Anyone who watched the West Wing during its tenure knows that fictional Pres. Jed Bartlett (Martin Sheen) would mark the end of a discussion with the firmly stated question “What’s next?”

I was thinking about “what’s next” yesterday morning. In Northeast Ohio, we’re in the middle of what meterologists are calling a “deep freeze.” January is a tough month for us Ohioans anyway. We’ve got the post holiday let down, and two months of snow and gray skies ahead. It’s hard to find that thing that we’re looking forward to to anchor us.

Even the school kids are feeling it. When fall moves into winter and brings with it the cold, we don’t notice as much because we’re marking time with a series of celebrations: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas.

Not so in January. In January, we’re measuring our lives in Eliot’s coffee spoons, getting from one small moment to the next.

Yesterday morning, I went to wake my girls. Mira (9) asked her usual January morning question: “Did you check the tv? Do we have a snow day?” Then she launched into a teary rant about how hard third grade is and there’s too much homework and we’re never going to get a school day. I sat on the side of her bed and told her that January is like this, and that we just have to get up and get going, and that little by little we’ll feel better, that it’s really about forward motion.

I also pointed out that next week was going to be a good week, that we were getting a new president and the LOST was coming back. “Mommy,” she said, “Those are adult things. I’m a kid. I want a snow day.”

Gwennie (5) tried another tac: “Mommy, you have to check my fever I think I’m sick. I have a tummy ache.” Then she got to the heart of it: “Mommy, I want to stay home with you.”

Corita Kent wrote “Life is a succession of moments. To live each one is to succeed.” That about sums up January in Ohio for all of us, the little ones and the big ones.