Sunday

Tomorrow is Sunday. I love Sundays. Albert Schweitzer said, "Do not let Sunday be taken from you. If your soul has no Sunday, it becomes an orphan"

It used to be our whole society understood what that meant. Folks went to church, cooked and ate a big meal and just generally spent the day enjoying their pleasures. The stores were closed so nobody shopped. Instead we puttered. We read or worked in the garden. People went on walks even Sunday drives. Remember those? You would pile into the car with your parents and a quilt next to a thermos of coffee in the front seat, and maybe make a stop for milkshakes at a drive in stand, or pull over and spread the quilt somewhere pretty and eat the homemade snacks that your mom had packed. I remember my dad tidying up his tools on Sunday afternoons or maybe putting up a shelf. He fished a lot on those Sundays too. My mom, always an avid reader, set aside Sundays for the big weekend paper and her pile of magazines. Sometimes she might throw a fluffy novel into the mix. The rest of the week she read more literary things, but Sunday was for Reader's Digest, Redbook, and Good Housekeeping. Sometimes she gave herself a homemade facial on Sunday afternoons, mixing avocado, olive oil, honey and oatmeal into a big bowl and slathering it all over her face. Then she would place a fluffy towel right on top still warm from an oven set on low. Sometimes she'd add cucumbers to her eyelids and lean back into the deepest chair in our living room. The place would smell like the produce department at the grocery store while she "seeped"

Sunday was the day you rested. You put your feet up and took a deep breath. Sunday was a metaphor for the whole weekend. Saturday might get a little crowded with the hairdresser, washing the car, grocery shopping, and maybe cleaning up for a Saturday night card party. It was work but with some sense of fun and frivolity. Cartoons in the morning, and cheeseburgers for supper. But Sunday was the real day of rest. If it hadn't gotten done by Sunday it could surely wait until Monday.

Please tell me what exactly happened to Sundays? Where did they go? Now everything is open always. We shop for shower curtains because the ones we have are dingy. We notice this and then somehow on Sunday it becomes unbearable. Or we run twenty errands, stopping by the dry cleaners, the pharmacy, the bookstore, and taking every kid in the neighborhood to play every sport that there is to play. People work on Sundays. Lots of them, not just the folks in the stores. Less people go to church, (which even for someone whose faith was always a little on the shaky side , was still a good place to sing and think about life and the big questions you never have time for on Tuesday. Plus the music was good, and there was always plenty to see...What color would Wanda's nails be, and would she dare to wear that tarty dress again? Would Charlie Herman pinch Edna Jones the organ player? And would the Davidson kids do something truly awful, like the time one of them got stuck in the bell tower wedged in between the bell and the stairs as he tried to steal it and the fire department had to come. The clanging was stuck for an hour so church had to be postponed, only of course nobody left because we all wanted to see how it would turn out.......like that)

And with church out of the picture so is the reflection and even the big Sunday dinner, eaten at noon or 1 o'clock followed by the occasional Sunday nap...now long gone too. Sunday is almost indistinguishable from Tuesday except you might go into the office later, or do your work from home, or shop because there is a sense that if you stop spending for even a minute something really bad will happen. I suspect the whole global financial crisis is a result of these lost Sundays.

We moved to Vermont in a very real way to get Sundays back into our lives. We didn't want our kids growing up in the malls. We wanted to find the natural world and because we were so alienated from it we figured we better move a thousand miles and see if anybody else had it. We wanted our kids to grow up to be thinkers and we felt like the noise in the city was making us all fuzzier and duller. We wanted to live the values we professed to believe. Then we got here and I wrote about every kind of weather and mountain. One's inner thoughts can be depressingly dull it seems. We read every book we owned, and there are thousands of volumes, and then bought a whole bunch more. We talked politics but mostly just to each other, because there aren't too many people and finding the two or three you will love out of a tiny pool is harder than it might seem. So then we made a New Year's resolution to go to the city more and see art openings and interesting film. That has brought back a little more culture, and lots more to talk and think about. But still, we carefully never go on Sunday. Because at forty-six I have finally grasped the meaning of these Sundays. The peace from one really good Sunday can carry you more than just a week. A Sunday spent in the woods with the dogs, talking to the mountains which some might call praying and sometimes I do too, with the smell of woodsmoke guiding us home, can pretty well fix that really bad meeting on Wednesday, a call from the school, the kid who wrecked and needs a $2000 repair for the third time, and even allow for a sense of calm when the market dips below 8000. The magic of a few good Sundays in a row is that you come to realize that happiness and sadness don't have to be tied to circumstance. You can be happy when things are hard and sad when the reasons are elusive. I learned about that once from a string of pretty perfect Sundays. It was a revelation and it has fed me in ways I still can't fully describe.

