I like the way we do things in our family.

12:20 am today found me in my grey boots that feel like slippers and rose-printed hoodie from Scotland and this beautiful hand-me-down skirt that Eva bought in India, squatting in twenty-eight degree weather on the bright red adirondak chair I picked up last week, watching my breath mist and dissipate and grinning as I waited for my mother to return with another strand of Christmas lights. Because we run on Africa time, and when the mood strikes us we run on the principle that there is no time like right this very second to do whatever it is we've been putting off--like stringing a couple of strands of Christmas lights across the front porch, even if we had to step around our Christmas tree (which all week has been casually leaning up against a pillar, studying its fingernails and patiently waiting for a space to be made inside) to do it. There is a sweetness to such moments that I can't imagine infusing any other space or time than midnight, with my mother, in the last few moments of the fall. I like the way we do things.