Resting Christmas

Christmas is over, at least the part of having decorations inside the house. I’m not ready to remove the outside lights and wreaths and red bows, but in a few days I’ll pack those away, too. Once again my intentions were to consolidate and eliminate, streamline for future Christmases. But memories got in the way, and nostalgia ruled more often than not.

The main rooms of the house look bare, ready for a good cleaning tomorrow, prepared to start a new year. The next couple of days I will slowly ease some decorative elements back into place, a few old ones usurped by new ones or by even older ones shifting into rotation once again. I’m eager for the comfort of familiarity after the bustle of the holiday season. On the other hand, I do look forward to the day after next Thanksgiving to start Christmas all over again with every wonder.

Groceries Galore

How much food can two people eat? Husband and I have our gastronomical work cut out for us if there is any hope for all the groceries crammed into our refrigerators and freezers, especially all the fresh produce. I will focus on preparing and packaging; he will focus on devouring and delivering. Our intention is to share in any way we can, and I suspect that neighbors and family have similar intentions.

If I can end the year without another foray into stores, I will be a happily absent shopper. But inevitably some item will cross from the maybe list over to the must have list.
Such as grapefruit.

Breakfast Brie

With Christmas Day almost upon us, I’ve been thinking about the breakfast my daughter served us Thanksgiving morning, one where we could casually serve ourselves or just wait patiently while saving room for the big holiday meal. She baked a wheel of brie covered with a relish including cranberries, nuts, and brandy. Beside it was a plate of croissants, biscotti, and flat bread. A bit decadent, I know, but so delicious with lots of freshly ground coffee. Christmas morning here will be so busy in the kitchen that I'll probably put out some banana bread for just the two of us, but I’ll be thinking of the other breakfast.

Art Lesson

Yesterday morning my painting teacher became an impressionist. Just like that. At age eighty-eight. After decades of capturing nature realistically on canvas, she made the switch and unceremoniously announced it to the class. In recent years, pride prolonged her efforts to paint in ways she enjoyed most, but gradually her failing eyesight pushed her to make choices. Her decision was to resurrect herself, a phoenix rising. And so she painted her first work in a new life and artistic phase, one where she can still control the composition but use colors and light and details the way her eyes now see them.

Any of us who ever thought of morphing into something new and different can’t help but applaud what she is attempting to do. At an advanced age, she is confident that going down this fresh path is the right move. If her work at the easel today is any indication, I can’t wait to see more results.

Her signature mark has always been a pair of cardinals placed somewhere in the painting. Now she may as well add a couple of butterflies, too.

The Foggy Faraway

Tomorrow will be the third day in a row starting with a dense foggy morning. I’m not describing a metaphorical fog, because Lord knows we have plenty of those around here, but a genuine meteorological fog so thick it probably shows on the radar map. Sunday the sun came out for the drive home, but today the late afternoon had fog equal to the early morning.

Crossing the bridge over the Sabinal River, I looked to the left and saw a tall owl sitting near the top of a mostly dead tree. Nothing else on that side of the road was visible with any clarity, but that bird perched frozen on its branch and foggy background, merely one dimensional. Ahead of me was pea soup, as the old-timers used to say, but now I’m saying it, so we know what that means.

Tomorrow when I drive to painting class, I expect to travel through a gray glaze much like the one I apply to my paintings when I want a hill to recede into the faraway. How easy would it be to brush myself into the faraway with tinted Liquin-loaded bristles, smooth the sharp edges, reduce the contrast, flatten the panorama, almost disappear.

Ear Screw

“You lost your ear screw,” she said as my candy cane earring slipped out and landed on my lap. Even though it was obviously a French wire to me, it was an ear screw to my aunt in her nineties. At this point any earring will never be anything else to her.

I remember those contraptions, and I do think I first wore them in grade seven or eight, careful to make them tight but not too tight. When I removed them, the indentations would remain for a while, and sometimes my lobes ached and throbbed until gentle massaging restored the circulation. Wearing them symbolized a growing-up moment for me as well as a reaffirmation of my gender, because I had never seen any male wear an earring except for Captain Hook.

Then I checked her ears and found them accented by dainty pearls but too obscured by her hairstyle to determine whether backed by screws or clips or posts. I resisted reaching up to brush back a strand of her hair, but I couldn’t stop myself from wondering. Our conversation drifted through current topics as well as stories of family members and history in no particular order. If she hesitated at a name or detail, it came to her quickly with confidence. When I said goodbye later, I kissed and hugged her closely, but the type of earring was still a mystery. Driving home, I wished I had just asked her about the earrings she was wearing today, but then I wish I had asked her about so many other things, too. At ninety plus, how many more chances will I have?

