A few months ago, I co-launched an expat women's writing group here in Oslo. We have eight talented, enthusiastic members, hailing originally from countries all over the globe. I love my group. Seeing them every other week lifts my spirits and inspires me to write often and better. 

(Note: We are not accepting new members at this time because we strive to allow everyone to share their writing at every meeting. With eight people, this is already often a stretch. However, I can attest to how helpful it is to find and link-up with a group of writers wherever you are. My best advice: If you can't find such a group... start one! It's easier than you might think, and always absolutely worth it. I'm happy to share the steps we took to get ours off the ground, so please don't hesitate to contact me with questions about that.)

Occasionally our assigned exercises yield some really fun writing on each of our parts. In particular, I enjoyed the 10-minute exercise we did a couple of weeks ago, and I thought I'd share my response to it here.

Now, here I must admit that I cheated a little bit. My actual first memory of a giraffe is a terrifying one. My mother owned a wall-hanging, three giraffes at a watering hole, black paint on bamboo slats, like window blinds without the window. She hung it on the wall of my childhood bedroom, the one I shared with both my little brothers until I was six-years-old. That wall-hanging scared the bajeezus out of me. I believed I saw it come alive at night, and that the giraffes bared their teeth at me. I believed they were going to eat me in my sleep. This was real, blood curdling, screaming-fit fear. 

I got over it quickly once I saw giraffes at the zoo, and that's the memory I describe here. The intelligence and analysis are retrospective, of course. The romance of the moment is absolutely real.

At first I think it is a plane, the first star in the evening sky. So bright, it seems like the pearled end of a pin stuck through the fabric of the sky to hold it in place. So bright, I can see it even though the sun hasn't entirely set. I am caught by the beam of it, ensnared, drawn in. The sky is banded with the late-afternoon ripeness of the sunset, burnt orange, gray-green, turquoise. But the star shines through, so bright I can see it glitter. I understand why we draw stars the way we do, with flashy points signifying the burst of light in the night. 

This is the shortest day of the year. The first day of winter. As I walked home from the grocery store after lunch, the cold numbed my fingers, bare and hooked through the handles of my shopping bags. I hauled home my groceries: milk, juice, soda, a whole chicken for roasting on Christmas Day. I passed dogs wearing bright red sweaters and women in full-length fur coats. And now my neighborhood streets are almost empty, long before dinner time. The darkness has pressed us all indoors.

And perhaps because today has been so short, it has felt like one of the busiest days of all. I have run from one end of my flat to the other putting things away, hanging Christmas decorations, reorganizing cupboards. I have been writing and editing and revising. All the things I writer is supposed to do. My checklist for the day has been looking pretty good.

Then the star caught my eye.

Seven years ago I was an undergrad at UC Davis, living in Livermore, California with my husband of four months, and I was a first-time mom to an itty-bitty kitty named Disney. Since then, many things have changed. I'm a graduate student at Lesley University, and I'm living in Oslo, Norway. Oh, and Diz isn't quite as itty or bitty anymore. In fact, he's quite a chunk! But a couple of important things have remained the same:

-- Marriage. Seven years later, Jonathan and I still feel like newlyweds in many ways. Lots of cuteness. (Thankfully the cuteness is woven in with a learned patience, humility, graciousness, and maturity... all things that only time can provide.)

-- Wardrobe. The shirt was $3.50 at Old Navy in 2002. It's a keeper! And the Santa Hat. The bow and ears are Minnie's, of course, and Jon has Mickey's to match. We picked them up on one of our early Disneyland trips in 2003. Again, I think they'll be around for a while. (We'd wear them outside, but we think it's a trifle soon to show the Norwegians our true, dorky colors.)

-- Humor. It lives here with us always. Often at Disney's expense. And if we're lucky and we work really hard at it, the laughter will still be around in 2018, 2025, and beyond.

Merry Christmas!