A Rose in December

A Rose in December

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One of the joys and hassles of a long-lived blog like this one is that I sometimes repeat myself. I feel relatively certain I’ve written of “Roses in December” (ah yes, there it is!), so I must find a new title for this one. How about “A Rose in December.” (The change is duly made.)

Having settled on a title now, then what about the meaning. I’m happy to announce that it’s a straightforward one today — the joy of seeing this bloom so late in the season, of feeling that it’s a slap in the face to subfreezing overnights and brisk western breezes. 

And yes, it brings back the long ago memory of a walled garden and its promise of warmth. But it is also a joy in and of itself. 

This year’s rose, no doubt fueled by a wet spring and moderate summer, has supplied me with blossoms from May to December. I’ve taken a rose to my just-born granddaughter and her mother in late October and could have given one to my November 30th-birthday daughter, had I the ability to ship it across the country. But that, alas, is beyond my power. 

One thing I know about these roses is how delicate they are, how fragile to the touch. They, like so much else in life, are better off the less they are disturbed. 

NaWriMo’s End?

NaWriMo’s End?

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Two years ago, I wrote a novel during National Novel Writing Month. It was an intense experience, in part because I only decided to do it on November 2 so was playing catch-up from the start, and in part because it was a stressful time in my life otherwise. But it was a valuable discipline as disciplines go, so this year I decided to modify it. 

Instead of celebrating National Novel Writing Month (affectionately known as NaNoWriMo), I celebrated National Writing Month, which is an observance of my own concoction, a time when my own writing comes fist because I wake up two hours earlier to do it.

Practicing this for 30 days convinces me (as it has in the past when I’ve made similar efforts), that it’s the writing that matters. Doing it first and doing it often starts my days off in the way they should begin. Like composing the proper outline for the high school theme, the dedicated writing time becomes the frame on which I hang my day. 

Today is December 1. NaWriMo is over. I could stop rising early, sitting in the dark living room with these keys beneath my fingers, letting them take me places I hadn’t thought to go.

Or then again, I might keep right on doing it. NaWriMo is over. My writing … is not. 

Cold Training

Cold Training

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As a chill rain falls and I curl up on the couch, swaddled in three layers, I wonder if my cold training project is working as I hoped it would. Since early fall I’ve been on a mission to be less of a ninny about winter weather, to work outside in temperatures I wouldn’t have dared to before and thus train myself, little by little, to be more comfortable in brisker breezes. 

The premise is simple. In these Covid days, to be outside is to be free. But to be outside in winter requires a tougher skin that the one I was born with. Cold training to the rescue. 

My model in this is the filmmaker Craig Foster, who began free driving without a wet suit in cold South African waters in order to win the confidence of an octopus. In the film “My Octopus Teacher,” Foster describes how he gradually acclimates himself to the water and, as a result, is able to share the life of this shy creature in a way that wouldn’t have been possible had he been more fully clad. The message: Discomfort in service to a higher ideal is not only bearable, it is noble. 

I’m nowhere near this point, of course. The most I can hope is to keep the heat set at 65 instead of 68. But, I tell myself, every little bit helps. 

Bye-Bye Bassinet

Bye-Bye Bassinet

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The bassinet reminded me of the ones my little brother and sister slept in when they came home from the hospital. Though it’s now called “vintage,” it was merely “used” when we bought it for our first baby. I sewed a new liner in a soft lavender flannel. 

A couple days ago, when the grand-babies were in the house, the bassinet was brought down from the attic, just in case it could be pressed into service. Unfortunately … it already had been pressed into service. Squirrels or mice had made it their home. The stuffed animals that were inside the bassinet (some harkening back to my own childhood or earlier) were eviscerated. 

It was sad. I was sad. … But I was also determined that the bassinet make yesterday’s trash pickup. So I took a few photos, and the bassinet was hoisted out to the curb, actually fitting into the trash dumpster. 

Three sweet little girls took their first sleeps in that well-used nest. And who knows how many others. And now, it’s in the landfill. But the girls, they have grown up into lovely young women. And that, of course, was the point of it all. 

(Photo: Courtesy, Etsy. My bassinet photos didn’t turn out so well.)

First Smile

First Smile

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I remember being thrilled at our baby’s first smiles when I was a young mother, but there’s something about seeing them as a grandmother that makes them even more miraculous.

Here is this tiny creature, seemingly from another world, movements as if underwater. Here are the eyes that look past you at first. Here is all the care their parents provide: the feeding and burping and changing and calming. The nonstop love right from the start.

