Monthly Archives: December 2021

Snow and pastels.

family, travel, winter, ,

As I was making my last sweep through the house to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything, my attention was caught by movement outside the kitchen windows, and I delayed my departure five minutes because of birds: doves, finches, a dozen juncos, a titmouse, a chickadee, a pair of Nutall’s woodpeckers — many hanging off the suet feeders to fortify them against the freezing weather coming through.

And this guy, whom I stared at for as long as he perched there, not recognizing him, as he was the biggest, fattest robin I have ever seen.

Then, I loaded myself in the car and off I drove, north to daughter “Pippin’s.’ The first hours were through winter-greened and gentled landscapes.

But now I am in the mountain forest.

I forgot to pack my laptop, so this post may come out a bit strange. When I arrived Pippin was just putting bread dough to rise next to the woodstove, and cats Fred and Duncan were not feeling the winter at all.

Scout helped me unload my car, and we admired icicles together.

This morning I woke in a cozy room with this view out my window:

Dear Readers who have kept me company here during the past year, or who only recently stopped by, I hope that in 2022 you also find comfort and peace. My advice: Try not to stand under large melting icicles.

Happy New Year!

Let the infants leap up.

church, Nativity, ,

Today we remember The Holy Innocents, the 14,000 infants slain by King Herod in Bethlehem after Christ’s birth, thus becoming the first martyrs for Christ; and all who died as martyrs for the glory of God by hunger, thirst, freezing, and the sword. This summary of the events is helpful:

The Magi in the East beheld a new star in the heavens, foretelling the Nativity of the King of the Jews. They journeyed immediately to Jerusalem to worship the Child, and the star showed them the way. Having worshiped the divine Infant, they did not return to Jerusalem to Herod, as he had ordered them, but being warned by God in a dream, they went back to their country by another way. Herod finally realized that his scheme to find the Child would not be successful, and he ordered that all the male children two years old and younger at Bethlehem and its surroundings be killed. He thought that the divine Infant, Whom he considered a rival, would be among the dead children. (From Orthodox Wiki)

There is also a reference to Rachel in the Gospel passage telling of the slaughter, a quote from the Prophet Jeremiah:

A voice was heard in Ramah,
Lamentation, weeping, and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children,
Refusing to be comforted,
Because they are no more.

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea,
the dominion of the Jews was abolished.
Let the infants slaughtered for Christ leap up,
and let Judea lament;
for a voice was heard in Rama:
Rachel, weeping, bewaileth her children,
as it is written,
for the all-iniquitous Herod
in slaying the babes fulfilled the Scriptures,
filling Judea with innocent blood
and staining the earth red with their blood,
but the Church of the nations
is mystically purified thereby
and is arrayed in beauty.
The Truth is come!
God Who hath been born of the Virgin
hath appeared to those who sit in shadow,
that He may save us all.
-Hymn for the feast

Some poems are heavy and longing.

poetry, travel, , , , ,
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Same week, some years ago…

This morning I had a date to iron altar cloths at church. If it hadn’t been for that, I think I might have read poems all day. Bright and early I found myself listening hungrily to The Daily Poem podcast, which I sometimes ignore for weeks at a time. Today, by contrast, its offerings seemed like my necessary food, cultivating hope and peace in my heart the way bodily exercise generates endorphins for the brain and psyche.

Not all poems are tasty, but even the bitter ones supply certain kinds of trace elements, hints and explorations of the worlds that lie underneath the clamoring and crowded surfaces where we walk every day. I like very much the engagement with the poets themselves, people who often do appreciate the mystery of things, but I usually avoid long poems. These very short poem podcasts help me to focus and enjoy works I might not normally read, even some longer poems; because it’s all auditory, and I can’t see how long of a poem or portion will be read, and be put off by it.

Today one of the podcast hosts, Heidi White, talked about the poem “Velvet Shoes,” by Elinor Wylie. She told us about her own longing, two days after Christmas, for peace and quiet, after the busyness of the holiday, and how this poem conveys the heaviness of the snow, and how that heaviness creates silence and a kind of weighty peace, “…the feeling you get going into the nave of a great cathedral.”

VELVET SHOES

Let us walk in the white snow
    In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
    At a tranquil pace,
    Under veils of white lace.

