Frost Flowers

Who decided to make it January? It has been snowing a little bit most days now for more than a week. We are keeping the fire going and the wood closet full. Temperatures hit the teens by mid day, but we wake up to single digits and we are all wearing our heavy woolen socks. I have a shawl permanently tattooed around my shoulders. Baby it's cold. The birds aren't evening emptying the feeders. They are frozen and wondering just what the hell has happened around here like the rest of us.
For those folks who were waiting for one more warm afternoon to finish raking, well their fate has been sealed. They now have crackly icy piles of leaves which will kill the grass forever and mark them come spring for the slackers they were.
We hadn't even brought down the big basket of hats and gloves, scarves and mittens that sits in December and January like a big round cuddly bowl of warmth in our mudroom. The kids have been wearing sweatshirts and shivering because it just isn't time. This is supposed to be the part where we cook pots of chili and toss the football around on Sunday afternoons, or build bonfires at night and roast marshmallows while we watch the kids and dogs run around the fire. We are not ready for frost on the windowpanes.
Sage goes with late fall and just the very beginning of winter. November conjures squash with buttery sage and carrots and potatoes next to cabbage with a little caraway and dark beer. A little heat maybe to jumpstart the day, but not a boiler creaking on all day long... world without end.
We northerners usually feel smug about winter. We endure. So then our summer is all the sweeter for it. We put on another layer and walk in the woods with the dogs. We are sure our minds are sharper and our conversations a little more clever for the hardship and the cars loaded and ready for anything that might happen out there. We feel brave and strong and proud. We secretly think all those blue skies and sunshine down south must make the people soft.
We don't succumb to big fat milky cocoas and pans of fudge until February at least, with the exception of those little jolly bits in December. But start winter in November and we are all thrown off. The wrought iron furniture is even still on the terrace. That's because during the bonfire portion of the season there are usually a few nights when the warmth of the fire is enough and people linger, hanging on to the very last moments before winter is here for good. But if these little flurries keep up we will have to admit that it came early this year for real. That furniture will bow under the weight of three or four feet of snow no matter that the North Carolina manufacturers say it is winter resistant. They must mean a southern winter not one made in Vermont.
We had frost flowers this morning. And when I let the dogs out there were three deer down in the meadow. They have been driven out of the woods by the hunters. We added a salt lick to the meadow and since it is so cold so early, we added a couple of bales of hay and I brought in oats to fatten them up for this early cold. They are safe here just above the village. No one would dare shoot them in our meadow and so I feed them with impunity. One of the does made a nest from some of the hay. It was as if she understood that the woods weren't safe and this warm bed might just be as good as it gets. I'll lay in some straw for them tomorrow. I guess I'll wash all the hats and gloves and admit to my myself what the deer have already figured out. It's winter. It's time to start getting serious about staying warm....

The Plow Guy

Winter has come knocking at our door again. I know for sure because the temperature was in the teens which is a good first sign. But the real way I know is that the plow guy came and set the snow posts along our lane and the driveway. If you live in the south you may not ever have to know what a snow post does. What it is, is about a four foot high wooden stick that a really big burly guy wearing a filed coat sticks into the ground along your plow route at regular intervals. He uses some kind of tool to make a hole and some other mallet thing to give it a whack so it sits snugly in the hole he has made. And what it does, is mark the route for him when the snow is falling and there are two foot drifts obliterating the driveway. These things are a staple in Vermont. By March we will have run over a couple of them, and the wind will have taken out a couple more. But in November they all come and stand silent sentry waiting to do their work.
We live on a curvy hill road that doesn't get any town services so we have to hire our own plow service. These are the guys who sell us beautiful nursery plants in the summer and Christmas trees in December. They take care of lawns and watch houses for the second home owners, and they keep us all moving in the winter. Now it often snows a little bit every day up here when this thing gets into full swing. So of course they have a plan. They come when there are about three inches on the ground and they they come again every three or four hours until it stops. During the big winter storms which usually start in the afternoon and continue deep into the night, they fill up their thermoses and sometimes never get to bed starting another round just after finishing their first. There is often a little something in the mug with the coffee. But they are practically alone out there, and their trucks weigh about a ton, so they are pretty safe. Maybe your lane has a bit of a curve in the snow that wasn't there before, but only when it has been snowing all night and who could blame the guy all alone with nothing but his Ipod, maybe a dog asleep on the seat beside him, and the occasional coyote or red fox?

