In the time of the two-headed god

After the storm

Bringing in the tree

We are taking down the Christmas tree today; packing away the ornaments we have made and collected over nearly four decades. It is time to take out the tree that we cut and brought in during near blizzard conditions.  We will deck it with strings of cranberries and hang a suet block on it to tempt the downy woodpeckers, chickadees, and the shy whisky jays who just this year have begun venturing from the fir trees and into the yard, lured by seeded suet hung in the small birch and apple trees.  I have taken the Christmas cards that we received down from the mantel, made note of the friends who sent them, and packed them away to be turned into gift tags and other crafts for next year. 

Beyond the windows, the sky is low and gray, the wind out of the southwest, promising another storm adding inches to the smooth blanket of white spread across our piece of the world.  Fifty-four inches of snow have fallen thus far this year, according to my husband who carefully measures and records each accumulation, and though much of it melted away earlier in the season, the nearly two feet that are on the ground make for difficult travel without snowshoes, skis or good snow tires.  

Dog in snow

The pace of life slows, and is marked by bringing in sled loads of wood every couple days to keep the fire burning and checking the weather sources so we can plan our trips to town around the storms.  The dogs hunker down, content with a mad dash around the snow-covered, subzero backyard before bounding back inside to stretch beside the hearth or curl up on the bed buried in fleeces.  Life slows.   It is a time of common chores and limited activities, and a time of reflection: looking ahead and looking back.

Janus, the two-headed Roman god, appropriately provides the inspiration for January, ushering out the old, welcoming in the new.  We look back on that which the past year has brought us, and look forward, sometimes foolishly, to what the next year will bring.  When I was young, I was sure that such things were within my control. All it took was a simple resolution and good things would come to past.  The years have taught me that although well intentioned, such thinking is not true. Life is bumpy, messy, and the best made resolutions often come to naught. And so we bid a relieved goodbye to the passing year which has been filled with trials and triumphs, joy and sorrow, success and failure, and we move forward, cautiously optimistic of success and braced for disappointment.

My mom on Christmas

This past year has been difficult, full of change and realization. My mother, who lives right next door to us, has struggled increasingly with the challenges that aging brings.  Her memory has faltered and time has become elusive and capricious.  Five minutes, five days, five years are all the same to her. Names of old friends and loved ones slip away without warning and the impact affects those who love her most and are closest to her.  Her physical stamina wanes with each day, and she naps more often, cares little for the knitting and other activities that once filled her hours. Cumulatively, she is alternately sad and enraged.  Watching her struggle makes us mindful of our own vulnerability to aging, and we rush about our own daily tasks with new determination to somehow hold off the inevitable advance of days, while knowing that somehow, no matter our commitment, we too will face the abandonment of things we love simply because of the frailty of being human.

But all is not lost as this beginning of yet another year brings joy and planning for the future, too.   The snow buntings have arrived, and every morning a breakfast club of about thirty of these small birds gathers in out driveway to feast on the seed we toss out for them.  Cornell University’s ornithology lab advises that these are birds of the High Arctic and snowy fields. I guess on both counts we near qualify.   Mostly white with hints of gingery buff and grey, these little birds are often called snowflakes because a flock of them seem to drop from the sky when they settle to eat or gather grit from the sand the town puts on the road to counter the icing that inevitably occurs. 

The breakfast club

Before the snow buries the dried heads of weeds, the birds fling themselves against the stalk to knock down the seeds, and then burrow into the snow to find their fallen food.  We spend hours watching them, and over the years, they have become so used to our feeding them that if Bruce does not get out early enough in the morning, they light in the popples across the road and raise a cacophonous clatter, quieting only when they see the garage door rise.  We’ve been told that their coming within a dozen feet of the house is unusual as they are shy birds, and they are easily spooked if we pass too close to the windows while they are feeding.  They rise together in one smooth spiral and wing back to the popples where they sit and complain until they are sure it is safe to return. We spend hours watching them.

The day that the mailman brings the first seed catalogs is a day of rejoicing, a sure promise that as the days grow longer and the cold grows stronger, spring too inches its way into our daily lives. Years ago, a guaranteed Christmas present was a new box of colored pencils and a pad of graph paper so I could plan out the summer garden.  Recently we’ve become more efficient, using large sheets of graph paper to plan, and saving the plans from one year to another so we can rotate various vegetables through the garden.

