Worth It

What a people-filled holiday season it's been, visiting with family from near and far. After the presents are opened, the leftovers consumed and the last dishes washed and put away, it's the people memories that linger longest. 

The gift that hit the mark, when you weren't sure it would. The hugs we finally don't feel guilty exchanging. The long conversations over breakfast, the long walks, too. 

At the beginning of every holiday season I experience a sort of inward groan as I look at the long list of to-dos.  But by this time every year I'm always glad I made the effort. Because behind all the cleaning and cooking, the getting and spending, there's just one motive: to share the season with the ones I love. 

City Walks

We still have a few days, but New Year's resolutions are beginning to coalesce. Or at least one of them is. 

Yesterday, I drove Celia and Matt into D.C. to save them a Metro trip. I was surprised by how excited I was to see the city spread out  beyond the river, first the Washington Monument swinging into focus and, a second or two later, the Capitol behind it. 

It was chilly enough to feel like winter but without the biting cold of recent days. Sidewalks were clogged with holiday visitors. There was a celebratory feeling in the air. 

I found a convenient spot to pull over and drop them off, and even more remarkably, was able to make a (perhaps illegal) U-turn at 12th to head home. But I couldn't help looking for parking places on Constitution on the return trip. Wouldn't it be nice to walk in the city instead of the suburbs? 

I didn't do it yesterday, but a new year beckons. It's only a matter of time. 

Stars in the Darkness

 

"To take a walk at night in a city that has settled into silence and a darkness that has become far too rare is to return to something precious, something lost for so long you've forgotten to miss it."

--- Margaret Renkl, Graceland, at Last

Thus does Renkl describe the days after tornadoes ripped through Nashville in March 2020, bringing the city, already Covid-bound, to its knees.

Or did it? It was a lovely, early spring that year, as it was here, gentle and rainy, and neighborliness was flourishing along with the flowers. People lingered outside because there was only darkness to go home to — and they could look up and see the stars.

But then the power company arrived, and life was back to normal. It was something to celebrate, but I picked up on a gentle melancholy in Renkl's description. There is something to be said for stepping out of the routine, as long as you don't step too far. Because once the lights came on ... the stars went out.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Preserving the Cheer

I just watered the Christmas tree, able to reach the stand now that gifts are opened. At this point a few needles are beginning to litter the red felt skirt, but the tree has at least another week to grace the living room.

When I worked full-time, the week between Christmas and New Years Day was all about relaxation. It still is, but now the focus is more on preserving the holiday spirit as long as possible — not always easy in a December 25th-centric world.

So we watched "Elf" last night and are still nibbling on sugared star and candy-cane cookies. The egg nog is flowing freely and stockings (mostly empty) hang from the mantel.

It's not December 20th ... but it's not January 2nd, either.

(A poinsettia catches the morning light.)

Merry Christmas!

Once again I'll re-run this blog post, which I wrote eleven years ago. Merry Christmas!

12/24/11

Our old house has seen better days. The siding is dented, the walkway is cracked, the yard is muddy and tracked with Copper's paw prints. Inside is one of the fullest and most aromatic trees we've ever chopped down. Cards line the mantel, the fridge is so full it takes ten minutes to find the cream cheese. Which is to say we are as ready as we will ever be. The family is gathering. I need to make one more trip to the grocery store.

This morning I thought about a scene from one of my favorite Christmas movies, one I hope we'll have time to watch in the next few days. In "It's a Wonderful Life," Jimmy Stewart has just learned he faces bank fraud and prison, and as he comes home beside himself with worry, he grabs the knob of the banister in his old house — and it comes off in his hand. He is exasperated at this; it seems to represent his failures and shortcomings.

By the end of the movie, after he's been visited by an angel, after his family and friends have rallied around him in an unprecedented way, after he's had a chance to see what the world would have been like without him — he grabs the banister knob again. And once again, it comes off in his hand. But this time, he kisses it. The house is still cold and drafty and in need of repair. But it has been sanctified by friendship and love and solidarity.

