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“And finally Winter, with its bitin’, whinin’ wind, and all the land will be mantled with snow.”

December 9, 2011

The wind won’t go away. It is even stronger than the last few days, but it’s a bit warmer at 49°. Yesterday I heard someone complaining about the cold. I guess all those November days in the mid-50’s spoiled us, but we’ll survive. We all know about winter in New England.

Today is errand day, and I have a huge list geographically organized. My cards got done last night, according to schedule, so the post office is first on my list. Gracie will be glad as the dump is second.

I remember when I was a kid and the first snow of the season would start to fall. When one of us noticed the flakes, we’d all run to the window and watch. In front of my house, at the bottom of the front grassy hill, was a street light. We’d watch the snow falling in the gleam of the light. I remember the snow sometimes fell sideways because of the wind. If the flakes were really large, we never held out much hope for a lot of snow. If the flakes were smaller, there was always hope. Snow storms were judged on school or no school and whether there was enough for a snowman and a snowball fight.

When I woke up, I’d run to the window to see how much snow had fallen. If there was enough for a no school day, the fire horn would blow early in the morning. If there wasn’t enough, it meant wearing boots which took forever to get on and off at school. Sometimes my shoe would be caught by the boot, and I’d try to shake it loose. I always thought it was funny to walk with the boot hanging and my foot still in the shoe. I felt a bit like a duck must feel with its webbed feet. The key, we all learned when we were a little older, was to take out your foot then pull out your shoes and then do the reverse in the afternoon. It was a bit harder getting our feet into the shoes already in the boots, but it was far easier than trying to shove the foot filled shoe into the rubber boot which never seemed to dry during the school day.

I remember the days which had snow on the ground were the brightest of all winter days. When the snow was high and there were no footprints yet, everything was beautiful, and the snowflakes shined and glimmered like diamonds in the sun. It always warmer on those days.

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“Christmas cookies without sprinkles are like raisins without wrinkles, and like sleigh bells without tinkles.”

December 8, 2011

My heat is blasting, a sure sign colder weather is here, but it’s the wind which is making the day feel so much colder than the 41° on the thermometer. It reaches right down to the bones and is strong enough to sway the trunks of pine trees. Gracie is staying closer to home and the couch. The outside hasn’t the same appeal it did for the last few weeks.

Yesterday it poured all day. I went off cape to a Christmas play and then to a really late lunch. The play and lunch or dinner are a tradition we’ve had for a long time. It would be the three of us: my mother, my sister and me. One year my mother treated us to The Death of a Salesman with Brian Dennehy. Afterwards we thanked her for the cheery choice of a play for the holidays. Now my sister and I go to a play. It’s one of my Christmas presents to her and it keeps the tradition alive. Before I dropped her home, we did a mini-light ride. It’s amazing how many houses are bright with lights this year. We oohed and ahhed as we rode up and down the streets. I got home around 8:30. It was a long but fun day.

I have my schedule all set up for Christmas. It starts tonight with Christmas card night. The cards came in the mail the other day, and I vowed they’d back in the mail by Friday. My list of ingredients for Christmas goodies is all set, and I have plenty of wrapping paper and ribbon for the gifts. I have a few more gifts to buy; some are for my friends but others will be sent right to Colorado. I need some stocking stuffers so I’ll take a day to do that then treat myself to lunch, in commemoration of the season of course.

My sister still makes sugar cookies. I used to but haven’t in a long while. Her grandson helps her to decorate them. We used to do that: spend a whole afternoon decorating the ones my mother had made. She’d cut them out using her old aluminum cookies cutters:  Santa, an angel, a bell, a reindeer and a tree. Both my sister and I have found those same figures in the old aluminum. They are the connection to our childhood and my mother.

I remember heavy cookies laden with frosting, and I remember green frosting the most. We were creative frosters. The trees had lights and ornaments, sprinkles mostly. Santa was tricky to decorate with his red suit, white beard and dark boots. Actually, there were no boots; we just iced them in as we couldn’t imagine a Santa without his boots.

Even when I was an adult with my own house, my mother and I would spend a day baking together. When the cookies were cooled, we’d put on the Christmas music and sit around the table to decorate them and to chat. It was always one of my favorite parts of Christmas and is still a cherished memory.

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“Christmas isn’t a season. It’s a feeling.”

December 6, 2011

The sky is white cloudy. The breeze is warm and it’s 58°. The weatherman has warned us that cold weather, winter weather, is coming later in the week. It’s time for the woolies to come out of the drawer.