At forty-six I may only have another couple thousand or so of Sundays left, I don't intend to let one go ever again. My nails might be ragged, and my floors might be dirty. But if they didn't get tended by Saturday they can surely wait one more day. Because tomorrow is Sunday. I have to read the paper and go for a walk with some kids and a few dogs. My husband and I might need a nap and maybe we will make cherry cobbler for supper. There probably ought to be some real food to go along with it but an omelet might be enough, or maybe pancakes and breakfast for supper. Because tomorrow is Sunday and by golly Albert sure knew what he was talking about.....

Pass the Popcorn Please

We spent the whole day, really most of the weekend reading dumb books and watching silly movies. Hannah is deep into the vampire series that all the young girls are reading. I was reading a bunch of old bad Nelson DeMille thrillers. John too. And Eli was hip deep in a juicy time travel story. Benjamin was playing video games, one after another, like he was twelve years old again. These are not the things you tell other people you are reading and doing, but sometimes you just need a bunch of junk food and brain candy, and we were cold and had been cold for days and we needed some comfort. Minus 15 gets to you after a while. It just does.
I finally said to hell with the oil bills and we turned the thermostat way up and started burning about $50 or $60 bucks a day. But by golly we finally got warm. We had roaring fires in both fireplaces, so we could meander back and forth from the library to the playroom and read trash or watch it. We wore fat wooly socks that were purple and green and our favorite, oldest, softest jammies and robes, for two days straight. The hardest part of the day was getting the salsa and the cheese inside those little scoop chips and remembering to get them out of the oven before the cheese burned…(I messed up two batches one way and another. The chickens were glad though) We rented a bunch of old Harrison Ford movies and let our hearts race, as he was chased or chased one or another terrorist.
I have been running around like a maniac with six client’s annual funds, two fat capital campaigns and 27 parties between now and February. And of course I loathe parties, but my clients don’t know. I look like a cheerful big-personality extrovert who has been waiting all her life to meet you and your friends. And really I have met some very nice people. Lots of them. Nice smart engaging Vermonters, but I was tired and all out of extrovert. Bad books and junk food tired. Rotel dip tired. We took it right into supper and had a yummy trashy Velveeta mess from my childhood that my boutique cheese making friends would probably break up with me over.
And now, when you are cold and tired and need a little old fashioned trashy Velveeta comfort you can have some too. Shhh I won’t tell if you won’t.


Beer Cheese Soup…with Popcorn Even
4 chicken bouillon cubes
3 cups water
1 can beer
1 sweet Vidalia (or any sweet onion), diced
2 1/2 cups potatoes, raw and cubed
1 lb Velveeta cheese, cubed
2 cans cream of chicken soup
In a large saucepan, combine bouillon, water, beer,
onion (I like to blacken mine a bit first), and potatoes.
Simmer 20 minutes, and then add cheese and soup.
Simmer 30 minutes. Serve with popcorn on top.
Enjoy!

History

What a day...

Trillions of dollars lost, two hot wars, unemployment rising too fast to count, and still yesterday we were all united and hopeful. There was a feeling of expectation in the air as this gentle brilliant man came to Washington to steer this unwieldy mess into a safe harbor. Mr Obama walked through one door and Mr Bush walked out another and just like that an era was over and a new one had begun. The simplicity of the thing was dazzling.

