Hey, friends,

When I was a kid, I had a favorite game whenever I got my hands on a big box. I used to pretend I was on a space ship, and that I couldn’t leave it, and whatever I needed for a long trip had to fit inside.

I have a startlingly clear memory of what must have been right after Christmas, sitting on the floor beside my grandparents’ white brick fireplace (It was a freestanding one, a sort of central island for their open-plan home) with a single green sprig from their enormous Christmas tree propped up in the center hole a Tinkertoy wheel. It was my space Christmas tree.

Well, we don’t have a Christmas tree this year, and haven’t since 2017 because of the presence in the household of young, rambunctious cats. But this does kind of feel like a space ship winter as so many of us batten down for our mission to the other side of the inimical space of a pandemic winter.