By Peggy Sturdivant

“Why didn’t you have a column last week?” a friend asked.

“Because I was in a funk,” I answered. She nodded, seemingly satisfied with my answer.

Here’s a problem though. My column deadline is always Friday, and even though it’s been another week, I’m still in a funk. Not that I’m alone. It seems that despite clear skies between the rains and fog, January is simply a tough month. We’ve either fully enjoyed the holidays or gritted our teeth through the events (usually a mix). We’re either taking down the cheerful outdoor lights or letting the wreath molder on the door, dropping needles with every open/shut.

“Where’s your staff?” I asked the husband and wife owners of Market Street Shoes after being drawn in by the Sale sign. The woman smiled rather ruefully, “Actually, they all have the flu.”

That would be worse than post-holiday blues. The realization that I do not yet have flu and was therefore well enough to attempt to lift my spirits with ‘retail therapy’…did lift my spirits. As did the nearly new corduroys from the Ballard Goodwill a few days earlier when I thought I’d bottomed out.

I don’t even mind the rain and what barely passes for cold. One friend minds so much that she is like clockwork in January; she starts buying many things on craigslist. It’s always the sign she should be on a plane to someplace warmer; it would cost less in the end. This year she thought she had bought her annual ticket to warmth but she must not have made that one last keystroke sometime last November. At least she realized no purchased ticket before she went to the airport. Instead she’s buying bar stools.

It seems when you’re feeling the blues everything looks grey. No matter how many colors there are on the latest seven-story apartment building. When you’re down, it’s the negatives that keep the balance scale tipped. Which doesn’t make for a fun column, or a fun week.

I can list so many good things about my life, and life here in Ballard, but sadder things block the light. A writing student who just retired has been diagnosed with end stage kidney cancer. Another friend is experiencing kidney failure. A neighbor’s husband lost his job just before Christmas. A friend lost her younger brother. In local news I read about more tenants displaced because of 140% increases in rent. Last weekend we finally followed my late mother-in-law’s wish for her ashes to be scattered above the Skagit River. Where we had hoped for closure there seems to be a new family wound.

Such is January, a month when we clearly need to embrace the dark and the light, the good and the bad. I’ve seen my first daffodils and irises. I love my students and my writing groups. I heard from old friends over the holidays and got to be with my daughter and my nieces on Christmas morning, the way it was for many years. Bartell Drugs has promised to return to a location across from the Ballard Branch library. So you see, there’s more daylight every day. The flu season will end, and perhaps, so will Ballard’s vertical building boom.

So in the spirit of moving forward we’ve taken the wreath off of the front door, and Martin swept up the needles. Even though it’s January I’ve put laundry out to dry on the neighbor’s clothesline. There is absolutely hope for Ballard in the upcoming year. After all, when we did finally scatter Charlotte’s ashes off the bridge in Concrete a pair of eagles answered our our summons and swooped us, perfectly on cue.