He's only one man. We tell ourselves that we mustn't expect miracles. And even as he placed his hand on Lincoln's Bible the market tanked and fell under 8000 points for the first time in years. The banks are worse than wobbly. It doesn't seem like another twenty billion will do much more than stave off disaster for a couple more months. Still we keep borrowing it and pouring it in. The banks are nationalized now. If they fail we will all hold the bill. The markets seem to be begging the government to let capitalism defend itself. Let a couple of them go and let the evolutionary nature of capitalism take over it seems to shout.

And Obama's big speech was a classic liberal package. Of course the guys in Greenwich CT are unhappy and of course the market tanked. But this president believes that capitalism is here to serve the country, not the other way round.

Still even in the direst Republican homes there is praise for this young African American family and the sweet man with the funny name. Everyone wants this thing to succeed. We have indeed chosen hope over cynicism. Because by golly this is America. We thrive on adversity. Always have and that's just the plain truth of it. We never succeed when we try to get leaner and meaner. This is the entrepreneurial capital of the world. We like bigger and faster, stronger and braver. We will not all drive little cars and apologize for our excess. We will find two kids in a garage somewhere who invent a new liquid fuel first and they will get rich and wear funny t shirts on TV in their congressional hearings where they explain it all to the grown ups.

This is America. And in America we get up in the morning, we go to work and we solve our problems. President Obama it's a mess, but we are all behind you. We will keep getting up in the mornings and we will fix this thing together. Good luck to you sir. Godspeed....

I Swear

We have a secret up here and I am going to tell it to you now. Winter has a smell. So does snow. Yes it really does. They are perfectly distinct one from another. Winter smells like woodsmoke, thick winey stew, bread baking, pine, and the old burner when it is newly full of oil.... which everyone believes.
Snow smells like freshly pressed linen which only people from way up north can believe and actually understand. Or maybe raw silk. Have you ever been in one of those little boutique stores that specialize in linens and natural raw fabrics? They are constantly steaming the clothes in there. Think of that crisp smell in that close place and take away all warmth and you have the smell of snow. Now pair that with a little woodsmoke hanging over the valley from all the chimneys and you will have the smell that lingers just outside our back door. At night when the moon is full and the snow is crisp and sparkling, the smell is perfectly clear without any interference from warming cars, or wet barking dogs, or kids eating snacks, It hits you in the face the way the clothes smell when they are just fresh from the dryer. It is too cold for the loamy smells of the woods that will permeate everything by May. It is too cold even for the smell of the piney woods to hide the top layer of snowy air. You get hints of pine when it is ten below, but the overwhelming flavor is of snow. Eli's cheeks after only an hour or so on the sled smell like snow. All our hats and mittens and even my coat and hair smell like the snow. Really. I swear.

Today I drove into a snow drift. I hit a small patch of ice and braked uselessly while my car careened slowly down the slippery slope on the side of the road. I tried backing out and only succeeded in digging myself even deeper into the bank. Luckily I was close to home. I pushed hard and opened my door and stepped into the four feet or so of snow. I walked, getting my skirt and long johns soaked. It was slow going since it was deeper than my legs are long. I trudged home and when I came in the smell of snow was so powerful that it brought John calling, "hey somebody left a door open the snow is coming in".
No only me, the Abominable wife, coated from the waist down and filling the house with the heady smell of fresh snow. I headed for the tub while the boys headed out on the rescue mission for the car. I sat in a deep tub full of hot water and grinned thinking about how it was the smell of snow that brought them out. Snow has a smell. Who knew?

Energy

It's minus 7 this morning in my part of Vermont. I know because I checked first thing this morning when I got up. I am not even there, but some of my people are and I wondered what they were waking up to this morning so I checked.

I am in NYC which thinks it is having a bitter cold spell. Thar's what they're calling it on the radio. I think it's in the twenties. I will allow that all this city wind in your face makes it feel pretty blustery, but it is hardly bitter.

Here folks are back at work after the holidays. The restaurants are only about half full and the hotels are affordable again and pretty empty. The traffic is the same though. A loud wash of music comes up behind you on Broadway from 18th and then stalls next to you or just in front before weaving in and out and pushing it's taillights into the long crowded stream of them that run all the way to the Hudson River, or New Jersey depending on which way you are going. In a minute or two you will hear it's blaring sounds up on the next block. Sometimes a firetruck whoops it's way past and people sort of scooch over a little bit as it makes it's own narrow lane down the middle. I always think God help anyone whose house is really on fire. It will burn long before the light changes.

