On Christmas Eve I walked home along the luminaria-lined streets after a service I played in a neighborhood church. Sitting on my doorstep when I arrived was a festive holiday bag. I went inside, opened the card which read, "I found this in a second-hand shop and thought of you." The card was signed by a colleague. I reached into the bag and pulled out a knick-knack. It was one of those awful tchotchkes involving cats and pianos and treble clefs that I usually avoid at all costs. But this particular item was distinct for two reasons--first, because it had a particularly horrendous paint job, and second, because I once owned this very knick-knack. It was made and given to me by a student some years ago. When the student moved away, I gleefully gave it to Goodwill. Now it was back, and sitting on my counter.

Due to the gods of the public school schedule, this year I had the longest winter break in history. By the 18th of December I was having lunches with friends, meeting colleagues for coffee, and attending Christmas services and concerts. I finished my Christmas shopping and spent entire afternoons on the couch with a stack of novels. My mother arrived on Christmas Day for a visit. We had a Boxing Day party with friends, and spent a day in Santa Fe roaming the plaza. There was no snow, but we had freezing temperatures for days, reminding us that winter had snuck in when we weren't looking.

Other things have snuck in as well, for as it turned out, this Christmas has been full of unexpected gifts and guests. It appears that we have a mouse in the kitchen. I say "mouse" ever hopeful that it is only one. Surely this isn't unrealistic given the fact we have two cats who have gone on high alert the last few weeks. Yun-Sun and Godiva now spend hours a day crouched on the kitchen floor staring at the baseboards or under the stove. They even take shifts; one napping while the other stands guard. This mouse must rue the day it chose our house to enter. We think the cats have actually laid eyes on the creature, but Matt and I have only seen evidence of where it has been. This is not a welcomed visitor on any level, for you must understand that I don't have a great history with mice.

One summer, I saw a mouse scamper across the floor of our Fort Worth kitchen and nearly had a mental breakdown. In fact, I moved in with a friend for several days until the problem could be eradicated. Then some years later when we were living in Boston, I was rummaging under the kitchen sink for a rag and stumbled upon a box of rodent poison. “Matt, darling,” I said to my husband, “why do we have mouse poison?” A look of love and earnestness came over his face. “I didn’t want you to know, but one night I saw a mouse.”

Upon questioning, my husband then admitted that he had been living this lie of mouse cohabitation for over a month. He had assured me that he kept this secret out of concern for my well-being, thinking I had enough stress already in my life. I suspected that he kept this secret out of concern for his own well-being, fearful of living with me and my rodent knowledge. The mouse was tiny and rather cute, he reassured me, and he hadn’t seen him in weeks. Considering my past reactions to such visitors, I remained remarkably calm. I didn't start packing my bags and moving out. Instead, we simply named the creature Stuart, and every day put out a large treat of poison for him.

Days passed and Stuart never touched the rat poison. He did, however, eat every crumb of the tortilla chips we mixed in to tempt him, which only proved that Boston city mice really were smarter than country mice. Just to show Stuart that we meant business, any time I was in the apartment I took to shouting randomly in the direction of the kitchen, only really demonstrating that I was still borderline mental when it came to rodent cohabitation.

But that was years ago. This time around I am ever more rational and mature. No more yelling aimlessly at appliances. This time I have two bored, indoor felines who have been in training for years for such excitement. "There is an enemy in the house," I solemnly explain to them. "Time to do your job."

And so they do, spending hour after hour guarding the kitchen. We think this mostly acts as a deterrent to the mouse, as we don't have a lot of faith in the cats ability to successfully hunt and kill anything. "Should we name the critter this time?" Matt asks me, and taunts both me and the mouse by walking around the house singing Somewhere out there....Beneath the pale moonlight....

New Years Eve arrived with a myriad of invitations to dinners, parties and so on. A few days before our friend Patti called. "What are you doing New Years Eve?" "Oh, this and that," I responded. "Can you make me a better offer?" "Well, I might," she answered and began telling me of plans to go snow shoeing on the crest. "It's a full moon, and a blue one at that. There hasn't been a full moon on New Year's since 1971. Afterwards, everyone is having dinner back at my place."

I wasn't alive the last time the stars and moon were so aligned, so it felt like a sign of what I should do. Matt opted to make the rounds of other events, (Divide and conquer, we decided.). On December 30, the Sandias got another 14 inches of snow, so clearly God was siding with the snowshoers. At sunset a group of eight of us drove around the back of the mountains and up past the ski area to the crest. We were the only ones up there. The temperature was in the single digits. I could read a book by the full moon rising behind the mountains. The snow drifts reached my knees. We made our way along the crest trail to the cabin that overlooked the twinkling lights of the city below. It and my real life seemed far away; it was as if I had somehow been transported to the moon itself and was literally viewing my world from a new perspective. Which, I suppose, I was.

We spiral back around our lives and patterns, over and over again, gaining altitude and new perspectives on the same subjects, issues, and attitudes. Gifts come back into our lives, unwelcomed or not, and we can either rejoice over the distance gained or we can blindly settle back into the same old ruts. Gearing up to begin another semester, I have to brace myself against thinking "Here we go again," and expecting that everything---good or bad--will be the same. In the next few months, I have my usual daunting roster of students, recitals to prepare for, deadlines to meet. I am taking six graduate hours in Ed. Psych. I have workshops to give this spring, and other professional obligations to attend to. I've been here before, I can all too easily find myself thinking. It's better not to drag the baggage of the past into a new year, but rather, to expect that any day could bring a surprise---an ironic gift left on my doorstep, a curious visitor scampering through the kitchen, a new way of seeing my world and my life. It's all new.

In the meantime, there is the tchotchke to make peace with once and for all. "Its like a boomerang," Lora said when I told her the story. "Maybe you could send it back home with your mother. If you get it out of the time zone do you think you're safe?"

Maybe, although I'm tempted this time to hang onto it, just for the reminder. One way or another, we will continue to revisit the stories of our lives, while at the same time we step forward into new territory with every hour, and every day, and every year. This paradox is a good one to hang onto as we enter a new semester and a new decade, fresh and familiar all at once.