An excerpt from the first chapter

Here's an excerpt from the opening of my book health, happiness, love, longevity, peace, prosperity, and safety:

Sometimes it snows at Christmas, like two years ago when we got two feet overnight, but usually it's just cold and the trees are bare. Animals forage, but the miles of forest are otherwise dormant, gray and brown.

Inside, there's plenty of life crowded behind the steamy windows. More people than bedrooms, more food than can fit in the cupboards and refrigerators. The golds and greens and red velvet of Christmas.

Despite everyone's promise to dial it back this year, the pile of gifts overwhelms the tree.

You start gaining weight the first day. The walk and the crunches and the blueberry smoothie first thing in the morning are vestigial habits that give way to shuffling down the hall to the breakfast table for coffee and nut rolls.

Nut rolls are an important thread in my family history. Both grandmothers made them. My mom made them every Christmas: wherever we lived, whichever coast or continent, she rolled out the tiny crescents of sugary dough, filled them with walnuts and cinnamon soaked in milk and butter.

Three days in, you're glad you brought sweat pants.

Outside, though, it's that dead early winter, a preamble to more cold, colorless months.

Thankfully now it's just a couple weeks at Christmas. An hour and a half north to Pittsburgh and we're on the plane. We leave late so we can drag out the last day, not have to rush. It'll be our regular bedtime when we get to California.

We leave our suitcases in the living room. My wife usually unpacks as soon as we get home, but she and my daughter both slept all the way home from the airport, and she's too tired to do anything but brush her teeth. My daughter doesn't even want to go that far, but we prevail over the whining.

It's nice to visit there, but I like it here. More bedrooms than people. No cache of baked goods behind every cabinet door.

I'm the first one up. I pull up the blinds behind the kitchen sink and have to squint against the light. The sky is an even blue. The ferns and climbing vines, the geraniums and agapanthus are green and crowded around the fountain. The camellias are blooming. Even in January, there's a rose on the arbor.

The cost of living exceeds most places on earth, but this morning it feels like a fair price.