The sidewalks were crowded when we went looking for good cheap Indian last night. We found a spicy little restaurant just blocks from the hotel filled with regular Indian people which is always a good sign. The food was fantastic. Lots of heat and cardamom. The scallops sitting on top of some hot colorful stuff were amazing and so was the chicken curry with the cauliflower turned orange by the hot sweet stuff it was cooked in. I miss the real ethnic food in the city possibly most of all. And so every time we get a chance we grab bunches of it. Hannah and I rounded out the evening at the Angellika. It is an old classic theater in Soho with high lavishly painted ceilings dripping with old chandeliers and real desserts at the counter. We kept the Indian theme and saw Slumdog Millionaire which is just as good as everyone says.

This morning there are horns and wind, and we will run around and have lunch with friends. I used to thrive on this. I needed the hurry and the stuff. I was charged by the high octane energy here, the people making deals and running the world, all of them always rushing as if the whole thing would stop spinning if they weren't really careful. But now all I can think about is the very different kind of energy back home. It is slower. It paces itself. But it is steady and constant. It's strength is fed by wind and snow, cheerful fires and the simple beauty of a mountain morning. I can't wait to get home. I want to warm up to its glow. Because that's what it is now. Vermont is no longer the experiment where we moved to see if we could find the natural world and live closer to it.

Vermont is home. Minus 7, sure. I'll be there by dark.....

Lessons

The first year we moved up here these deep snows scared me. I wondered how would we ever manage to shovel it all, (We wouldn't) How would we get out? (We didn't need to) How would the dogs manage? (Just fine) What if we ran out of heating oil? (We'd call the oil guys) And how would we manage? ( LIke everyone else)

These were the questions and the fears that swirled around inside my brain. I remember opening the door to let the dogs out after the first really deep snow and realizing that little Stuart couldn't go out until somebody made him a path. The marble steps were all snowed under and the drifts were leaning about three feet up the sides of the doors. I shut the door and walked back into the kitchen and stared out the window and cried. I wasn't ready. What had we done? What had I been thinking?

Now finally six winters later I have begun to adjust. I understand that the old city brain that felt the need to shovel and salt, sweep and rearrange has faded away. I have no need to order this snow anymore. It isn't mine to control. There are plow guys who make a swath for the car, and we shovel off the steps, kind of and mostly, just like everybody else. There are no neat glistening sidewalks surrounded by new snow. Everything here lives contentedly under a blanket of white for a few months every year. Stuart that little Carin Terrier is 12 now. John makes a path for him until the plow guys come. Pippi the other little dog tramps happily behind Eloise the Bernese Mountain Dog who makes everybody a path. We keep stores of milk and butter, flour and sugar. We have eggs out in the hen house and we can always make do if the big snow comes just as grocery day was approaching. The grocers never get those storm runs up here where everybody empties the shelves. We all make do. Sometimes the plow guys are late like today, when there were some 14 or 15 inches of new snow dropped, they have a lot of work today and since it's Sunday nobody is going anywhere anyway. There was already a couple of feet out there and now it is closer to three. When these really big ones hit on weekdays nobody goes anywhere either. Businesses close. So do schools and even the Post Office. Once the banks closed. But if you need them, really really badly, you just call Patty at home. Everyone has her number. She'll come in and get you what you need.

What I have learned in six winters is this.....

The world does not need me to run it.
It runs along quite well without my shoveling, or cleaning up whatever it creates. Better in fact.