These guys have big hearts. A few weeks ago the signs went up in the Post Office. There are long walls covered with butcher paper and pens hanging by a string alongside. The sign next to the blank paper says "Please sign up if you or someone you know needs plowing this winter" Then there is a place for a name and an address. A week or so later someone draws calendar boxes underneath each name and address. The boxes say Nov 1-Nov 15, Nov 15-Nov 30 and on through the end of April. Then after another few days the plow guys come in and sign up for various weeks and various addresses until the whole thing is full. Once it has been full for another week or so somebody takes it down, because now it is in the hands of the guys. So if you have a ninety year old neighbor you sign her up and she only every knows that her road gets plowed. She doesn't know who signed her up or does the plowing and she never gets a bill. The idea is anonymity for anyone who prefers it. But a lot of these folks will wander out and meet their plow guy. And our guy, Kevin tells us that his old folks keep him in a steady supply of thermoses filled with soup, and bags of cookies and at least one older gentlemen often tosses a full bottle of scotch through his window. Since the plow guys often bring along their truck dog, the dogs get soup bones and pigs ears to keep them happy too.

You don't have to be old to qualify either. If you are out of work or just down on your luck, you sign yourself up and nobody ever says a word. Some of us add a little extra onto our payments every month to cover our neighbors who need the help and anyway some of the extra gas costs the plow guys take on. And we know that if we ever get into trouble those same neighbors, even the ones with whom we have had long rancorous land disputes, (which are as common up here as snow, but that's another story), will chip in and cover us. November is dark and the coming winter will be long. But by golly New Englanders are a hardy bunch and we take care of our own.

Oh and God bless those plow guys. Long may they drive....

The List

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I love to cook and there is something especially wonderful about a long weekend dedicated to cooking old family recipes where a whole family's traditions are summed up in food. In our old lives, for many years, our house was filled with family, lots of them crazy or crabby, but then we moved more than a thousand miles away from them. And it never occurred to any of us to travel back. Neither did I think too many of them, even the ones we liked, would plan expensive flights at what is arguably the ugliest, or anyway bleakest, time in Vermont. The mountains steal the sun sometimes by 4 in the afternoon, always by 4:30. The trees are bare sad skeletons and there is no snow yet lightening everything and giving it the sense of magic and wonder that gets us through. Plus in the old days we had already begun moving away from those crazy meals with trips to the Thanksgiving Parade and smaller gatherings with people who made us laugh. So we planned our first Thanksgiving, alone, just us five, with care. I wanted to make sure no one felt lonely or sad. We cooked all of the favorite foods which ridiculously include two kinds of potato and stuffing besides. But each of the five of us has old favorites and we are divided between that sweet yam souffle and traditional mashed with giblet gravy. Our table was very full. And because we moved up here for a reason we added an afternoon walk in the woods with all our dogs, and finally that old family staple, movie night with Home for the Holidays. No Thanksgiving would be complete without it.

Years earlier we'd had our own dysfunctional mess with relatives misbehaving and the five of us had one by one wound up in our bedroom with my best friend Ches, all of us giggling on the big bed. Eventually we wandered back down, a little shamefaced at to having had such secret fun and found that they had all left, every grandma and aunt and before they sulked off they'd washed the dishes! We figured they'd felt guilty for their misbehavior and without any guilt at all got the turkey back out, made a big batch of turkey salad and settled down to watch Home for the Holidays. We have watched it every year since. This is probably about the tenth year anniversary of watching Holly Hunter and her on screen brother played by Robert Downey Jr put the fun back in dysfunctional. We all know the lines by heart and wait for our own particular favorite scenes to recite.