Christmas doesn't take away our problems. But it counters them with joy. it reminds us to  appreciate the humble, familiar things that surround us every day, and to draw strength from the people we love. And surely there is a bit of the miraculous in that. 

Flash Freeze

At this hour the rain is still falling, not freezing, and there is even a softness to the air. But soon, perhaps within minutes, the winds will rise and the bomb cyclone will strike these parts.

The temperature will plummet, the rain will freeze, and at sunset we will be in the single digits. Roads and sidewalks will grow slick. The ground will harden. Nature will lose her diadem.

It's winter, so we expect ice and cold, but not this much, please. A light fluffy snow would be just fine. 

The Christmas Special

In preparation for family visiting since last week, I did something I seldom do around the holidays: got ahead of the game. Christmas cards are written and mailed. Cookies are baked. Gifts are purchased and (almost) wrapped. 

While there may be trips for last-minute items, for the most part I have a little more time than I usually have. I won't say I'm caught up, but holiday preparations are flowing along at a slightly more leisurely pace than they usually do. And that means I can linger at the breakfast table and work in a walk here and there. 

When I was young I remember Mom sighing this time of year, saying that if only she could finish all the buying/wrapping/baking, she'd have time to settle down and watch one of those Christmas specials on TV. I think what she was wishing for was time to savor what she had created — the ever-elusive pause before the chaos of Christmas Eve and Day. 

It's still dark outside, but so far I'm the only one awake. I'm about to stream a holiday movie. It's my Christmas special. 

Solstice Miracle

The low light was shining directly into my eyes during part of today's trail walk. But it's all part of the package on the shortest day of the year. 

For some reason now, as I write this post, a funny little glob of a rainbow has appeared. I don't recall seeing anything like it before: an ordinary sky except for one cloud bleeding yellow and orange light.  We've had no rain; the sun is lower in the firmament. 

I'm sure there's some sort of scientific explanation. But I'm going to consider it a solstice miracle.

(P.S.on February 2, 2023: I just learned that my "solstice miracle" is called a sundog.)

Grandparents Rock!

New research finds that grandmothers may be one reason for the dominance of homo sapiens. Humans have alleles (alternative versions of a gene) that protect against late-onset Alzheimer's Disease and otherwise safeguard the functioning of  grandmothers and "other human elders who are involved in caregiving of the young." 

This study helps explain why women live on past menopause and bolsters the "grandmother hypothesis," which posits that it's in grandmothers' evolutionary interest to ensure that grandchildren survive to reproductive age.  

Scientists who study the evolutionary effect of various genetic mutations have noticed that these mutations were not present in Neanderthals and other early human lineages. 

All of which says, to me at least, that grandparents rock!

(My parents, who lived to see almost all their grandchildren graduate from high school.)

Alert and Predictable

Noticed on my walk this morning: signs reading "Be Alert and Predictable!" Not your typical path-sign wording, but understandable given the busyness of the Washington and Old Dominion Trail, where bicycles whiz by at 30 miles an hour. 

An unsuspecting pedestrian who strays from her lane might be mowed down by one of these speeding cyclists, so better to walk steady and stay to the right. 

The signs had me thinking, though, about predictability and alertness and how those two don't always go hand-in-hand. An alert human may in fact be less predictable, more prone to straying off the beaten path and into a tangle of undergrowth, lured there by the song of a bird or an angle of light.

The Christmas Position

I'm in what I've come to think of as my Christmas position. Unlike the warrior pose or downward dog, this position requires very little of the joints and tendons. It is, in fact, a posture of repose, of satiation. 

All that's required is that I plop down on the couch, facing north, a pile of  books beside me and (sometimes, like now) a laptop in my lap, and savor the Christmas tree, which is, as always, the most beautiful one we've ever had, the fullest and most aromatic. 

