Nasty weather

For the last three days we are in the grip of an arctic blast. It was -26' here this morning and is around 3' right now. The best part is the sun is shining and filling the porch with free btu's.

Tonight will be almost as cold, but tomorrow it is supposed to improve. This winter has been a difficult one for me; coping without Peter's good brain, without his company, without the warmth of his hugs and without the warmth of him in the bed near to me has been a cold and frigid experience for my brain too. Roll on spring, I can't wait to get outside again, drive anywhere I want to, when I want to, and stop listening to the chug of the furnace. Speaking of which - has anyone out there noticed that the oil companies report record profits whenever the price of gas goes up due to a supposed short supply? As Shakespeare put it -

"There is something rotten in the State of Denmark"

frigidity

four below at four o’clock
february on the cusp of january
ice crystals hang in still air
snow over ice
bubble-wraps the landscape
cat scratches the furniture
in boredom
deer moved back to brush
along the river bank
juncos desert the feeder
sun descends in silver rays
the house cracks in contraction
I put on bing crosby
who’s crooning with jack
teagarden and eddie condon
with a touch of Satchmo
dance around the living room
to put movement in my static day
cabin fever, anyone?

The Big Melt

daily haiku

late january

sun rises and stays all day

I see earth once more

Three days of sunshine - my body and mind begin to relax. All those grey days seem to leech all the energy out of my soul and I can understand those who suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD) The light has changed, how, I can't discern. I just know that it registered a change in my brain at a subtle level and it feels good.

55° today and at last the path to the house thawed. I was able to get to the log pile without worrying about falling and dying in a snow bank. I brought up smaller logs to the back door that I use to start the evening fire and restacked the pile ready for probable snow this weekend.

Before the snow thawed, my emotions thawed and the pain came flooding in again. While I know the grief process pretty well, it doesn't stop the shock and surprise when I enter a new phase; but knowing assures me it will gradually end. With that knowledge comes ambivalence. I don't want to lose the connection to Peter that the pain gives me. However since I don't have the choice I'll take it a day at a time, the way that it comes, and be thankful for all the wonderful memories that cause it.

Winter Storms

daily haiku

freezing rain
the bird feeder
abandoned

The photo of the deer (above) is one of my favorite winter pictures. It is so gentle, so interested and seems to be almost posing for the camera.

A very wintry day today, and strange. It began with freezing rain; got warmer and moved to rain, then later to sleet, snow, and right now, a blustery nothing. The grey of evening has settled in and the village below no longer visible except for two security lamps that cut the gloom with their orange glow, one at the school and the other at the Post Office. Temperatures are supposed to plunge for the foreseeable future and it is easy to feel trapped inside and climb the walls.

Staying in the moment, and the day, is the only survival strategy. Finding things to do that I enjoy, including talking with friends and family. The internet is a godsend, I don't know how the pioneers did without it!

Here is a poem to be published in the next issue of Harp Strings Poetry Journal, that I wrote a few years ago:

cabin fever and the internet

snow
and gray days
twenty below and more
cold cabin walls
suck every ounce
of heat from your body

cat lies under
the baseboard heater
listens to the constant
scream
of bird-fights
at the feeder

e-mails
connect us
to the outside world
are like conversations
with friends
a comfort
in the long hours
of sub-zero days

First Blog of 2011

daily haiku

ice crystals
at seventeen below
a silver miracle

Happy New Year 2011 to all my family and friends.

Christmas Eve 2010

Christmas Eve Haiku

stars radiant
ink black sky moon not risen
christ child's birthday nears

Christmas Food

I think we can all remember the smells of Christmas. Just the phrase "smells of Christmas" touches senses deep in the brain and disturbs olfactory echoes down there from years of Christmas memories.

The sharp pine odor of the Christmas tree in my childhood in England is replaced in later years by the scent of wild cedar cut from the hillsides around Birney. Of course I can't forget the family quarrels over which tree to cut. We almost killed each other over the tree especially when Sarah was with us; she always wanted us to cut the tallest tree we could find. She wasn't satisfied unless it touched the ceiling.

And poignant memories come back to me of the year that Peter was recuperating from his heart surgery a month prior to Christmas. I cut the tree alone that year and somehow managed to cut a cedar that was about 12 feet high, drag it up the draw, and using scientific thought and the principles of physics put it on top of our Mercury Colony Park station wagon and drove it home! I still can't believe that I managed it, so I attribute a lot to the prayer I say silently before cutting it down.

The smells of cooking? Oh my. During the war the center of feasting was Baking Hen raised on my aunt's smallholding, which in later years was replaced by Turkey. The air in the kitchen redolent with cooking bird was always interspersed with the fresh sage and onion stuffing sizzling along with it. The kitchen, normally cold from lack of central heating, positively glowed with the warmth from the oven, and steam condensed and ran down the cold kitchen window, my mother's face rosy red as she bore the platter to the table. The hen was always served traditionally, surrounded by roasted pork sausages.

There is no adequate way to describe the smell of Christmas pudding - referred to over here as "plum pudding". Every family has its own recipe and each one is a little different. Some smell of the suet, others of the rum, some of the ale with which they are moistened before steaming. But in the end they all look the same as they are carried to the table alight with the dancing blue flames of an ounce or two of brandy saved especially for the festivities.

No Christmas in England would be complete without Mince pies. The afternoon of Christmas Eve found the house filled with the spicy aroma of baking mince pies. These small munchables of buttery pastry each hide a generous amount of mincemeat, which in England contains no meat, just candied fruits, currants and apples laced with rum or brandy, and macerated into one glorious flavorful mouthful. I was so happy when I was old enough to go Carol Singing with the church choir. The Choir was always roundly toasted wherever they sang, and plied with mince pies and small glasses of sherry wine. Younger members got "a spot of the good stuff" too, and we arrived home around midnight bellies full and fell into bed a bit "squiffy" from a few dollops of wine.

May you all have a truly Happy Christmas and the smells of Christmas food permeate your dreams.

The Peace Tree

daily haiku

christ buddha allah
we all celebrate their birth
mystery and peace

Christmas traditions continue; without Peter it is lonely and sad. However doing the familiar is comforting, even so, and I work through more grief as I continue our traditions. I put up the peace tree yesterday. This evolved over the years and was something that he loved. I wrote an essay about it that was published by the Billings Gazette in 2008:

The Peace Tree

by Christine Valentine

Our tradition started so many years ago that I can’t remember exactly when it began. When my first husband was alive I bought a flock of 24 Chinese paper doves. I perched them on pine boughs placed around pictures, windows, doorways etc and they looked very pretty.

After I remarried I bought a large white dove made of feathers and started decorating a small tree in my kitchen with little white lights, all the paper doves, and the large dove crowning the top of the tree. The year that Americans were taken hostage in Iran I wrote a prayer for their safety and placed it in the beak of the large dove. After Christmas, on Twelfth Night I burned the prayer with some cedar in a small personal ceremony.

Each year this tradition continues. My family looks forward to the peace tree, and my friends ask, “Will you put up your peace tree this year?” Prayers for those involved in wars continue, not just for the soldiers but the people of those countries who are hurt, dying and dead: the Gulf War, Bosnia Herzegovina, Afghanistan, Iraq, Congo, Ethiopia, Darfur, Haiti, Israel and the middle east, and Kenya, among others.

The paper doves are falling apart now. I fix them with tape and hang them anyway, because always there is a war somewhere, always I need to write a prayer and burn it on Twelfth Night. I look forward to a Christmas when I do not have to write a prayer because there is no war.

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daily haiku

open the curtains
wonderland before my eyes
trees frosted with hoar