It’s the final Thursday of the year. Hard to believe, eh? Or maybe not. Either way, I offer to you three beautiful things from the past week:

1. It has been good to spend time with my folks and with my grandmother, even if I spent some of it distracted by Cybils work and by Christmas shopping. Being far away is stressful and so I appreciate even just getting to be in the same house with them.

2. The holidays are for reconnecting. And we have. In the past week, we talked to a college friend who returned home to the Philippines to live and work. We usually get a letter each Christmas, so it was especially wonderful to hear his voice. I also spent a couple hours on the phone with my college roommate, who caught me up on what’s been going on in her life and with those folks she’s in closer contact with than I am. Rudi and I had brunch with another college friend, whom we hadn’t seen in a couple years. She seems to be doing well, which was reassuring to see. (And we hope to see her again next month when she and some of her students visit D.C. for the inauguration.) And, today, Karen opened her home to me for a few hours so we could visit and so I could deliver some Christmas presents to her and her kids.

3. My Cybils work is inches away from being complete. I am sworn to secrecy until the shortlist appears on Jan. 1, but I will say that it has been an enormous amount of work and I am proud of the role I’ve played. And I’m really excited to be done with it all and to get back to books of my own choosing and my knitting and my bed.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

Here in Connecticut, as in many parts of the U.S. recently, we’re in the midst of a winter storm. It’s my first of the season.

Nearly half a foot of snow fell earlier this evening, leaving a white blanket across my parents’ yard and an icing of white on the pines out back. It was beautiful to observe out the kitchen window, particular with the glow of Christmas lights on various shrubs and trees in the yard peeping out from beneath the white coverlet.

Not long after midnight, the snow stopped, but the wind picked up, blowing over my parents’ ridge like a train (or a hurricane). The sound is surprisingly ceaseless, like a jet doing constant loops over the house. Although periodically I can hear the gusts roar down the bank and break against the house, most of the winds must be high up. Between gusts, the trees are not waving the way I’d expected them to be given the noise.

I hope we keep power, but if there’s no three beautiful things post later today, you’ll know why.