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