We scheduled another visit for next Monday when my sister and I will be in that town for a meeting. You can safely bet that I’m looking forward to it very much, maybe even surprisingly so. I’ll be sure to wear some earrings that I can fasten more securely, just like I’m trying hard to fasten her stories to mine more securely.

Cousin, Sister, Me

Cousin Lunch

Phone calls this week from my oldest cousin to my sister and from my sister to me set up a lunch for the three of us in Hondo at a restaurant with as much history as our childhoods. We sat at a quiet table from 11:30 to 4:30, but we were anything but quiet since we see our cousin so rarely.

Story after story we pieced together our memories like a crazy quilt, nothing orderly but layered with colorful bits of lives we remembered. Throughout the reminiscing one theme emerged: women in our previous generations were tough. They were resourceful and assertive, firmly nurtured relationships, and expected the best of themselves and their families. By comparison, we also caught up with the disjointed features of later generations and what we miss about the dwindling number of family gatherings.

As we said our goodbyes in the parking lot, fresh addresses packed carefully in our purses, the poignancy of the moment hit harder. Questions about the likelihood of future lunches filled my chest and throat but never left my lips. The cold wind brushed over our warm kisses to remind us that perhaps we were in the winters of our lives, and one more hug might reaffirm a commitment not to wait too long to meet again.

Home Again

Being home again brings mixed feelings. Our time in Minnesota flew by so quickly, but I knew from the beginning it would come to an end, didn't want to think about it, but knew it had to come to an end. I don't know other families that do what we do, stay together several times a year under one roof for a week, sometimes more, functioning as a family unit headed by whoever hosts us. We fell into this pattern without thinking or planning, simply fulfilling a desire to share our lives for a time and realizing that our goal is not to live this way indefinitely.

We celebrated our annual tri-holiday weekend with Thanksgiving Thursday, Anniversary Friday, and Christmas Saturday and Sunday. This year we took a new approach to the traditional Thursday menu and limited the first meal to turkey, cornbread dressing, sausage stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and cranberry sauce. No other sides allowed! The plan for the second meal included all the leftovers with the freshly made sides, but you know what they say about plans. This new twist in the menu made the day much more relaxed and fed us our favorites when we were the hungriest. Saturday was the usual tamales with chili, a spicy change our bodies craved by that time, but I think many families take such a Tex-Mex break for their taste buds. Probably the strangest success was a breakfast of baked brie smothered with a brandied cranberry pecan relish and accompanied with croissants, flat bread, biscotti, and lush Vashon Island coffee. Enough about food.

On another day I may get to the dinner and the performance we saw Friday night when the adults went out and the granddaughters stayed with the sitter. Then there's the Christmas tree decorating and how much faster it went this year with the granddaughters helping more than ever. I want to remember every little moment.

Will it go?

This post comes from my iPhone as a test for what I can do. Go, thumbs, go! And no, I am not driving but sitting in the back seat (another story) on our way to the airport. Pawpaw's truck has a plugin in the back that's perfect for my phone charger. Okay, that's enough for the mobile test, so here goes.

Sunny Sunday

This afternoon the sun was so bright that I thought it would keep me warm while I sat down at the river to read. That worked until the sun slowly sank behind the bluff. With everything I put in my tote bag, a blanket was not one of the items. My next landing spot was the patio, a little higher, a little more time with the sun. Shaded out once more, I finally retreated to the porch. By this time my book was scattered in chunks all over my brain and wouldn’t come into focus again, maybe because of all the rereading I had done with each relocation.

Starting my river time earlier in the morning is not an option because the temperature is just too cold these short days. Thinking over the attempt, maybe the reading would have gone better in front of the fireplace. With a mug of hot something. Next to a sunny window, of course.

Rainy day

Rain fell so hard early this morning that friend and I postponed exercise session to start an hour later. We sweated with Kathy Smith, no weights today, just sweaty aerobics and stretching afterward. Later at the bank, the Christmas tree was up and partially decorated, lots of work done since yesterday. The mantle featured white candles in shapes of buildings, unique but subtle. By next week maybe I'll figure out how to get a photo on this blog.

In case you're wondering, and even if you're not, our post office and bank share a building and have a door joining them so we don't need to walk outside to go from one to the other. The bank has cozy leather furniture, original western art, old photos of the area, and a coffee pot never empty. The locals hang out there in the mornings, some claiming to wait for all the mail to be put into the post office boxes, some more candidly filling up their own coffee mugs, and all sharing the latest news. These days the hot topic is the town's first Christmas festival and the parade on the fourth and final night. How much snow can forty snow machines make? We're soon to find out.

Here comes the rain again.

To b or not to b

To blog or not to blog, that is the question. I have no idea how this will go. If I can collect my thoughts, blogging might work.