I shall go shod in silk,
    And you in wool,
White as white cow’s milk,
    More beautiful
    Than the breast of a gull.

We shall walk through the still town
    In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
    Upon silver fleece,
    Upon softer than these.

We shall walk in velvet shoes:
    Wherever we go
Silence will fall like dews
    On white silence below.
    We shall walk in the snow.

-Elinor Wylie, 1885-1928

The longing expressed in the few stanzas is impressive. We do start to wonder if the narrator will break out of the future tense and make it the present. Personally, I think that if she were truly hopeful of walking in the whiteness, she would do the activity first, and then write about it. Unless it is a sort of love letter, to someone not present at the moment. It seems to be as much about longing — and maybe purity? — as it is about snow.

Winter at Pippin’s place.
The Daily Poem hosts talked to me about several other poems as I was getting dressed, by W.H. Auden, Edward Thomas, George Santayana and Mary Oliver. Of course, many of the recent offerings have been autumnal or Advent-themed poems, but I enjoyed them all. I may save some to post here in the appropriate season next year.
 

“Velvet Shoes” may have especially impressed me because I am anticipating walking in the snow myself this week, if my plans work out to visit Pippin. And here I was, just yesterday, going on about fire and warmth….

I always think I do not want to visit snowy and cold places, but whenever I do, it’s fun. Did you notice that in spite of the narrator’s silk and lace garments, there is no mention of the cold? That might mean that it is just the poem for me!

We’ll make fire our business.

family, love, quotes, winter, work, , , , , ,

This morning Liam and I squeezed in one game of Bananagrams, while his parents were making the rounds of all the rooms to find stray items not to leave behind. The grandchildren also stuffed their backpacks, and found space for last-minute offerings I made: their choice of a matchbox car and a book from my toy area/children’s library.

Liam chose one of the two remaining Sugar Creek Gang paperbacks, and Laddie combed through shelves and baskets looking for the hardcover Velveteen Rabbit, which he and I had enjoyed together last week; he finally did locate it. Brodie debated between The Little Fur Family and another book about a small animal, but after I encouraged him to take the classic, he happily went home with that superior and more traditional story. Clara finally settled on The Fox Jumped Up One Winter’s Night, after which you could hear young and old voices singing the story upstairs and down as she packed it into her bag.

Having watched Clara managing all the stuffies and several baby dolls over the last ten days, I was pretty sure she might like to take one home. I offered her the bear she had named Gingerbread. Their relationship hadn’t started well: she showed him to me twice early on and told me that he was “mean.” Laddie thought she might have had that response because of the placement of his eyes, closer together than other bears we compared him to. A few days ago he and I decided to put a blue ribbon around Gingerbread’s neck, and after that he became a favorite of Clara.

She was overjoyed when I told her she might take him home and keep him.

This afternoon my dear children departed for their home in Colorado, leaving the house strangely quiet and a little sad. I ate lunch and took a walk. The air was crisp and cold, and I began to cheer up right away. But maybe I was wearing the “wrong” shoes, because my feet began to hurt, and I returned home.

Soldier and Joy and the two older kids had been organizing, tidying and cleaning since yesterday, and before they left they got the dishwasher running — and the bathroom floors cleaned! There was nothing urgent for me to do, so I relaxed and caught up on blog-reading, as the furnace blew noisily trying to heat up this barn of a space. The idea of building a fire did cross my mind, and then it doubled back and crossed by again…

But I was beginning to feel the delayed fatigue of the last two weeks, and I didn’t want to pay attention to that thought. Until I read on an unfamiliar blog:

If the world is cold, make it your business to build fires.
~Horace Traubel

Ha! Well, okay. I left this frigid computer corner to bring in a few logs, and as I spied the stack of kindling next to the stove, I recalled the time last week when I was surprised to find Liam all by himself in the garage, splitting sticks with the little hatchet, a big pile accumulating in front of him. I will be appreciating his efforts for a while to come.

Now it’s nearly my bedtime, and I have got the house cozied up. I’m thinking of lots of little ways that multitudes of people around me have been making it their business to “build fires.” It might just be sparks of kindness here and there, seemingly timid flames and ineffective; but so easily they can ignite a bonfire that will warm a whole village, and lessen the gloom of winter. Here’s to love!