And then … here is the babe giving back. Yesterday, my new granddaughter smiled not once, not twice, but three times. Looked me right in the eye, turned up her sweet little mouth and smiled.

To me it’s proof of love at work, a visible sign of the love that passes from parent to child and then ripples out from that child into the world she builds for herself, extends all the way to the child she bears … who starts the beautiful cycle all over again.

Gratitude 2020

Gratitude 2020

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The rain has cleared out, the sun is peeking through the clouds. It’s warm enough to have an al fresco Thanksgiving meal — if only we had known that a couple weeks ago. But that, like so much else lately, is out of our control. 

Thinking of thankfulness today, as many of us are. All signs point to the moment as the source of gratitude and wonder. The moment indivisible, the moment extinguishable, the moment which is all we have so we must live fully in it.

A tough lesson to learn. But grateful I have another day to try. 

Cooking Up Memories

Cooking Up Memories

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I just pulled out an old cookbook that falls apart when you open it. There are a few recipes in there I still use, and one of them is the cranberry salad I make at Thanksgiving. It’s a molded salad that involves Jello — yes, Jello! — but goes way beyond church potlucks in its appeal. It’s tangy and elegant, a different way to do cranberries.

This cookbook is a window into my past, a long-ago birthday gift from a friend I still count among my dearest, given to me at a pivotal point in my life, when I was moving back to Lexington from Chicago. 

The move was designed to let me try teaching and writing at the same time and see which one “won,” which one I would pursue further. There was no contest, and generations of high school English students are the poorer for it. 

Only kidding, of course. It’s I who am the richer for it. And seldom a day goes by that I don’t realize it.

Winter Sight

Winter Sight

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As seasons pass, dimensions change and distances shrink. The greenery that hemmed us in only last month has thinned and drooped. Leaves have shriveled and blown away. What was once a screen is now an open book.

We hear about winter light, the low-slanting sun, but not as much about winter sight.

My woods walks lately reveal shiny new objects: small metal discs hammered into tree bark. Some trees have been tagged recently because the metal gleams and the discs swing freely on their nails. The older discs have dimmed and dulled; some you can hardly see because they have been swallowed up by bark. The trees have grown around them. Eventually those markers will seem little more than a metal eye.

While these older markers have been there all along, I saw them as if for the first time over the weekend. It was the winter landscape that drew my eyes to them, the same bare expanse that lets us glimpse a hidden stream or the outline of a hill, once shrouded in green. It is winter sight.

Slouching Toward Improvement

Slouching Toward Improvement

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I have a long career in slouching: sliding down into the comfy cushions of the new couch, propping myself up with pillows in the overstuffed chair and, before these pieces of furniture were here, doing whatever I could to make horizontal whatever vertical piece of furniture I inhabited. 

Maybe it comes from having long legs and needing a place to put them. Or maybe from spending way too much time on my posterior. Whatever it is, I’m vowing to change. 

The reason: I’ve come to realize something I knew all along but which my forgiving back has let me ignore: that young slouchers may look all limber and cozy, but old slouchers look pained. 

I’m sitting up straighter, aided by a fine office chair that encourages good posture. When I’m not there I’m either standing (as I am now) or putting pillows behind my back to keep myself upright. 

It will take a while, this shift in posture. But I’m … slouching toward improvement. 

Christ the King

Christ the King

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Today is the feast day of Christ the King, the last Sunday of the liturgical year. But for me, Christ the King will always be, first and foremost, a school — “CKS,” my earliest alma mater, the place where I learned to read and write, where I got my first crushes on boys, where I arrived most days with a knot in my stomach. 

It was not a feel-good place; most parochial schools were not in those days. It was a bar of Ivory soap and a rough towel, just the basics. There were no counselors, no social workers. If the nuns were unhappy with you, they weren’t above grabbing you by the arm and giving it a firm squeeze.

I remember the scent of wet rubber boots in the cloak room on a rainy day, the smell of vomit and of the detergent used to clean it (I wasn’t the only one who arrived at school with a knot in my stomach). I remember chalk dust and the way the nuns would tuck their arms up their voluminous sleeves, the clicking of the rosary beads they wore clipped to the side of their habits.

A few years ago, when I was visiting Lexington, I went back to Christ the King, strode through the halls, peeked into the classrooms, wandered through the lunchroom, which was where I tried out for cheerleader in seventh grade. “Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar, All for Christ the King, stand up and holler.” 

Eight years is a long time to spend in a place, especially when those years are your sixth through 13th. Those years throw long shadows; I walk in them still.