Entirely out of keeping with the season, I’m thinking of spring. Save for houseplants, the Vermont world is entirely without a single leaf of tender green leaf — in utter hibernation — but the days are lengthening.
Groundhog’s Day holds no suspense here — that garden-eater always turns around and burrows back down for more winter. In the meantime, a spring haiku.
The spring breeze.
Being pulled by a cow
To the Zenkoji temple.
— Issa
Dirty, grubby, road-salt-stained: that’s my midwinter boots.
Walking down Montpelier’s Main Street, on a whim I stop into Delish, the candy store. Not so long ago, my younger daughter eyed their door each time we walked by. Yesterday afternoon, on my way to meet someone for an interview at Capitol Grounds, I impulsively walked in, bought a small white paper bag of chocolate-covered gummy bears, and slid it in my backpack to take home to her.
I’ve been mothering — a mother — for twenty-one years now. Not a single day — and hardly an hour, it seems — has passed when I haven’t been actively or mentally engaged in parenting.
Now, my older daughter is all grown up, busily writing her own narrative about work and college and a complex network of friends. In our house, it feels like all of us are on precipices — of turning 21, of adolescence heading toward young adulthood, and myself. Even the cats are keeping busy. Midwinter? Oh yes.
Happy final day of January, 2020.
Ooooo, midwinter.
After work, while my daughter memorizes French for an exam, I head out for a walk. A slight snow is falling, just a few lazy flakes as if nothing much is going to happen, just that little bit of snow. It’s my most very favorite snow, just lovely, and in the cone of streetlight I have that enchanting Narnia feeling — as if it’s just me and the lamppost and that snow, and maybe the mysterious White Witch might silently appear. In that twirling-down-slowly snow, Turkish delight might still be an untasted promise in my life, rather than the too-sweet candy I remember.
That’s it, from my end of the world. I’ve been “dividing my time” between desk and couch, finishing up a manuscript. When I submit it Friday, I’m planning to ski out the back door — snow willing — and paint my daughter’s room.
Then, on to the next month.
But land is land, and it’s safer than the stocks and bonds of Wall Street swindlers.
― Long Day’s Journey into Night
Midwinter. Need I say more?
I remember a Vermont winter when I was in my twenties where January was sub-sub-zero. 25 below zero, in what seemed like a cold snap that wouldn’t snap.
Not so, this year. Rain, slush, ice. Some sparkling skiing days.
The cats drape on the couches, dreaming of tuna perhaps, their little furry faces rubbing our hands. Midwinter is that particularly good place for work — or at least the kind of work I do, much of it at a laptop and not re-roofing a house. My daughters and I talk about swimming, of wandering in wet sand along the ocean, of ice cream cones (so dull I am, preferring vanilla), but in January that’s all imaginary…. for the moment. In a warm, well-lighted house, that’s just fine.
Let’s pull some blueberries from the freezer and make muffins — and another little silver pot of espresso, too.
So much money made
by clever temple priests
using peonies
— Issa
In a handful of days, my oldest daughter will be twenty-one. Wow, that’s a birthday.
When she turned six and I marveled over that, another mother told me all birthdays are big. Six was big, and so was seven, and so on. But 21? That’s an age when her heart’s been broken, more than once, an age when she’s fully left adolescence and crossed over into the realm of adulthood.
The year she turned six, her best girlfriend from down the road walked over wearing a tutu. Snow was falling.
When she turned seven, my friend had made her a piñata with purple and silver sparkles. When the pretty thing broke apart, her baby sister cried.
Twenty-one: now I keep up with the Impeachment hearings to hold up my end of our conversation. Twenty-one: so glad to have you here.
No matter who lives, who dies, the seasons never rest.
Creatures take their turns, and the year turns and turns.
David Budbill, Judevine
Early evening, I pull on my winter coat and hat and walk down the hill and through the neighborhood. Snow falls so heavily my eyes blink as snowflakes accumulate on my lashes.
I walk from streetlight to streetlight, house lights muted through curtains of falling white. In one dark road bend, I hear a man’s smoker-raspy cough: that’s all for the sound of humanity. In those side streets, not even a car or a pickup with a plow passes me.
The swirling storm knocks wind chimes. Likely, the stillness brings those sounds to me, their tiny chimes usually muted beneath the humdrumness of folks going about their daily lives. But on this walk, it’s just snow and the variation of darkness and streetlight and the jangling chimes like an invisible rope tugging me along. Not even the dog walkers are out.
The best way out is always through.
―
Stony Soil Vermont 