Winter: staring dreamily into the hypnotic flames of an open fire, aware of the cold wind, the falling snow and the bare, icy landscape a few feet away beyond the closed curtains. The flames begin to blur as images of bittersweet memories flood the mind's eye. Recollections of warmer, carefree times stretching back through the years. Glad to remember, yet a gladness tinged with a faint halo of sadness, knowing that those times are gone forever and that they exist now only in the hearts and minds of those who lived them and within the glowing embers and flames in the hearth. Then, as swiftly as the fleeting images came, they melt and fade, and the dancing flames become once more a stark reminder of the wind, the snow, and the ice outside.