd has the entire front window filled with illuminated Christmas trees in various colors, and on the left side the trees are several deep. This window against a black sky with no other stores around makes it more silent than it should be. I turned off the car and the radio and rolled the window down and still heard nothing but quiet, a faint spill of music from the light display at the realtors.

Behind Hurd’s and across the street is the village branch of the county library, and tonight my son worked while a local Y hosted kids who had entered their artwork to be hung in the library gallery in the back. I rolled down the street and looked back into the window. This, right here, is one of my favorite things to do in the dead of a cold night in December; to see kids and families laughing and warm inside a window, not able to hear them, but watching them play and talk while outside I can see my breath and my face is tight from the cold. At one table near the front Michael talked to a woman, while over near the door a few kids entered to head back to show their parents their work.

On the way home I rolled into the IGA and could see Kristin from the museum and one of her kids at the checkout, talking to the clerk, laughing. The lot was empty, mostly because it’s Monday but also the rain, and I headed to the river, rolled down the windows, and turned off the car and sat quietly. Out on the Norris Bridge I could hear the whining of truck wheels moving across to White Stone, and the light at the airfield was circling, indicating someone will land at some point tonight, probably Mike in his PT-13 headed back from some weekend show. All of this going on yet all I can hear is the lapping of the Rap on the sand and the slow movement of a heron about fifty feet away in the marsh. To my right in the windows of the yellow house across the reeds is a blue light of a computer or television flashing on the walls.

I like the peace I find when I am outside looking in at Christmastime, and some rebirth of familiar connections take hold of everyone. It is fleeting of course, but present for now. I enjoy watching these flashes of life around me. I try not to be creepy and prefer only to look in public spaces like convenience and hardware stores, but it is nice to catch a place like the library where so much activity is going on behind my music, like shadows on some cave wall. But this year is different than last. Some of the people I used to talk to every day have gone silent, somewhere beyond the ideas and anticipations of those still here. So my world in general has gone mostly silent in the past several months for the first time in three decades.

So tonight I decided a drive made perfect sense; not only because it fills me with some sort of hope to see life being lived, but also because I’ve always been just outside looking in.

This happens to a lot of people, especially this time of year; we have a sense that we’re better off a step back, perhaps a small part of the conversation but not participating as much as others, preferring instead the safety of the next row back instead of the circle of talkers; we are more comfortable on the patio bench quietly watching the stars until someone else who feels awkward comes out and quips about needing some air. That’s where I am, away from the small talk, and I turn around, place my elbows on some wrought iron fence behind me, and look in a everyone laughing. I am okay a step back.

But at the river I sat in silence and thought about why this distance works for me.

It is safely consistent. I know blindfolded how to walk through most of the Blue’s Brother’s light display, and I know Wayne and Maria will be at 711 at this hour. Monday nights Michael always works the library, and Jack’s trees make everyone smile for a few weeks. They make me smile anyway, and I appreciate that. It is predictable and consistent at the end of a year that has been anything but either.

So I drove around listening to Winston’s version of Bach’s Joy and felt completely and literally at peace. Life is out there, through the windows, in the market and the front steps of the convenience store. The kids in the library laugh like Michael used to when I brought him in to sit at those same tables two and a half decades ago. This is what we can count on when we are running out of things to rely upon; that Christmas will bring out people with lights and once dark window displays are somehow almost personified, the trees in Jack’s window display appear more like watermen at the cafe standing around talking about the coming snow.

I slowly rolled down my long, winding driveway until I reached the lamppost near the lawn at the house. The porch is lit with white lights, as usual, and the wreathes illuminate the walls and windows. I had one other significant loss this past year; the Penguin, affectionately known as Pengy, died last January. His wires were shredded from years of moisture and his skin simply popped. Sad really, because I liked seeing him for twenty years at the corner of the porch.

But things change. I have new light displays now someone sent me, and after tonight’s Chocolate Bailey’s on ice I’m not going to care so much anyway. But I do have a suggestion: Turn off the music except for something peaceful, and stay outside for a bit–watch life for a while from the outside, observe it’s consistent laugher and predictable love. Watch others enjoy the moments they have together while they still have those moments.

But don’t stay out there too long. The love is inside.