This morning dawned bright and sunny, with sunbeams bouncing off all the snow at a myriad angles - no need for lights on in the house yet. Everything in the yard is wearing a 12-inch, or higher, cap of snow, like the chimes in my drawing. (Wish I had a camera. My drawing doesn't do the chimes justice.)
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Don't know if you remember my neighbor, Mike, whom I sometimes refer to as the "Butcher (of trees) from Pittsburgh." Well, I may have to reconsider my unkindness toward him. Several times during the storm yesterday and last evening, Mike got out his brand-new snow blower and cleared the alley between our properties. Granted, he did it because he has to go to work and didn't want to be plowed in by the borough plows, as we usually are each winter, but he blew snow away from where I pull out into the alley, as well. Thank you, Mike. (Perhaps I'll make a fruitcake for him. But, you might be thinking - especially if you're from the US - isn't that worse than calling him the Butcher from Pittsburgh? Okay, okay...I'll make snickerdoodles.)
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Watched two crows frolicking in the snow on the carport roof earlier this morning. They were so comical, flinging snow about with their bills, almost as if having a snowball fight. Then they took turns, while one stood watch, rolling in the fluffy stuff like I've seen kids and dogs do, their birdy feet flailing in the air. Their snow-fun was arrested when a Cooper's hawk flew over, but then the chase-the-hawk fun began. Yelling for their compatriots to join them, the two snow-flingers lit out after the Cooper's with determination and great speed. That poor hawk had to dodge seven or eight crows around the neighborhood, until he lighted in one of the tall larches down the alley and hunkered down to wait them out.
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The Kids were over last night. We had turkey-brown rice soup (not so adventurous after all, Plutarch) then sorted out Christmas decorations. In the midst of giving over to Kareema all the decorations I'd collected and used over the forty years I've been "doing" Christmas, I was overcome with a slight melancholy, very slight. (Perhaps melancholy is too strong.) I realized that I was passing the baton, so to speak, to the next generation, because she will be doing Christmas from now on. I mentioned this to Kareema as I passed to her some of the old homemade decorations we've always used.
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She said she understood.
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"You're not the Christmas-mommy, anymore," she said.
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I am now the Matriarch, with all the weightiness that title carries with it, but no longer the focus of family holiday activities.
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I kept a few items that have deep sentimental value to me, such as the long rubber Chinese-style dragon and the stuffed California-raisin guy. Most important were the pieces she, my brother Don and I made of salt-dough almost 37 years ago, the year after my mother died and Don (17 at the time, same age as grandson Donovan is now) came to live with me in California. If I ever get a tree again, those few pieces will decorate it, but I'm not buying any new decorations.
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Sigh...oh, the things the snow brings.
(c) 2009 Martha McLemore
6 comments:
Your words touched a cord, Martha. I, too, am the matriarch, and passed my large tree and its decorations to my son last year, this year decorating just with two small trees and greenery here and there. The house still has the "feel" of Christmas, and I am only a bit nostalgic that I'm not preparing food for 15-20! (sigh)
May the peace and content that is the spirit of Christmas be with you and yours the whole year through!
Wonderful story about the crows I trust you are familiar with the book "The Mind of the Raven".
Be careful not to read too much into the cleared-street episode. Guy's got a snow blower; how many times does he get to use it a year? Chances are when there's an opportunity he'll take it to extremes. It's a guy sort of thing. My fingers hovered over the keyboard at the first mention of fruitcake but I sighed with relief a couple of lines later. You don't want to be getting into other guy-sort-of-things (v. clumsy, I fear). A thought arrives: the first part of the film "The Deerhunter", far more powerful than all that Russian Roulette muckments at the end. I've been through one or two of those towns; this Pittsburgher he couldn't be from some place like Newcastle, could he? If so don't let him take you dancing to the Yugoslav Club.
Hello, Bev:
Thank you for your kind holiday wishes. I wish the same for you and your family.
ArtSparker:
I have a few books about crows and ravens, but not that one. I'll look for it on line.
Crows are such clowns, which is one of the reasons I like them so.
:)
BB: I don't understand the animosity so many people feel toward fruitcakes. The only bad on I've had was one I overbaked and it was dry as sawdust.
Of course Mike just wanted to play with his new toy, but I benefitted from it, too.
I think Mike and his family lived within the city limits. Do you suppose I'd be risking life or limb to ask him? We used to joke, when they first moved here, that they were in the witness protection program. They dressed like goodfellas. (I should talk! I dress like a bum most of the time.)
:)
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