And slower is better.
Running around to try and get everything done by some magical imposed deadline accomplishes nothing more than doing it at a saner pace would have. In fact it accomplishes less. I look and feel frazzled, not competent and busy like I always imagined I did. The lady with the long johns, flannel and fleece, over a billowing purple skirt, who fixes her coffee before she tackles the windshield to get to her client meeting, is calmer and gentler and inspires more confidence than the one who used to arrive on time, huffing and puffing and breezing into the room is inappropriate shoes with cold feet. Nobody was ever there to greet her anyway, because her clients are all New Englanders now. There were home fixing their coffee, and getting on their heavy boots. They'll be along in a few minutes, having had a full breakfast, with clean windows and warm feet. By late morning or early afternoon at the latest most of them will be on the slopes getting in a few runs while the new powder holds.

The city lady used to look at them and sees unprofessional people living in vacation land with no sense of urgency.
They looked back at the city lady and wondered why she was so nervous and how long it would be til she went back.

Now she sees people who understand time. There is always more of it and when there isn't they will know they used up their last measure of it on a woodsy walk with their dog or next to a cute little kid in a pink snowsuit up on the mountain. They have warm feet and they know there is always time for a cup of coffee before taking to a snowy road.
Now they see a woman who still wears those silly gypsy skirts, but she has on good Canadian boots and she isn't in such a hurry anymore. She brings her dog with her in the front seat and they feed her pieces of their biscuit under the table at meetings. Maybe she'll stay after all they think.

And even the deer will come up close to the house for their kibble now. They can't find it in the meadow and even the dogs have finally stopped barking at them. I think we have adjusted.....

January

Have you ever seen a snow tornado? We had a humongous ice storm up here Tuesday night and then the second wave hit yesterday. The winds were whipping the snow around and you could look out the windows and see three or four of these cool snow funnels blowing all at the same time. They whirl and spin and dance like crazy snow characters. Some of them are six or seven feet high and then there are dozens of little bitty ones that never get more than a few inches off the ground.

Today the guys are out sanding the roads. There is about an inch of ice under all the snow now and the salt mostly just exposes the ice. But the winds have quieted and now we have lovely fat flakes dropping straight down and our chicken house looks like a set piece in a perfect little snow globe.

Wintertime is beautiful here. There have been whole seasons of it when I worried and yearned for spring. But this time I was ready. I am happy to have a snowy January and December was like a made for TV holiday special. Now the last of the pine needles have been swept, and the ribbons and greenery have all been taken down. We packed away the ornaments in one fast afternoon and the house seemed quiet and a little sad. The end of the holidays always makes me a little mournful. It is a time of reflection and remembering before taking on the new resolutions and the secrets that the next year surely has in store.

I remember the year the tree fell down and Benjamin's red glass sneaker ornament lost its bottom. I remember too the year we moved to Vermont and wondered if by Christmas we would feel at home. And what would it be like without friends and family when we sang carols and put up the tree? That was the year we found the Three Clock Inn where we still have dinner every Christmas Eve, and the sleigh ride, and our whole lives as we know them now were unfolding revealing themselves a little more each day. If I go way back I can remember the Christmas Eve with a baby boy when I cried and wondered how I would ever correct the mistake I'd made in marrying his dad. And there are all the ones in between with the wonderful Christmas Adventures, brunches at the Adam's Mark, new ornaments from Botanicals, pictures on Santa's knee, the sound of the bells, cookies and carrots for Santa and his reindeer, and then later when we were all older and hipper looking at the Macy's windows in NYC after a big dinner in Soho.

Looking back and remembering the worries and the questions that have all been answered one way or another makes it possible to go forward with hope and expectation, no matter that we seem to have misplaced trillions of dollars. As I watched the snow tornadoes yesterday I thought about the whirl of our lives. We blow around and make big spectacles too, but then just like the snow we settle back down and have a few pretty fat lazy snowfalls. It is said that you have to love winter to live up here. This year I am loving it. I wouldn't trade this fire and this view with these people for anything else. But pretty soon I know there will be another whirl and one or another of us will start spinning. Then we will pull on our good boots and follow the spinner and see where we wind up. It's January. Everything is possible......

