For days, the forecast has trumpeted news of impending snow this weekend; still, sunlight floods into our kitchen this morning. Sure, it’s a few degrees above zero, nothing to sneeze at, but the icicles gleam, skinny stalactites, proof of this week’s warming. A crimson cardinal perches on the feeder.
We are in deep midwinter, the annual mark of collective cabin fever, of generalized bitching, of snow pile comparisons and, in precise detail, what is now hidden from view. It’s the season for skiing, for chocolate, for mooning over seed catalogs.
In my own cancer world, I mark the merge of days and nights in my own way, writing my thousand words a day (sometimes more, sometimes not at all), as my own shepherd’s crook to right my crooked self. In the afternoons, spent, I read and read, returning to that great pleasure of my youth. Around me, my family shifts and jostles, their own lives crammed full with their living, with jobs and classes and loves or longed-for loves. My daughters call me with stories about a grapefruit drink that I vow to drink this July and August, over smashed ice, my bare feet on the grass or maybe a sandy shore of Lake Champlain. It’s the time of year when we long for rain drops on our cheeks and clotting in our eyelashes. But February rain holds ice and sleet, not the green wash of spring, the scent of soaked earth, the tang of emerging garlic.
Every day, I talk with my old father in New Mexico. He asks, Are you sticking to the plan?
I am, I assure him, holding to the course of what the medical realm prescribes, meds and applesauce and so much water — but the here’s the refreshing, liberating, unbelievable thing: there’s no bones with anyone at all in the cancer world that this is a hard dirty blow. So seize this opportunity, turn your life inside out, remake it anew. Make no excuses. Take.
Driving, again driving in the dark to Dartmouth, the full moon hung over our shoulders the entire journey, a creamy light, brilliant on new snow, unsurpassable.
And here’s a poem from Ginger Andrews I used to read in my shut-in mothering-toddler days….
The Cure
Lying around all day
with some strange new deep blue
weekend funk, I’m not really asleep
when my sister calls
to say she’s just hung up
from talking with Aunt Bertha
who is 89 and ill but managing
to take care of Uncle Frank
who is completely bed ridden.
Aunt Bert says
it’s snowing there in Arkansas,
on Catfish Lane, and she hasn’t been
able to walk out to their mailbox.
She’s been suffering
from a bad case of the mulleygrubs.
The cure for the mulleygrubs,
she tells my sister,
is to get up and bake a cake.
If that doesn’t do it, put on a red dress.
Stony Soil Vermont 
Seems like your writing is different this week. More vibrant. More detailed. More beautiful. More you. I hope th
I appreciate this note….. thank you!
I love the poem!
We’re all suffering from the mulleygrubs, in one degree or another, and I’m pretty tired of hearing about the impending storm on the news…like, it’s February, it’s supposed to snow, isn’t it? Gosh, I am getting cranky.
Must need a new book.
Cabin fever…. Another Vermont season.
Oh yes, it”s a chapter in the cook book I’m writing!
That’s a book I’ll have to read!!!
Thanks! I wish I could stop changing it!!!!
The sun was like a valentine gift yesterday and today and as the preparations
for more snow and whatever are underway everywhere I pitch in and
smile to be part of the cycle of my son’s family life. This poem was perfect
for today thank you. We always need a humorous twist to bring us back to here
and now.
May your treatments deliver you to the months in spring and early summer when
planting gardens takes precedent and you sigh a sigh of relief.
Take care and cheers to you and your close family.
Always nice to hear from you. And the brighter February sun is so welcome! ☀️🌞
or a red sweater, slightly frayed. Love all of this, and thank goddess for the moon illuminating the night. Glad it was there for your long drive.
💛
Thank you for sharing your downs and ups and amazingly courageous heart in general on this pot holed journey. You are awesome….<3
Thank you!!!
‘turn your life inside out’. That could be an admonition and guiding instruction to all of us. Thank you. A good reminder.
🩵
Love this…especially the sound of “mulleygrubs”!
💚
😊❤️
Here on the southcoast of MA the snow has turned to freezing rain to rain. The cat has settled herself on a large camera lens bag well out of reach and gone to sleep. She’ll most likely awake soon and want lunch. The news from the world is often grim but the world outside remains filled with moments of intense beauty. I am often reminded of Strider’s comment that was something like : “for as long as one beautiful thing remains my life will not have been in vain.” (Looking for a one line quote in Tolkien’s trilogy is impossible.)
I am wondering whether you have read Donald Hall’s recent book, A Carnival of Losses. It is a deeply human volume. funny, full of pathos, beautifully written, and somehow hopeful.
You are often in my thoughts. I find myself looking forward to your posts, to your vast vulnerability and writerly writing.
Best,
Michael
Appreciate this southerly update! I’m a great fan of Donald Hall and always happy to know another of his admirers. I haven’t read A Carnival of Losses but I’ll check it out. Thank you for the suggestion. Good luck with your end of this storm.