This year we have some extended family coming, and there will be odd ex partners and their families in a loud Alan Alda movie version of Thanksgiving. But the walk and the movie will not waver. Neither will the food. There will be a new squash casserole on trial, next to the old favorites including pecan and pumpkin pie made with my mom's famous pie dough recipe. The exes have a favorite carrot recipe that we will add so everybody can share the tastes of their childhood as we clink glasses after our round of thankfuls. We do thankful during dinner. Everyone tells what they are thankful for that year and there is nothing like giving voice to gratitude to really get you counting your blessings. In this year when money no longer seems reliable and everyone is worried about their savings, or worse their job or house, it is especially important to remember all of the stuff we still have. We live in a beautiful place that feeds my soul and we have each other. I am deeply blessed with kids that I not only love but like and who love and like me right back. I have a husband who makes me laugh every single day. The consuming passion of youth has turned into a sweet middle aged heat which is way better than I ever imagined in my twenties. And in our house we have the best critter gang we have ever had. Our dogs and cat and chickens give us gobs of pleasure every single day.

The market is scary. Nobody knows what will happen next. I make our living by raising money, so everyone is a little worried about how long all this will last. But, the big stuff is already here. No matter what happens I hope I will have the sense to stay thankful. When I make my annoying to do lists now, which are frequently fraught with the worries of the markets, I also write a list in the margins of what I am thankful for that day. It is a little patch of grace in an inky sea of worry.

Today's list looked like this

hot thick coffee with real cream
leaf blowers
Timmy
Benjamin's math mid term
Eli's art teacher
my slippers
Hannah's idea about the pig
John's orange shirt
the bells
the price of gas today
my friend Karen's new puppy
Julia Reed's Ham Biscuits and Hostess Gowns
this new black cherry nail polish.....

What's on your list?

Parts of Speech

We had the rest of the festival of Eli here this weekend with a kid party of 10 thirteen year olds. It began with skating and ended with the barbarians staying up all night. I woke up once when the house was finally quiet, and after checking discovered that they'd headed down to the Dorset Green to perform for the Inn's webcam. One can only imagine what antics they got up to in front of that camera. I am almost afraid to go the post office where I will surely hear. I may wait a couple of weeks until whatever they did blows over and someone else's kid starts a round of gossip about them and their parenting instead of mine.

When did parenting become a verb? We had dinner with some folks this weekend who were longing for the days of benevolent neglect and kids running wild and enjoying their teenage years without the benefit of much adult intervention. I could not relate. Well, sure my own teenage years were a mystery to my mom as I wandered in and out of trouble that she never even knew about. My dining partner this weekend supposed that the entrepreneurs and artists and problem solvers were being squelched by all this silly attentive attachment parenting. I disagree.

Everyone I know has at least a couple of marriages under their belts. We joke that we are the Prozac nation and how many families are gearing up for holiday celebrations with dread? The radio call in programs are filled with people wondering what to do about their sister or their Aunt Harriett and looking for permission to run away to a cabin in the woods instead of celebrating with the relatives they can barely stand. Alcohol sales are steadier than ever and yet this fellow cannot see how adult tending and intervention in kid's lives is important let a responsibility.

Now we were all dining with close family friends who have lots of kids and are close to a big extended group who come for every holiday and email all the time about a cool new ice cream flavor or the boy they love madly and want to break up with simultaneously. In short they are connected.

And we are a family of five. Our oldest is twenty three followed by a nineteen year old and a thirteen year old brings up the rear. We parent all of them all the time. The oldest is living in a house on a lake with his buddies, and the middle one is in a college dorm. That doesn't stop them from calling most days and asking us to look over a paper, or to give them a recipe, or just to tell us about their date last night. We too are a close and connected family and our intimacy seems to offend some people. We began dinner by telling about Eli's blessing party and I think my dining companion, who has on occasion been disconnected from his own kids, was feeling threatened. The proximity in our lives got challenged as too much dependence as opposed to a joyful sharing of triumphs and concerns. Now this same fellow shares his own hopes and dreams and worries when he has them with his friends. Yet it seems weird to him that some families function that same way.

