My first word was "light." My son's, too. I love light in many forms: vintage lamps with yellowed shades, strings of Christmas bulbs, paper Chinese lanterns, the golden glow from windows at night, fireflies blinking in the Texas evening, the multicolored circles in a lens flare streaking across a shaft of sunlight in a late afternoon photo.

I've been known to put up our pink Christmas tree the day after Halloween. Not because I relish the holidays–in fact, it's emphatically the opposite–but rather, because once the sunlight dwindles from the days, I need to be sure it blazes from a thousand twinkling places.

As a child, I was known for being a daydreamer, a ceiling-gazer. I wasn't looking at the ceilings though, it just appeared so. I was looking at the light fixtures. Modern cubist installations, globes on staggered lengths of wire, glinting chandelier prisms. At home, I made mosaics with my Lite Brite and created "stained glass" to hang in the windows by melting crayons between sheets of waxed paper. I would stare mutely at the sparkling chaos of dust motes in bright sunlight. Hold my hand over a flashlight to see the fine network of life that's invisible under normal circumstances.

I feared dusk because it meant the arrival home of the scary dad, so I would go around the house and start flicking on light switches once the tell-tale dimness settled over the rooms. When I spent time in other family's houses I was introduced to the wonders of dimmer switches, recessed lighting, and spotlights artfully arranged to highlight the landscaping.

I'm supposed to wear glasses but I usually don't, because unadulterated, my eyes turn every streetlamp into a parhelion.

Overhead lights and the shadows they cast make me feel the smallest bit panicked, like nothing will stand up to the blazing illumination. I'd rather squint to read small print than have that naked blast from above.

I miss the neon lights of city living, though I get stars now, in exchange. I tell my children that they'll go back to the stars someday, when they ask me about death and dying. It's nice to have a visual aid for such an important parental lesson. You're mine but you're also a mote of light, and that life in you is fire.

This time of year gives me a feast of lighting pleasures, and I stop and pay it proper attention. I see the reading lamp through the lace curtain, the fireplaces in small warm living rooms, this cafe that looks like an especially inviting harbor in the premature darkness. I'll take one humble strand of old-school Christmas bulbs and their candlelit haze, however, over an entire display of cold LED pulsars. I know I need to move past this obsession with the incandescent and the crackle of its inefficient filament, but for now I am going to lay claim to it and the specific warmth of its glow. It's how I make it through, until spring comes.