Christmas lights

When I was young I used to sit on the stairs looking at the lights on our Christmas tree in the hall. I’d squint my eyes to make them blurry and out of focus (the days before digital cameras and filters!)

We had some baubles that had lots of flat hexagons on them and I’d twizzle the thread they hung on and dash back to the stairs to watch the pretty lights dancing.

I remember spending hours in my youth doing not much. I don’t do it now. I fill that not much time with social media and podcasts and taking photos instead of squinting and staring.

I’d lay on my back in the garden in the summer just watching clouds drift by.

I’d sit on the heating vent by the window in the library with a book in my lap just looking out the window, or more often nose deep in a book, until closing time.

But my best memory is sitting on those stairs squinting at the lights. When the thoughts and memories of that makes me feel so contented, I know it wasn’t time wasted. Just the value of it is only just coming to fruition.

Much of my childhood was difficult and I carry a lot of baggage around from it but there are diamonds in the mud when you look for them.