I Know Who To Blame!

 

10 AM this morning...the Husband not happy

Three and a half FEET. And it’s still coming down. And the radio keeps saying 12-16 inches. HA!

My office mate and one of my patients is responsible for this: one has been saying how much she likes snow, and the other has been complaining that there isn’t any snow yet and how she’d like a lot of snow so it really feels like winter. Well, listen up: winter doesn’t start until next week, thank you very much, and you have to remember that the weather gods are always listening, always looking for an excuse to play what they think of as a fun trick on us. Don’t talk about what you wish the weather was; don’t even think about it. You two are responsible for this mess we’re in!

I’m looking out the window at the back forty, where the garden is. The teak garden chair that was setting on the brick entryway I made this summer has disappeared. There isn’t even a higher lump to indicate where it is – I assume it’s still there and the weather gods didn’t take it back to their cave or whatever they live in this time of year. The snow piled up on the compost bins is so high I can only see the tips of the apple tree branches beyond them. One of my wind whirlies is completely buried, and the other two have snow up to their lowest blades, inhibiting their ability to whirl. The pear tree’s entire trunk is under snow. The wheelbarrow the Husband left out at the far end of the garden has disappeared.  There’s snow up to the garage door windows – it’s going to be awhile before the Husband can move that snow, and the snow blower, of course, is inside the garage, as are the snowshoes; and the woodpiles – yeah, right. Can’t reach them. And my bedroom window is almost completely blocked by the snow piled on the roof of the chapel, which it looks out on.

Picture me with a glove on one hand reaching through the foot-wide opening, which is all we could bash open, of the chapel door, trying to reach through with a shovel and one-handedly push the top of the 4-foot pile of compacted snow (snow’s been sliding off the roof onto the 3.5 feet that was already there) down to the Husband, who waded through 4-foot drifts from the kitchen wart to get to the bottom of the chapel wart, which is our way in for the woodstove cords which are still out of reach. None of which matters  if we can’t get the door to open.

Andy the snowplow guy made a rudimentary run through earlier today, but he couldn’t do much – partly because there’s so much snow, and because we have a wicked long driveway that’s more like a short road, and because everyone needs their snow moved and it’s slow going. 

Guess where the snowblower is?

Before it started snowing, a couple of patients brought me some holiday gifts from their kitchens. One is a jar of salt full of fresh herbs from her summer garden, and sprinkling it on tomato toast this morning was like summer bursting open on my tongue. The other brought me a sweet holiday bread – cranberries and walnuts and I think I detect a burst of orange as well – which is just like the winter holidays rolled into a mouthful of deliciousness. And that’s what that patient was aiming at achieving, I believe. We had an interesting conversation about what the holidays mean, and how the Gathering, and Story-telling and Story-making, and being a cornucopia of generosity and heart and welcome is so important for her and has been for her adult life.

I have to admit that after that conversation, I looked at the Christmas lights outside folks’ houses in a more awake way, last night on the ride home. I enjoy bright colored lights (it’s the French-Canadian in me) and always have, but talking about the spiritual, but non-religious meaning of the end-of-year holidays, brought my eyes back to the wonder they could see when I was a youngster. Followed by this  giant snowstorm, it opens the soul again to the emotions of the season that have become rationalized for me, more than felt, in recent years.

Our bodies are animals; come fall, we want to eat more, we feel more tired, we want to sleep more, bundled into flannel sheets and soft blankets. We want to sit by a fire in a cozy chair with a lap-rug and a cat, a mug of cocoa at our sides, reading a book about Christmas ghosts or the Wild Hunt or the meaning of the first stranger to cross our doorstep in the New Year. We want to take our dogs out and watch them turn into puppies again in the glorious, glorious snow. We long for the rich foods, the bright colors of the foods, the garlic and cloves and orange and cinnamon; the harissa and za’atar, the advieh and salt, pomegranate syrup and galettes and tortiere, the foods that mean the time is special and that we are safe and comfortable. We long for whatever makes us feel blessed and sacred; the enforced rest that lets us shed the past year and move on as holy warriors into the next.

My idea of comfort

These things are important; and during a year’s end when there is and has long been danger on all sides and our nerves are worn more than thin, it’s important to find the things that wake us up to the sacred. A lit candle; a special dish; a secret kept and wrapped in tissue paper; a favorite sweater; some balsam soap; a honeycomb in a bowl; a walk in the dark on a crisp and starlit night.

It’s been years since I put up a Christmas tree: small house, small rooms, two very large dogs with wavy tails, and cats too curious for their own good. The ornaments go on my curtain rods and stay all year, and I don’t really see them anymore. It hasn’t really mattered. When I did put up a tree, I exchanged erecting a real one, years ago, for a short, black, fake tree. It’s – different – and in its own way, can be quite lovely.

This year, I might put up the tree.

 

 

All photos Deb Marshall

 

Kitchen wart