Because we grew for the farmers’ market for several years, we get a several dozen seed catalogs, but we are picky about where we get our seeds. They must be organic and non-GMO, both because we aren’t convinced that modifying what we eat does not impact our health and in honor of Jim Gerritsen of Wood Prairie Farm in Bridgewater who championed the GMO fight against Monsanto.  We’re blessed to have one of the best, Fedco Seeds, here in Maine, but we also buy from High Mowing Seeds in Vermont, Southern Exposure Seed, Seedsavers, and Richter’s out of Ontario, Canada.  This year, daughter Kasey sent a link to a list of heirloom seed companies (http://www.off-grid.info/food-independence/heirloom-seed-suppliers.html) that I will peruse too. 

We like these old fashioned varieties because they remind us of the food we ate as children and usually have better flavor.  I can spend hours pouring over colored photos of emerald broccoli, ruby tomatoes, golden corn, and a wealth of others. We grow much of the food we eat year round, organically, and want to make sure we get great yield and great flavor.  The efforts are never disappointing, and it’s a wonderful way to spend a day like today.

Outside the skies are low and gray, and a large squall that dropped another half inch of snow has gone past, heading east to New Brunswick.  Crown of Maine Weather, which we often turn to for accurate forecasts, shows that tonight into tomorrow may be rough with more heavy snow, so we bring in a bit more firewood and plan a hearty supper.  There is bread in the machine, and homemade beef pot pie on the menu.  While this sounds difficult, it’s really quite easy and is so soul-satisfying that everyone should try their hand at it.  Best of all, we’re using leftovers from Christmas dinner to put it all together.

Beef Pot Pie

One 9-inch pie crust

1 c. turnip, cooked and in chunks

1 c. cubed potatoes, cooked

1/2 cup frozen peas

I c. carrots, sliced and cooked

1 stalk celery, minced

1 medium onion, minced

2 cloves garlic, minced

6 Tbls. butter or beef drippings

6 Tbls. flour

2 c. burgundy wine

2 c. brown beef stock

Leftover beef gravy if you have it

3 strips good bacon, chopped in pieces

2-3 lbs beef, in chunks

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large pot over medium high heat, sauté the bacon pieces, stirring often, until crisp to render fat.  Remove from pot and set aside.  Brown beef chunks if necessary, then remove and set aside.  If you have leftover beef roast, you do not have to brown the beef. 

Sauté celery, onion and garlic in bacon fat for 2 to 3 minutes or until just tender.

Add butter to pot and melt, then mix in flour to create a roux. Add in burgundy and then the brown stock, and whisk to blend well, and stir until it comes to a boil.  Reduce heat.  If you have leftover gravy, add it now, and return sauce to a gentle boil. Cook until it thickens a bit more and then remove pot from heat. Stir in beef chunks and then turnip, potatoes, carrots, and peas. Stir to mix Adjust seasonings and pour into a large heavy casserole (10-inch diameter by at least 3 inches high.

Cut vents in the pie crust and lay on top of beef/vegetable/gravy mix.   Place in hot oven and cook until crust is golden brown – about 45 minutes.

Best served with warm crusty bread to mop up the gravy.

This dish is somewhat thrown together, so take latitude with both the ingredients and the preparation, but don’t by-pass the beef pot pies of childhood simply because the preparation looks complex.  I have known some to use canned gravy and frozen veggies to throw this together and the results have been wonderful.

Beyond the window, a few flakes are falling, and the western sky is low and dark. Bruce has laid the fire and the dogs doze in their chairs, paws twitching in their dreams.  The house smells of beef and gravy and yeasty bread.  We are prepared for whatever this next storm brings, but we think of the linesmen still out in the cold, racing to get power back to homes that have been dark now for as much as a week.   We offer a silent prayer to the storm gods and hope that all get home before the gale begins, and as we inch toward the New Year and new possibilities, we wish you all the happiest of dreams and hope that all your dreams come true.

For me?

Did I hear sleigh bells?

.

 

Back woods tree

Darkness and Light

Presque Isle Historical Society's Molly the Trolley in holiday finery

These northern reaches where we have chosen to live are breathtakingly beautiful and heartbreakingly hard.  The population here is sparse and aging. Employment is scarce, and what is here is hard, grueling work in farming or timber. Young people flee early for climes that are warmer and offer greater opportunities, and those who do not are, for the most part, bound to this place by birth and duty, habit and happenstance, and we hunker down, bracing ourselves for snow and cold, and longing for spring.  We are blessed to be here by choice, loving the capricious of weather, adjusting our routines to snowstorms and temperatures that routinely plunge well below zero.  Our days are marked by work and responsibility: wood to split, walkways and roofs to be shoveled, elderly neighbors to check on. It is a hard place to live, but it builds in us a resilience and resolve that carries us through. 

