It’s the first night of the year. I was outside earlier, the heavy snowfall was trying my balance on every step, but the white squall provides the perfect canvas for the street-side Christmas lights to make the sky glow. I’m inside now, warm and bundled in the blanket my mother knit for me. I’m winding down for the night, drinking a hot cup of chamomile tea and reading. The words on the page start to disappear, one at a time. I can feel my eyes grow weaker, unable to hold their grip on the current passage. Okay, time to call it. I set my book aside and get up to close the lights. As I walk back to my bed I take a look out of my balcony window to appreciate the snowfall, now from afar. The street is quiet. Battered by snow and a post new years reprieve, most people are inside like I am, except for this one woman I see. She’s standing in front of her door with a book in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She’s completely unbothered by the tempête. Her fingers are perfectly positioned over the page she’s on. A solid grip that keeps the pages from ruffling in the breeze. She draws the book down, pulls the cigarette in the opposite hand to her face and takes a puff. The hand with the cigarette goes down and the book is drawn back to her face. I wonder what she’s reading? What could keep her so still in such horrid weather? I could go onto my balcony and shout through the breeze to ask her. This is a neighbourly thing to do I think. Two neighbours, shouting through the winter wind about the books their reading. Then again, what would I say? “What are you reading!” I could ask. Do I ask in french and try my hardest to follow up? Would she be off-put by the fact that I’ve been watching her from above? Maybe I should leave her be, she seems entranced. I watched her flip through another page as I considered what to do then suddenly, she closes the book. She turns her attention towards the cigarette, takes one final pull before ashing it in the snow. Her gaze remains on the ground below her as she turns to the door, and heads inside. I want to be brave this year. I want to talk to anyone who will listen without my own self-consciousness holding me back. I’ll do it for the new year but not as a resolution, more like a gentle promise. I missed my opportunity to meet that promise for today but I’m not worried. I still have 364 more opportunities to go.