It's so old, and the beauty of a hundred years of happy memories and lives lived to the fullest is seeped into the dark and creaking wood beams of this home. In the fireplace crackles a soft warmth that keeps the bitter cold at bay from this room. Sometimes, it still tickles your nose and playfully pinches your ears, painting pink across your cheeks. But this is the only gentle reminder that outside the frosted window, snowflakes fall in soft piles against your doorstep, dancing and singing in their own special winter way. Inside is only merriment, where the wine is poured and the stuffed mushrooms are devoured slowly and languidly, each bite tasting of a melody. Around you on the walls, painted flowers and snapshot memories smile down on you as your friends laugh and sing and dance and break out the fiddle for a folk tune. After the wine comes the coffee where your hand gently holds a saucer and the cup almost never leaves your mouth. Everywhere you look, there is a joyous friendly face with a contentment of time about them, not anxious of a thing. Furry friends circle the floor in search of scraps, which they were given in a moment of weakness. And as you feel the warmth begin in your toes in your socks on the creaking wooden floor, as it travels up your spine and into your head and fingers, you know this is where you are meant to be. Here, surrounded by friends, with love draping his arm peacefully about your waist and laughing along with the rest, only every once in a while glancing over with a look that you know is meant to assure you, "Someday, this will be all we get, and it will be enough."