The holidays are often hard, as they are for so many others, and filled with memories, both good and bad, and Rockwellian expectations: families gathered joyously together, children waiting hopefully for Santa, the peace of an evening Christmas service.  Most of the children who came through our house as they grew are far from here, and we no longer hear their laughter regularly.  More years than not, I move past Thanksgiving and into December filled with apprehension, a habit born of years when, whether by circumstance or choice, I found myself spending Christmas in a manner far different than what I had hoped. 

But holidays are what you make them.  Over the nearly four decades that we have been married, Bruce and I have built our own traditions: a fresh tree, hundreds of dozens of Christmas cookies made and scores of breads baked frantically and furiously so that the whole house seems to wear a dusting of flour and smell of cinnamon and burnt sugar.  There are nighttime drives around a hushed and darkened village to see the Christmas lights, and gathering boughs for homemade wreaths during a furious snow storm, and there is the practice of always reaching out to someone less fortunate than we were, although some years it could be argued that we might well have been the ones needing help.  Kasey recalls me puling a five dollar bill from my wallet and giving it to a homeless person who needed it more than we did, although she remains convinced there was little more than five dollars in my wallet. We pulled names from the Giving Tree at the mall, and more than once, we set an extra plate at the table for someone whose Christmas plans had been thwarted. Over the years, as the number of children in and out of our house – permanently and in-transit – grew, the traditions did too. Our holidays were filled with laughter, friends, and children coming and going. 

But children grow and as they began their own lives and families, the holidays changed.  The tree became smaller, the clan stopped gathering around our table and we began traveling to theirs.  Some things we continued – the fresh tree, the making of wreaths, a million Christmas cookies, goodie trays and loaves of homemade bread dropped off to friends and neighbors, but there were fewer new traditions added, until this year. 

Every year, Northern Maine Community College, where I teach, begins gathering children’s books in November. Cardboard donation boxes wrapped in Christmas papers pop up all over campus and soon the books begin appearing too, filling the boxes.  A thousand, two thousand, five thousand books – the number always varies – donated by students, faculty, local institutions and businesses.  The books are cleaned and sorted, then students, faculty and staff come together for the Light Parade, always held in Presque Isle the first Saturday in December, and give the books away to the children who brave the darkness and cold.

There are two things that are certain about this parade; it will be bitterly cold, and Main Street, Route 1 that runs north to south from Fort Kent, Maine to Key West, Florida, will be lined shoulder-to-shoulder with parade goers.  I don’t know how long they have held the Light Parade, ten maybe twelve years, but I do know that it is one of the favorite events of the year, and despite wind chill temperatures that often dip below zero, thousands of people from tiny tots to stately seniors turn out.  Local equipment companies, hospitals, banks, utility companies, potato farmers, and car dealers all enter floats bedecked with Christmas lights. The college always donates books, handed out along the route by dedicated volunteers who run alongside the NMCC float for the nearly two-mile route in frigid temperatures. Although the idea fascinated me, I had not volunteered.  This year was different.

For some time I had been contemplating eight-year-old grandson Silas who is nearing that dangerous age of cynicism about Christmas.  He’s an accomplished young man with a dry eight-year-old sense of humor and an intensity that can be intimidating.  He plays violin and loves it, has read all the Harry Potter books at least twice, is moving through the belts of To Shin Do, loves Lego robotics, and would rather be running and playing in the woods than doing most anything else – except reading.  He’s also an old soul given to quixotic changes of mood that range from totally self-absorbed to struggling to understand how the world can be such a terrible place.  Although he wants to believe in magic and possibilities, that faith is slipping just a tiny bit, pushed by friends and schoolmates.

At eight, it’s easy to be self-absorbed, and even easier to forget how magical this time of year can be, so I decided that if his parents agreed, Silas and I volunteer for the Light Parade together. It would be a big undertaking for an eight-year-old, walking two miles in the cold darkness, handing out books to strangers. Like his mother and me, Si is convinced that one doesn’t buy books, one adopts them.  Sharing his love of books seemed fitting.