Some of the leaves still hang precariously from the ends of the oak tree branches near the deck. The leaves are brown and curled and blow back and forth in the breeze. They don’t know their time is long over. Huge scrub pine trees tower over the backyard. They are old and some are delicate. Every winter more branches fall. One tree is dead and another has a broken branch hanging across two branches which keep it from falling in the yard. Come spring both will be gone after the clean-up.

Every night even more houses are bright with outside lights. Never have I seen as many this early in the season. I think the warm weather was the incentive. It is far easier putting up lights when your fingers don’t get stiff from the cold.

All my friends and family buy real trees at Christmas. My sister, when her kids were little, had two: one in the living room and one in the family room. They went to a cut down your own tree farm each year, and one of my nephews claims every tree they brought home back then looked like a Charlie Brown tree. This year my sister has only one tree, and it’s in the family room so she can see it every night while she watches television. My other sister is putting hers up tonight. I can see my friends’ tree all lit up through the window when I go by their house. This time of year I always use their end of the street so I can see the tree.

I sit in the living room and read all afternoon with the tree lit. I stop reading often just to look at the tree and all the ornaments. Some are from my childhood, others I made for my mother and they came back to me when she passed away, many are from my trips while others are gifts from my friends and their trips, a couple are from Africa and some, like the ragged angel and the clown, are just ugly or weird, and I love them for that. I think my tree is just beautiful, but I suspect we all think our trees are beautiful.

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“Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we’d have frozen to death.”

December 5, 2011

Today is warm; it’s 56°. That’s not winter the way it should be with Christmas only three weeks away. I remember walking to school this time of year bundled against the wind and the cold. My head was covered; my legs were encased in snow pants under my skirt and my fingers were barely warm inside my mittens. A scarf  kept my face from the worst of the wind, but the walk to school was always a cold one. It was actually a relief to arrive at school and hear the hiss of radiators as we stood in the cloakroom and shed our outer skins.

At the foot of my bed was a radiator. Above it was a window. The window was never very good at keeping out the cold nor was the radiator much better at keeping my room warm. Often, on a freezing winter morning, the inside bottom panes of the glass were covered with frost. I remember taking my fingernail and using it to write my name across the frost. We wore flannel pajamas to bed and always had slipper socks to keep our feet warm on the cold floors. I still wear slipper socks. I like the sound the soles make on the floor, that scuffing sound. Every Christmas we always got a new pair. Back then the slipper socks were all grey with brown leather soles. Now they come in every color.

We used to run to be the first to turn on the window lights. You had to turn the bulb as there was no switch. Back then our living room was the only one with window lights. My favorite was the one with five bulbs which always went in the picture window. The bases of all the lights were plastic, and when the bulbs were added, they sometimes got top-heavy. My father used to tape the bases to the window sill so the lights wouldn’t fall off. Sometimes they did anyway and the bulbs would shatter. I remember the small pieces of an orange bulb all over the floor.

Each night one of us had to crawl under the tree to the outlet to plug in the main cord to the lights. I remember there were lots of cords attached to one another, but we never had a problem with the cords or the fuses. I do remember a few times when the tree fell. It always fell slowly loaded down as it was with lights and ornaments. My dad would lift up the tree, one of us would hold it by the trunk, and he’d lie down on his stomach to tighten the screws in the base. That didn’t always work and the tree would sometimes fall again. My dad’s solution was always a hammer, some wire and some nails, never a bigger tree stand. I think he enjoyed the challenge.

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“Christmas is the day that holds all time together.”

December 2, 2011

Last night my house was festive with all the lights lit, both back and front. The star on the fence is so bright you’d swear it swooped down from the sky just for the occasion. Late yesterday afternoon I went to Agway just for dog food and a red bow for the sled outside, but I should have known better. I ended up buying poinsettias, small ones for a cart in my dining room, a rosemary tree which fills the house with its fragrance, a small wreath for the gate, a larger wreath for the front door and a juniper swag for the mantle. The only thing left is the tree, but I say that with tongue in cheek.

It’s been a bit colder the last few days, in the mid to high 40’s, but it’s still not winter. Yesterday in one store I saw a woman wearing mittens, and I wondered if she was from a warm place.

People have started wishing each other a Merry Christmas. I’ve been hearing it in the stores when friends greet each other. I guess the season really is upon us. I opened day two of my advent calendar this morning, and it was a tree waiting to be decorated. I took my time placing the ornaments in exactly the right spots.

The only two times I was away at Christmas was when I was in the Peace Corps. I was 22, but I was still a kid at Christmas, and I was missing the snow, the lights and the tree and mostly I was missing my mother teasing me about my gifts, something she did all of her life. “Guess what I just bought you,” was what I’d hear this time of year. I’d pepper her with questions and get a hint which was really no hint at all. She sent me a box, air mail no less, just before my first Christmas away. It had a small artificial tree, some ornaments from our own tree, brick crepe paper to make a fireplace and a stocking. I decorated right away and felt a little less lonely.