I'm not usually able to still and just be, but this time of year, when I'm in the Christmas position, that's all I want to do. 

Messiness and Joy

Today we celebrate the birthday of our aging canine, Copper. He's over 17 in human years but can still cavort in the yard, terrify the toddlers and pounce for treats. 

He's also a living, breathing lesson in patience, as he soils the carpet and gets stuck under chairs. But even addled and voiceless (as opposed to the old days, when he barked all the time) Copper is still Copper: loyal, loving and feisty. 

It's hard to look at him and not see the future that awaits us all, but it's also hard to look at him and not see the fun he has always brought our family, from his chaotic arrival giving us a merry chase down the street to his victory laps now when he makes it in from outside and celebrates with a run around the house.

When I look at Copper, I see life, with all its messiness and all its joy. 

(Photos: Claire Capehart)

Every Minute Counts

It's a cold, rainy morning days away from the winter solstice. But last week I heard a radio announcer explain that, at least when it comes to sunsets, we're already bouncing back. 

I just checked a daylight chart for Virginia ... and it's true. Starting last week we held steady with a 4:18 sunset, and last night, for the first time since midsummer, we added a minute to the evening end of the day. 

This tiny gain is still offset by the ever-later sunrises (7:51 this morning), but this time of year, every minute counts.

Ten Years Later

Ten years ago I wrote a post that was strangely prescient,  a post about guns early the morning of the Sandy Hook shooting, before that tragedy had happened.

In the post, I told the story of a shopping expedition the night before and how it was difficult to find anyone to help me in the large sporting goods store — difficult until I wandered into the firearms department.

You can analyze it any way you will. You can pin it on our frontier mentality, on the myth of rugged individualism with which our nation has become entangled. You can bring politics in there too, although ten years ago we weren't as polarized as we are now. 

But no matter how you attempt to explain it, there are 20 six- and seven-year-olds who never went home that horrible day, who never grew up, graduated from high school and got their first jobs. Families shattered, lives upended. 

We've endured legions of school shootings and other massacres since then, including Uvalde, where almost as many children lost their lives as at Sandy Hook. Ten years later, the tears that have fallen could fill another ocean. But still we do nothing.

Concentration

The old map showed it, clear as day, a trail angling off to the north from a paved path I usually take out and back. So we explored it yesterday, on a cold, cloudy afternoon when the leafless trees held no secrets.

It looked like little more than a deer trail at first, but the logs flanking it gave it respectability. Before long there was a sign: Pine Branch Trail. Thinking it might be a distraction from the ultimate destination — a Nature Center — we ignored it and pressed north. We made it over a bridge, down a paved path, back into the woods on the Snakeden Trail, then crossed Glade and into the forest where we started. 

I'm speaking as if great distances were covered, and they were not. But new territory slows the walk, makes one concentrate on the subtleties. And concentration refreshes the mind. 

A Tide of Books

In a way, it's tidal. Or at least it should be. A rhythm of inflow and outflow. During the semester, books trickle into my office, barely noticeable at first, then building in strength and volume as the assignments mount. At the end of the semester, they're supposed to flow out.

As it stands now, books  have piled up on the floor and on my desktop. They're teetering on top of the filing cabinet and bedside table, threatening to tumble every time I open a drawer. 

These are textbooks, volumes I collected for my research paper (due today but submitted a few days ago — whew!) and other volumes I've checked out of the Georgetown library because ... well, they have just about everything the public library does not.

This year's secret weapon in book removal: the textbook rental plan. Some of these treasures are due back in days or I'll pay a penalty. Now, if only all the other books in my house were rentals, too.

Urban Campfire

It's been a while since I sat around a campfire, but I did last night ... in the middle of D.C. That it was part of a professional association meeting, that it was around a fire pit, that the occasional helicopter chugged overhead, didn't seem to matter.

We were outside, the food was terrific, and the darkness and the crackling wood invited, if not ghost stories, at least some tales of journalistic hijinks and derring-do.

