“I was thinking about comfort—how we comfort ourselves,” I said to a friend over Saturday morning coffee. “Small things. A favorite sweater. Comfort food. Friends.”

“Does it work?” she asked.

“A little. For a moment.”

Our talk had veered, as it often does, toward the perilous state of the world, each of us relating things we’d read in various news sources. I’d also been talking about difficulties at work and how I was starting to feel burned out from dealing with it all.

Small comforts. A silk scarf that once belonged to my friend Fran; a soft, warm Alpaca scarf that Mary gave me; colorful, dangly earrings from Trish; a pair of blue earrings that my sister and I chose together at a crafts gallery near her home in England. Each time I look in the mirror or touch the earrings or scarf, my friends and sister are with me.

Or I’ll wear a sweater that I knit one long cold winter, my only successful attempt at knitting a garment for myself. Whenever I wear it, I think of my mother who taught me to knit. The sweaters and afghans she made warmed us for years—one of her afghans still does wrap me on winter evenings.

Comfort. Taking care. Resting. Coming to center. This week, I committed to spending time writing in the morning rather than dropping immediately into news and Facebook. To honor this I’m sitting at the dining table, looking out at the chilly winter landscape rather than sprawling on my couch as I do most mornings. I pause frequently, staring out at trees, sun, blue sky—nothing moving, no breeze, no birds for this moment although they’ll come eventually. Still. Quiet.

My posture shifts. Elbows rest on the table, hands clasp together, chin rests on hands. I’m not religious but there’s comfort in this posture that’s old and familiar.

Tomorrow, I’ll meet my friend again for another Saturday morning coffee date. We’re both walking through our days with anger, frustration, fear simmering just below the surface and these feelings will bubble into the conversation. But we’ll also check in, buoy each other up.

I might say that crocuses are starting to poke through the leaf mold in front of the house. Or describe the snow castle that neighborhood kids sculpted out of the dirty pile of snow on the corner. I’ll tell her about the guided meditation we followed in the meditation group last Sunday, one of Tara Brach’s meditations for quieting the mind, the suggestion to “Make yourself at home in the flow of the present moment.”

The flow of the present moment. We breathe in, breathe out, let go, keep going.

I often resist winter, both psychically and physically. I go for a walk and feel all my muscles tightening up as I hunch into my coat, shoulders raised against the cold. I run errands and penguin walk across icy pavements. I grumble and complain about the cold and the dark and the sleet/snow/freezing rain. February can be especially tough with its first slight hints of spring—stronger sun, a change in bird call—overwhelmed by repeated storms.

I wrote that first paragraph earlier in the week, intending to post something on Wednesday or Thursday. But then I saw the news about Elizabeth Warren being silenced—my senator essentially being told to sit down, shut up, stop making a fuss. The news rendered me speechless. Ironic, eh?

A post about winter seemed irrelevant and I couldn’t think of anything to post that would add to the conversation. Then I remembered this image, which was conceived by my friends Paul and Fran over ten years ago in response to the flag becoming more and more a symbol of unquestioning patriotism.

Embrace democracy, it says. Such a positive action. Every time I look at the news, scroll through my Facebook news feed I get riled up. But I can’t spend every moment with my shoulders hunched and mind spinning.There’s work to be done–phone calls to make, letters to write. Pay attention, I tell myself, stay informed, question, act when and how I can. Embrace.

Today, it’s snowing. Yesterday I bought apples at the winter farmer’s market and brightly colored primroses at the garden store. This morning I had breakfast with friends and drove home as the snow began to fall. It’s now 3:30 and snow has been falling since 10 a.m. The cat has emerged from her duvet nest and is curled in my lap. I have a mug of hot chocolate on the table next to me. Birds flit to the feeders, my next door neighbor pulls a sled loaded with two grinning toddlers bundled in bright parkas, the primroses glow against the snowy scene out the window. 

This winter I’ve been wearing my mother’s nightgown. Loose and soft, it flows along my body to mid-calf. I don’t know why I brought it back from mom’s house after she died over 20 years ago, although I do remember feeling sad and hurt when I saw it tossed aside at the end of the estate sale. I usually don’t wear nightgowns. My typical winter sleepwear is a silky long underwear top and flannel PJ bottoms but ever since my hip replacement operation this past fall, the nightgown has been my bedtime garment. Practical, comfortable, comforting.

I’ve been thinking about mom a lot over the past weeks and months, wondering how she would have responded to a woman running for president and to the final outcome of the election. I hope she would have supported Mrs. Clinton, although I’m not sure she would have, and I know she’d be horrified by Mr. Trump.

I thought of her when I recently donated money to Planned Parenthood. She regularly gave them money because she believed in access to women’s health care, including access to safe abortions. When she was a young married woman she’d supported two friends through recoveries from illegal abortions. She felt strongly that no woman should have to go through that.

My mother was a housewife and homemaker, a staunch Republican until the first Iraq war pushed her to vote for Mr. Clinton. We had some tense discussions when I was in my 20s because she thought my feminism was disrespectful of the choices she’d made, the life she’d led. And although I declared that I DID respect her, on some level she was right—there was an edge of dismissal in my rejection of her chosen path.

There’s a lot of my mother in me and much more to say about her and about us. But for now, just this musing as I sit here on the couch with the nightgown layered over my flannel PJ bottoms for morning warmth and I look out at blue sky and the beginning of a chilly February day.