He didn't say any of that though. He pretended to want to have a philosophical discussion about over parenting in our society and cited our refusal to let our thirteen year old date as a prefect example. (He was twelve when two girls asked him to "go out". He was glad for an excuse to tell both no. In fact he had to come in from a fast game of capture the flag with his pals to take the call. Dating is hardly in his current developmental realm)

I tried to entertain the conversation as theoretical, because I really like this man most of the time. But with a night's sleep under my belt I wonder why I didn't say what I know to be true. There is not enough parenting in the world is what I think. Parenting is a verb. You cannot be a proud parent if you never do it. Giving them money or good schools is not the same thing. Being their friend is not parenting them. Dropping them off in the morning and picking them up at night is not parenting. Parenting takes time and lots of it. Loving is a verb too. It includes telling them no, listening always to the real need behind their words, nurturing them, and giving them the benefit of your sense of perspective and wisdom. (By the way, this fellow does parent. But it is an area of worry and it is not been simple for them. When is it???)

What I did say was that I think there is a wide range of what's okay and a narrow range of what never is. But my friend was intent on spinning it another way. Parents cannot be loving if their limits are not his. He even suggested that another family whose conservative Christian beliefs have them segregating their young teenagers from co- ed parties must be molesting them or have been molested somewhere in their past. The strength of his argument felt bizarre to me.

I am trying to remember that we are the sum of our frames of reference and our choices. Real understanding has majesty. It takes only a casual skill to win an argument. It takes something much bigger and kinder to try to understand. I am working on it....

A New World

It is a transformational moment. We are being asked to pay attention. Barack Obama stands today as a beacon of hope against the tides of racism and division of the last eight years. Will we remember this one gentle moment as the day that everything changed? Sometimes great change is heralded by days and weeks and years of loud protest. The sixties brought noisy change for civil rights and for peace. And sometimes a quiet person walks on the moon or invents email, or makes a speech against a lousy war and the whole world gets smaller and better in one fast second.

The presence of this good man on our national stage whose father was an African with three wives and whose single mom was a white woman from Kansas, changes everything for all of our children. My thirteen year old will not remember a time when black people weren't on the news or running companies. Our children's frame of reference will be very different than ours.

We are being asked to pay attention. The market woes will not be so easily solved. Neither will the wretched business in Iraq. But one thing changed overnight. African Americans have no glass ceiling in this country anymore. Black kids can dream as big as anybody. White people settled this election and that crabby old racist uncle in the corner will no longer be tolerated. Today is a day of glory and celebration for civil rights and for our standing around the world. Imagine that kindly family in our nation's rose garden. It is a different world today than it was only yesterday.

Thank you Mr President Elect and thanks to your smart wife and adorable kids too. You wandered up and down a million rope lines and ate a lot of bad fair food for us in states you might never have wanted to go and where plenty of folks didn't want you to come. Thank you sir. Now go do a bunch of right things, end torture maybe, hire some smart Republicans, start transitioning Iraq back to Iraq, help every single American find affordable heathcare, surprise us. Good luck sir.. Traveling mercies....

November

The mountains are back. I was out with the dogs this morning when I saw them again. The beautiful colors of autumn are gone now, but they have left behind these glorious mountains that are hidden for much of the year under a vast canopy of green. Oh, we always have lovely views of course. We sit in a high sweet valley and are surrounded on all sides by the soft round mountains of Vermont. But their shapes are mysterious underneath all those trees until November.

They call it stick season up here. Wrapped as we are by forests the leafless trees are everywhere, giving rise to the nickname. November is also our darkest month and so depression rates start running up pretty soon right about now. The lovely glittering snow has yet to make much of an appearance lightening the landscape as it will, and the sun and the fall color have disappeared and taken away all the light. We are left with millions of dark skeletons and gray skies punctuated by wind and rain. It can be a dreary month.

