Last night I was utterly exhausted; I get like that sometimes. But last night I received a gift: the gift of my family around me. Was I the center of attention? No, not at all. Yet, I was in the center of a circle: the family circle.

I was curled up, huddled under a large, dark green, wool blanket. I was as cocooned as I could be and still be breathing. I was incredibly tired and cold and miserable. And I had parked myself on the couch in the living room, so I could be with my family.

Sitting next to me, my husband was working on his laptop in preparation for the next day’s teaching assignment. There was no conversation, just the normal “clicks” of keyboarding, occasionally punctuated with various musical selections being reviewed for the coming lesson.

Across from us, on the large two-person chair, sat my 13-year-old daughter. She was browsing a book about urban survival skills. I glanced over at her from the depths of my woolen cocoon. She was sitting, knees pulled up, book resting against her knees, intent and interested in her reading.

I let my gaze travel from my reader, over to the fireplace, then further, to the far side of the fireplace. There, my younger daughter was intent in her own way. She was all contentment and absorption, as she made a play with a small train set encircling our Christmas tree. She had a whole menagerie of plastic animals, and they were being loaded and unloaded in turn, to take a trip around the tree. The train was softly humming and clacking as it made it’s circuit around the tree under the power of an electric engine. No one was much aware of me at all, but I was there, observing, receiving.

Last night I received a gift: a gift in the circle of my family. We were not talking together, we were not playing together, but we were together, and I was included.