I Believe in the Power of Words

Peace was just too big a word. It asks lots of questions all at once, personal, political, metaphorical, and physical. And I get a fair bit of it with my dogs and books in front of the fire with a slow snow falling outside. It is just not my word.
I thought about forgiveness for a while. I have a couple of people I probably need to forgive. But I don't really want to forgive the one, and the other is dead so there is no real sense of urgency there either.
I liked the idea of choosing a word or phrase to accompany my new year's resolutions. This would be an idea that I needed more of in my life. I would read and write and think about it and hopefully over the course of a year grow in my understanding of its meaning and figure out how to find or make more of it.
But choosing the word turned out to be hard. What one word or simple phrase did I want to live with all year long? It was a bigger commitment than the regular resolutions. They are at least diluted by the others on the list. Sure, I'd like to lose weight. But I also want to help Benjamin find an interesting and meaningful first real job. I want to help Hannah make a conscious choice about her major so that she picks something with intention and meaning, as opposed to what she needs the least number of credits for, as at least one of her parents did. And if those two happen and my ample backside doesn't change much, well the kids lives are surely more important.
But this whole word thing stands alone. And even if I do it again, even if I do it every year for the rest of my life, I am already forty six, I might only get forty more words total. Fifty at the way outside. That is a small amount of words for a woman who uses so many almost carelessly in any given day.
This idea will reflect and challenge simultaneously. It aims to reveal a weakness and force a consciousness that I don't always feel or even aspire to feel.
So I caught myself considering words that I already possess. After all how much easier to choose humor or gratitude where I feel strong and safe. I could read articles and essays that would reinforce my life. How lovely to be so validated. Also, of course, pretty far removed from the whole point of the exercise.
I also discarded for one or another reasons change, attention, slow...(this one I actually wrote in my book next to the list of resolutions and now I have to amend it), settle down, (..this is something I have been doing now for the whole of my 21 years with John. I would be lying if I said that I am no longer excitable..I come form a long line of over reactors...but I no longer need to buy a new refrigerator rather than clean the old one, and neither do I scream when I am pouring the hot fudge and cause everyone to grab pot holders and open the freezer, and get out of the way and, and, and....so I am way better), choose, simple, marriage...(although I was way tempted to pick this one so I could charge off sex with my husband in the bathroom at a restaurant or behind the movie theater to paying attention to my marriage and following my new year's plans...okay so I told you I am still not quite settled down), and faith. Faith might be next year's word. This one begs for some attention. But not right now, not this year.
But I did actually manage to choose a word. The word is security.
I often have feelings of insecurity. Our finances like everyone's have been in the market freefall. This makes some people worry and behave with more practicality and greater restraint. It makes others run faster to make up for it. I figure you can always make more money. I have made and lost a fair bit of it. Now I want to make another big pile and live in Italy with all of our kids for a year. But does this lead to greater security or less? And does the running around starting new businesses make me feel more or less secure? Why do I always have something on the front burner and a couple more pots on the back burners just in case? I am surely not risk averse, but maybe worse and certainly more confusing, I seem almost to court risk. Is that by definition an inherently insecure act?
Security with my mate has led to years of good decisions piled atop more good decisions. Out of that history stands a strong and satisfying union with it own quirks and language and humor. My security in my ability to mother these kids has built a happy house and a family that we all want to come home to. It is my proudest accomplishment and so I know the benefits of decisions that lead to security.
Now how can I find enough of it to build a secure financial foundation that allows us to make the wild outlandish choices and still have a soft place to land? I don't know. Or I don't know anyway how to do that without becoming bored and risking it all in another silly Monopoly move sure to make me lose all my hotels. Boredom has often been my nemesis. And so that is why my word is security.
I have always claimed not to need it. I think that is probably an old lie leftover from a childhood that didn't have any. So now I am going looking for it. I'll let you know what I find...

Resolutions

This is not mine, but I love it. It comes under the heading of you can't get what you want if you don't know what you want....

A boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.

"Not very long," answered the Mexican.

"But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American.

The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family.

The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs. . I have a full life."

The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat."

"And after that?" asked the Mexican.

"With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge new enterprise."

"How long would that take?" asked the Mexican.

"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.

"And after that?"

"Well my Friend, That's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!"

"Millions? Really? And after that?" said the Mexican.

"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends."

And the moral is:

Know where you're going in life….you may already be there.