But then this morning, I realized that November gives us our mountains back. There they are, no longer hidden beneath the weight of all that green. Their shapes now are unmistakable, filling in all the blanks. Owl's Head is no longer just a little bump, but a great round circle hinting at hidden bear caves and bats, and all the life being lived in those deep forests. Mother Myrick too is wide open and unbuttoned. You can see the rivers running along her sides if you get close enough, and the shaggy outline she lends to miles of landscape are clear and distinct at this time of year. With thousands of leafless trees just in front of our front porch, the views are long and open again. The mountains that we always know are there are now right in front of us, practically shouting their presence, and reminding me that they have been here all along.

When I first moved to Vermont I never tired of coming out of the grocery store and looking at a mountain just a few hundred yards away. But somewhere along the way I forgot that November brings these particular charms, shifting our perceptions, outlining the world again and getting it all back down to the bare essentials.

We are here together in this bleakly beautiful place that is November. The bears are filling up and snuggling in and so are we. Our oil tanks are getting filled, and our boilers are rattling on again. The firewood is stacked and the cupboards are full of tomatoes canned from this summer's bounty. Our cell phones and blackberries don't work too well up here, and so that other real world of traffic and financial meltdowns, lunches and late appointments seems far away. Here real life is the sound of the boiler chugging once more back to life and the smells of a steamy cassoulet cooking on the stove. We work hard in the north country for the right to see these mountains every day, breathe this good air, and live this gentle slower life beside the waterfalls with the coyotes and the bears. We give up restaurants and multiplexes, shiny shoes and good hair salons. But what we get instead are these magnificent views, the smell of woodsmoke and the quiet satisfaction of a life lived on its own terms.

My mountains are back and I have found some gratitude amidst this dark November.....

A New Mancub

He was a blond curly headed sweet natured little boy who roared like a lion and barked like a dog long before he had any words. He had a puppy named Stuart whom he called his brother. Not much has changed. Stuart at 12 is more like an older uncle now, but Zoe the cat loves no other human more than she loves her Eli. When she was his Christmas kitten a few years ago her feet didn't touch the floor for two weeks. He called himself her mommy, because she was a baby and as he explained, babies need mommies more than daddies at first. These weren't the gender neutral roles his parents postured, but they seemed clear to him nonetheless. Mommy was a role which had nothing to do with gender. He spoke to Zoe in meows and still to this day when he meows she comes running from wherever she is to be near wherever he is. There is Eloise the big Bernese Mountain dog who followed him protectively in the city and barks at any kid who's games of chase get too wild for her tastes. Don't mess with Eli. There is also Pippi, ostensibly his sister's dog, and for whom Eli has a special voice. They are best friends in that special way kids and dogs have always known. They say that animals can always tell instinctively about a person's character. Even the penguins swim up to the glass to see Eli at the aquarium....

He was a hip city kid for the first seven years. We played chess in a cool coffee shop on a noisy city street every morning before kindergarten. Then we moved to Vermont and he discovered the mountains, with their waterfalls and rivers. He moved outside where he lives still. We became homeschoolers together and studied history through the eyes of a little boy. Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone came back to life. I was raising Tom Sawyer. There was an Easter egg hunt where Eli and the pack of boys he runs with played a game that ended with a lady in an Easter pink pantsuit crying, " there he goes, stop that kid", words Eli said he had been waiting all his life to hear. It had been about ten years at that point.

Eli is one of the funniest people I have ever known. He has an unerring talent for imitation. And in many ways we are raising my husband. It is a special treat for me to get to fall in love with him all over again at every age. John often says, after Eli has said some ironic slightly inappropriate thing as he takes the reigns of his humor, "he says what I think". It is a keen pleasure to be a member of the audience.

Today Eli turned thirteen. We had a coming of age party for him, and our friends and family sent their blessings from around the country. His brother and sister came home from school and we all cooked together and then read Eli all of the messages around a big bonfire before we burned them and sent our hopes and prayers, wishes and blessings into the universe in a cloud of love and smoke. There were funny stories and sweet memories. So many noted his humor and his relationships with the animals. Lots of us reminded him that kindness will get you through almost anything as we wished him traveling mercies on his road to manhood. Happy Birthday Eli. You have brought us all pleasure every day for thirteen years. I can't wait for what comes next....