A wintry start to December, light coating of snow on the ground, and raw weather with no sun all day.  Depressing, isn't it?  Add to the mixture of cold, gray weather - 24 days to Christmas shop and a shopping list that fills a whole notebook page, and you have a recipe for winter blues.  But I won't give in to that.  I've been having a reoccuring dream of parades.  All kinds of parades and in all different places.  Some in Tivoli, I recognize Broadway as the start of the parade, some in Beacon, some in places I've never even been.  But parades.  Timmy looked up the meaning of this dream on the internet and came downstairs telling me that it meant I felt like an observer, watcher of the parade of life going by.  And I guess that kind of explains where I am - watching, but certainly not leading the parade.  I guess when you are seventy that's good enough. 

Tonight we are going to the Sinterklaus parade in Rhinebeck.  This is a wonderful parade, with lots of puppets, characters, lights and St. Nicholas on a white horse, with rough looking scarey men near him rattling chains, but throwing candy to the kids.  Years ago Rhinebeck had this parade, Jer was about two years old bundled up with a blanket in a stroller.  It was a night just like this, cold with light snow on the ground, but a full moon.  We would have a large moon tonight if the clouds would disappear.  Anyway, Ria and I and Jer were watching this parade in Rhinebeck, lots of large puppets, the four seasons puppets, all represented as women, filling the whole street with their skirts.  The people working them stayed under the skirts and they moved smoothly past the cheering crowd.  A man or woman dressed as a large owl stopped in front of us, lifting his wings high above his head.  Jer almost jumped out of the stroller in fright.  And Ria and I laughed.  That parade was more about the winter solistice.  And I remember Tivoli used to celebrate the beginning of winter with a parade organized by the Tivoli Artist Coop.  I marched with Atticus who was probably about three then, we had made a big white flag made out of an old towel and I had attached giant sleigh bells to it.  Marching in a group of cold people in the dark of night, ringing a towel lined flag felt right.

So maybe this parade tonight will get that dream out of my head.  Or else, I might just start dreaming about a bearded man on a horse that is going to help me get ready for Christmas.