A story I have told here before is one I’d like to tell again as that night still means so much to me. It was my first year in Bolgatanga. Christmas time in northern Ghana is the time of the harmattan. The days are hot, hot enough to melt a candle hot, but the nights are cold or at least cold in comparison. I kept my windows open so I could feel the cold, but I put a wool blanket on my bed to keep me warm. One night I was feeling sorry for myself missing Christmas and my family and was lying in bed trying to fall asleep when I heard someone singing We Three Kings. It was the only sound in the night, and it traveled through the clear air from one of the compounds near my house. I could tell it was a young boy. He sang each verse so clearly and so beautifully I was filled with all sorts of feelings especially joy at this gift he was giving me. Every year since then I have remembered that Christmas and that small boy and the most wonderous gift I was given.

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“Christmas is the keeping-place for memories of our innocence.”

December 1, 2011

Sorry for the rather late start today, but Skip, my factotum, is here to put up the outside lights, and I am periodically called outside to check progress and to see if everything is in the right place then when the spotlight blew I had to go to the store to buy another one and some new garlands for the fence. Last year there was enough garland to span the fence but it seems to have disappeared over the summer. My artificial tree, the ugliest scrub pine you ever saw, is now up in the dining room. Over the summer, a few of the ornaments were gnawed in places and some of the ribbons were eaten, nesting material I suppose. All that seems to be the work of the mini-spawns, the field mice who call my cellar their home. Around here we all have mice. My brother claims that anyone who lives on Cape Cod and says he has no mice is living in a fantasy world. Luckily my cats are adept at catching the critters, and I often find one lying perfectly still on the rug in the hall having peacefully gone to its rest.

The lights outside are all connected to timers. I’m crossing my fingers that everything will light as hoped. The newest light is a giant star with a trail of lights. It is atop the fence. If all goes well, it should be spectacular.

Tomorrow will begin the transformation of the inside of the house. The tree will arrive either Sunday or Monday. I’m wondering if a parade might be a bit over the top.

I was going to decorate only a little this year, but once I started I got the Christmas bug. It’s a disease most of my family has, inherited from my mother’s side of the family. My father’s parents were more the socks and underwear sort of  Christmas givers while my mother’s parents, with their eight kids, went all out for the holiday. Most of my cousins have also inherited the same disease.

The goldfinches are back to the feeders, drab and pale. Gone is the brilliant yellow of their summer feathers. Today there were five or six of them. I wonder where they’ve been.

I opened day one of my Advent calendar today. Only 24 more to go!

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“In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary.”

November 28, 2011

Today is still warm but cloudy and lifeless. I don’t even see the birds at the feeders. The animals, as usual, are having their morning naps. I showered, read the papers, gathered my Thanksgiving decorations to put away and got caught up in my book for a while, but I disciplined myself to stop to get busy with Coffee. I have several errands today so Gracie and I will be around town for a bit. She’s always up for a ride.

Christmas lights are up all over. I noticed them the other night. I think it has to do with the warm weather. People don’t mind being outside putting their lights around when it is in the 60’s. I love the lights, and I love the ride to see the lights. I still do it with just Gracie for company. I talk to her and let her know which houses are especially pretty.

I’m a colored lights person myself. It’s a throwback from my childhood when everyone used those big colored bulbs. Today I need a couple of new timers, a few more light sets, a spotlight and a giant wreath for the fence then I’m good to go.

When Gracie was a puppy, she was out front as the fence hadn’t yet been erected in the backyard. At Christmas time she amused herself by pulling the garland off the fence and chewing on the light cords until they split and the lights died. I had to replace several sets of them. Why she wasn’t electrocuted I’ll never know. I eventually unplugged the lights each night before I went to bed then plugged them back in the next night, but that didn’t stop her from dragging the garlands and pulling the lights. It just prevented her electrocution. I got quite expert at unwinding and rewinding sets of lights.

The winter nights are long, dark and cold, and I have always been thankful for houses bright with Christmas lights. The lights brighten the night and bring a sense of warmth and a burst of color. It’s like a bit of summer drops by for a quick visit.

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“Read in order to live.”

November 27, 2011

The day is again lovely and warm, though not as warm as yesterday. From my window here I’ve been watching the birds at the feeders, and I just watched a red spawn fit through the mesh of the small feeder, the one the nuthatches like, and he’s having quite the picnic. I’m thinking a weapon of some sort, even a slingshot, would be useful right about now.

