Silver Lake, New Hampshire

Around New Year’s, there are a few cars parked in the gravel driveway: one grey minivan, usually. Sometimes a blue car, sometimes red or gray. Depends on who could make it, who drove up with who. Politics. By the time we get there, it doesn’t matter, we’ll use whoever’s for whatever, so long as we all fit. The mountains linger in the distance. On the side of the fridge, a diagram of the peaks. From the living room, laughter.

There is a fire going, and footsteps in the melting snow where two of us have ventured out to the sheds along the house to find more wood that someone else has kept stocked for us. We announce that we are providing for the family anyhow. The moon is silver and crawling up the blue-black winter sky. We leave our shoes by the door.

The light inside is thick as it pours out from the windows into the cold air, persimmon-yellow. Sasha prods at the fire, which responds in the sharp popping of embers, an emission of sparks. We lay in various states of sprawl around the room: a couple on each of the couches, one in an armchair, and the last two on the floor by the fireplace. My head is on Sasha’s lap as she twists around to stoke the flames, turning back towards the rest of us when she is satisfied. The rug is surprisingly comfortable, soft beneath our legs. We are warmed by the thick blue knit of blankets. I braid the fringe of mine between my fingers. There is tissue paper, holiday wrapping paper, discarded red ribbons strung about from gifts exchanged. Empty bottles of wine and margarita mix decorate the little tables that sit in the center of the circle we make. There were once party hats too. Someone suggests cake.

It’s chocolate from the Hannaford’s twenty minutes down the road with the most gorgeous view. It’s almost unfair, the view from that parking lot. Cars, suburban sprawl, a one lane highway, the bright yellows and reds, and the jagged edge of the mountains overseeing it all. Sometimes I imagine the snowy summits are disappointed with their view. A grocery store, a two-lane highway. Traffic. Sometimes I don’t know what they’d think. We meet in the parking lot on the drive up, sometimes, and go grocery shopping together before we get to the house. It’s hard to coordinate desires without looking at each other. Sometimes we are not women who say what we want. Sometimes we are, though, and when we argue about types of milk, it is like children arguing over Christmas presents, too happy for any real heartbreak over whole versus almond, soy versus oat. It will go in the coffee regardless.

In the living room, it is getting dark. The fire glows like citrus. The cake is now cardboard scraped clean, spoons in a circle like children at summer camp. We admire each other, our own little circle. My sisters and my sisters. I am yawning into into the blanket and dissolving into the carpet and the dying embers of the fire. We settle into silence, leaving only the rustle of the trees in the wind, a car speeding past every so often. No one moves to leave quite yet.