A Light parade float (Mark Shaw photo)

In some ways, walking the two miles between North Street where the parade began and the University of Maine campus where it ended seemed daunting, so I worked out the details carefully.  We would walk for as far as we could and then could hop in and ride in the truck that would be towing the NMCC float.  Shawn Lahey, a kind of NMCC McGyver who is the guy to go to for events, parades, and logistics in general, worked with assuring me that we would make it work.

            The parade began at 6 p.m. so Silas and I headed off to Presque Isle at four, well before supper which is a necessity for a growing boy.  We grabbed a quick chicken sandwich and fries from McDonald’s, that in itself a treat, then headed to the huge North Street parking lot that was already filling up with floats and volunteers, who were arriving better than an hour before the parade.  The chug of generators and rumble of diesels filled the night. There was music and lights everywhere and people hustling about, adding last-minute touches to floats. Silas couldn’t take it in fast enough.  This was everything magical that Christmas should be.

There was a brisk wind out of the west and the temperatures were heading down with every passing minute.  Would we really be able to help with the parade or had I been wrong in my judgment?

“Are you a good driver?” Shawn suddenly asked me. The question startled me. I’d been staring around me, watching hundreds of volunteers appearing out of the darkness to help as we got closer to the start time. 

“I’m okay,” I said.

“Good. You’re driving the truck,” he said.  And that was that.

Some volunteers for the NMCC float had been unable to come, which meant responsibilities were shifting. I was being pressed into service so Shawn could walk the route, help hand out books and keep an eye on everyone.  Shawn gave me a few brief instructions and then hurried off to finish organizing other details.

 I can drive a truck as well as anybody. I regularly take our pickup truck on errands, but it had been a long time since I’d driven anything as big as a Ram 1500 – a one-ton, my husband assured me later – but I figured, what the heck, it’s like riding a bike.  I grabbed the bar over the driver’s door, stepped up onto the running board and hauled myself into the cab.  Silas climbed in on the passenger side.  A few minutes later, the Presque Isle police moved into place at the head of the parade and we were off. 

Some of those who volunteered this year. Silas and I on the far right front.  (Shawn Lahey photo)

I had a few minutes of panic, but as Silas settled in and began waving to people along the roadsides, I relaxed. There were crowds of people waving and smiling as we passed. Christmas carols filled the air, lights twinkled. Silas’s eyes were huge, taking in everything, and he couldn’t stop grinning.  We inched along at barely three miles an hour while the volunteers pushed the grocery carts and handed out books to delighted children. 

About half a mile into the route, Silas decided he wanted to help hand out books, so we signaled Jess, Shawn’s wife and nursing student at the college, and I brought the truck to a halt. Si slid out and scampered off with Jess.  I kept an eye on him via the mirrors and peering out the windows, expecting at any minute he would have enough and want to climb back into the warm truck. But he didn’t.

He walked the whole way to Gentile Hall, giving out books, talking to young and older children alike. I watched him as I drove, always keeping him in sight. Students and colleagues from the college – Jess, Sheldon, Bob, Anjie, Shawn, even the college president – kept a close eye on him, passing him off one to the other until at last we arrived at the University of Maine Presque Isle campus where the parade ended. Silas found me and together we went inside for cookies and cocoa.  Shawn, relieved of herding volunteers, took back the truck. 

We helped with the cleanup – taking the few leftover books and the empty cardboard boxes back to the NMCC campus – and then we were dropped off at the car in the North Street lot and we headed home.

“Did you have fun?” I asked Si as we walked through the now nearly empty lot.  His head was nodding, eyes drooping.

“Yup,” he said, “but I could eat a real supper, and I really need something cold to drink.” It was after eight o’clock, and the half bottle of milk from McDonald’s wasn’t quite enough.  I promised I’d get him milk and supper at the grocery in Caribou, ten miles away.

We drove through the darkness, headlights picking up the remnants of snow along the side of the road, the Big Dipper glinting in the dark sky.  By the time we got to Caribou, Silas was nearly asleep, so I was in and out of the grocery in record time, but when I returned to the car, he was sound asleep.  I drove him home in near silence, a Celtic show softly playing on the radio. It had been a wonderful evening spent together and giving to others, a good lesson to learn even at eight, a night that restored my faith in the power of magic and the joy of giving. 

There are some people who don’t understand why we live here, how we could give up so much.  While it’s true that northern Maine can be a tough place to live, it is also generous, and people find joy creating magic that enriches all our lives and brings us together as a community to share this special time of year.  We’ll be back next year. 

All is calm ...