The two cats and the dog are asleep. I guess they had a tough morning moving from the bed to the couch though Gracie might be tired as she did have a play date earlier with her friend Cody from down the street. Cody is let out, he comes here and barks at the door to come in, and he and Gracie romp in the yard. When they’re done, Cody barks to come in, gets a biscuit from me then I let him out and he walks home. It’s a perfect arrangement.

Today I have no plans except to loll and read. I have just started the new Stephen King novel, and I’m unhappy about it. When I hold that giant book, over 800 pages, in my hands, I bemoan its length. The problem is that the novel grabbed my attention right away, but given the number of pages, it will be a long while until the end unless I do nothing else but read, not really unheard of for me. I realize I have to partake in a bit of life here and there, but I suspect I’ll resent it as time taken away from the book.

I have sometimes read until three or four in the morning totally unaware of the passage of time as I turn the pages of an engrossing novel. When I realize the time, I tell myself one more chapter then one more then one more again. Soon enough another hour or so has passed. When I was a kid, my mother swore I was totally ignoring her. “Didn’t you hear me screaming for you?” I hadn’t. I was so into my book nothing could intrude. I always suspected she never believed my no.

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“”The time has come,” the walrus said, “to talk of many things: Of shoes and ships – and sealing wax – of cabbages and kings”

November 26, 2011

I’m not going to be the one to tell her. Why have her notice is my thought. If Mother Nature wants to keep sending us days in the 60’s this time of year, I’ll not break the spell. People are wearing short sleeve shirts or light jackets at the most. I even had my bedroom window open all night so I could smell the fresh air. Today is beautiful with a sunny blue sky and not even a tiny breeze. The leaves still hanging for dear life on the ends of branches aren’t moving. Today is a reprieve. Gracie has been out almost the entire morning. I’ll join her after this as the feeders need filling.

When I went to get the papers from the driveway, it was one of those stand a while and take in the day sort of mornings. I haven’t had one of those since early fall. I did miss the front flowers I used to love looking at every day, but the air was clear and bright, and that’s more than enough for late November.

Buckle shoes were never my favorite when I was a kid. Unlike sneakers, you couldn’t just slide your foot out. You had to unbuckle the shoes first. Also, they were only for church or school so they were tainted by their use. Every Easter my mother bought us girls new shoes with buckles because they were fancy shoes. Buckle shoes, though, had design drawbacks. If a lace on my sneaker broke, I’d tie a knot and use the lace anyway or my mother would buy new laces when the knots got too many. Buckle straps broke, and there was just nothing you could do. I always knew when the strap was getting close as there was process before the break. First, the hole in the strap would get bigger because the shoe fit only one way so I always used the same hole. Pretty soon the area around the hole would start to lose color, then it would bend and finally the hole would give way, and the strap became two pieces, one shorter than the other, and the shoe was useless without the strap. My dad would try to fix it, but nothing ever held. My mother was stuck buying me a new pair. I think she was thrilled when saddle shoes became popular because they lasted the whole school year, and the strap shoes were relegated to Sundays so they lasted much longer. We all now had two good pairs of shoes and a pair of sneakers. We felt rich.

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“Autumn is marching on: even the scarecrows are wearing dead leaves.”

November 25, 2011

The headache has come and gone all day, but I decided to get out and about anyway. I needed a blood test so the errand seemed perfect to add to the misery, but the day was so lovely and warm I’m glad I didn’t miss it. Well, the lab was closed so Gracie and I went to one of my favorite places to shop, and I bought two Christmas presents. I felt accomplished.

Thanksgiving was wonderful with great friends, the tastiest food and even a card game after dinner. My friend Clare made my favorite fall appetizer: a sugar pumpkin filled with bread and cheese combined with the pumpkin then put back into the pumpkin shell and baked in the over. Nothing tastier or prettier. We took a bit of a break before dessert out of necessity. We needed time to digest to make room for the pies: chocolate cream and pumpkin.

I have plenty of leftovers, and I’m hoping I’ll feel good enough later for a re-creation of yesterday’s wonderful dinner.

Now that Thanksgiving’s over, I can start concentrating on my Christmas list and seeing what I have and what I need. My outside lights will go up next week. The neighbors across the street always ask me not to park in front of the house so they can see the lights so I oblige and park at the top of the driveway so they can still see the lights strung across the gate and the huge lit wreath on the middle. When the lights around town go up, I’m always reminded of the ride we took every Christmas when I was a kid so we could see the lights. I think that was the only time we never argued about sides in the backseat. All of us were too glued to the windows to notice encroachment.

It’s been really warm so far for this time of year, but soon enough it will chilly and time to bring out the sugar cookies and the hot cocoa with melted Marshmallow Fluff floating on the top. I used to love that most of all when I was a kid.

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