When I returned last evening I kept smelling something familiar, something comforting. It was the aroma of wood smoke in my hair. 

Wreathed in Fog

A soft fog last night as I drove to a meeting. A fog that made the lighted trees and homes send halo-like rainbows into the gloom. 

Our house is finally among the decorated, with candles in the windows and lights along the roof and a big old wreath that I bought as a splurge because it smells so much nicer than the artificial one — and also because it was made by Bradley's mother. 

That would be Bradley from Whitetop Mountain, Virginia, the same fellow we bought from last year. He apologized that the trees cost more this December and said he would "work with us" on the price. I bought the wreath to up the total. Bradley and his family could use it, I imagine. 

And now the wreath and the lights are shaking their fists at the darkness. In less than two weeks, the days start growing longer. 

Malls of America

Darkened storefronts, sparse merchandise, even the busy Apple store was quiet yesterday at the mall. True, it was a rainy Tuesday more than two weeks away from the big day, but even a few years ago it would have been bustling. Not for the first time I ask myself ... where have all the people gone? 

They're in their homes, collecting Amazon deliveries. While in the sad cavernous halls poor souls wander, looking for candles or purses or calendars, strolling through clouds of perfume and the scent of cinnamon rolls, listening to yet another rendition of "I'll Be Home for Christmas.".

I've never been a mall lover, always held them responsible for the death of downtowns, but yesterday's trip made me feel sorry for them — and for us.

The Scent of Cold

The winter world is scrubbed clean, scoured by wind and weather to reveal pockmarked roads and blown-grass fields. It is silent, but for the drone of a distant leaf blower.

It carries with it a whiff of cold, not the metallic taste of snow but something earthier and more elemental. Perhaps it is the absence of scent — but I think not. It's more like the presence of an aroma I've known since I was a child. 

Inhaling it prompts a near-involuntary physical reactions, a tensing of the muscles. Yesterday as I walked, I worked to keep my shoulders from bunching up against the chill, concentrating instead on the beauty of the afternoon. 

It worked ... most of the time.

Swish Swash

The newest addition to my wardrobe is a pair of corduroy pants. I've been looking for some for years, and now that I have them, I'm remembering how warm they are ... and how they talk back to you.

Swish, swish, swash, they say, as I cruise down the hall to retrieve a book from my bedside table. Swash, swash, swish, they say, as I amble down the street. 

Unlike some of their confreres, these trousers work as well on long walks as they do in interminable writing sessions.  And unlike the tights and leggings I wear, these are presentable for running errands. 

There's gonna be a whole lotta swish-swashing going on. 

(This is large wale, mine is small.)

Farewell, Leftovers

For some, today might be TGIF. For others, only 22 more shopping days till Christmas. For me, it's the last day to eat Thanksgiving leftovers. Yesterday I eked one final turkey sandwich out of the bird, the day before that I ate the last cup of stuffing and final piece of pumpkin pie. 

Today it's down to the molded cranberry salad, which has been whittled from a large serving bowl to one a fraction of its size.

Before I'm drummed out of town on reckless eating charges, let me say that I've written a few food safety articles and know the drill. I keep hot foods hot and cold foods cold. I avoid cross-contamination at all costs, treating raw chicken prep areas as if they were hazmat zones. 

But I also like to get as much mileage as I can from any big meal I cook -- and last Thursday's was a doozy.  

(Apparently, I don't take many food pictures, either.)

Last-Minute Light

Yesterday was rainy and gray from start to almost finish. At 3 p.m. it was dark enough that I had to check the clock to be sure it wasn't 5. 

But only minutes from sunset, the clouds blew away and left a window for the light. It slanted in clear and bright and contained, more like the illumination from a half-shaded window than one thrown off by our nearest star. 

I've seen this phenomenon before, this last-minute light. Some days it feels like a reprieve, other days a cheat. But it's hard to complain when it leaves an afterglow like this.