Nemesis

I have been thinking about Miss Marple lately and about evil and goodness for it’s own sake and a little about Professor Dumbledore and his whole love-is-powerful-magic-thingy (I don’t know if this will get as far as the Dumbledore part) and I’m also thinking about moisturizer (but that’s only because I just got out of the shower and my face is all pinchy).

Back to Miss Marple: Miss Marple believed that evil was very real. Not just evil deeds and evil doers but evil it’s ownself. Out there waiting to be tripped over, encountered, flirted with and embraced and that she was evil's Nemesis. Gray haired, sensibly shoed, elderly Nemesis armed with a sense of justice (and a carpet bag with knitting in it) and an unlikely visage. How cool is that? I want to live next door to her, I want know her. I want to have tea with this lady. (Okay, before you ask, I do know she’s not real < and, pssshhhah, she'd be like 160 years old by now> and that all that stuff was really Agatha Christie but it doesn’t seem like it does it? It seems like it belongs to Miss Marple.)

I wonder why Aggie assigned Nemesis and the pursuit of evil to the little old maiden lady. She gave Poirot the “little gray cells” and his powers of observation and massive ego and Tommy and Tuppence got the flip and devil may care “aren’t we too-too clever?” (Well, and they were! I really do love them and wish there were more stories which makes me thinks about the “classics” and why they are supposed to better and must reads. I read Canterbury Tales and Moby Dick and To Kill a Mockingbird <I’d say that’s a modern classic wouldn’t you?> and most of Shakespeare and I pretended to read The Iliad <here I have to pause to say “gack”, Does anybody really read The Iliad when it’s assigned??...okay, maybe you went back to it but COME ON as a sophomore? Again: “gack”.> and lots of other classics and they just stack up with all of the other stuff I read. Good, wonderful, GACK, spoke to me, loved it, beautiful, boring, thick, awful, transcendent (good word), entertaining. In a long lifetime of reading good writing is good writing. Maybe some are called classics because they have endured over time but that brings us back to Aggie. She certainly endures and is rarely counted among the 100 ‘must reads’. Perhaps a subject for another essay - Who would like to take it on? Volunteers?)

ALRIGHT! Now is the time to show patience an understanding not the time to scream “GET TO THE POINT! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD"* (*I always think that adds a little drama so good on you for using it appropriately here.) I’m heading right back there. I don’t wear contact lenses and am not so good at finding tiny, transparent things that have popped out of place.

So Nemesis and Christie: why Miss Marple as Nemesis? Why the elderly lady as the Avenging Angel?  (I wonder when Aggie decided that it would be Miss Marple and not any of her other characters? We know when she writing these stories but when did she think of it? At what point in her own life? Was she a young woman or did she come to this later? When did it make sense to give this to Jane Marple? Originally I thought this was going to be about evil and goodness and choices but now I think it might be about old women and their place in our world, our notions and our literature and our movies- Dumbledore will have to wait.)

We meet Jane Marple and see what she presents to the world and then we are surprised to find the steely inner core of resolve and the ruthless Avenging Angel. We are programmed to be surprised by her power. She doesn’t have the steely gray hair pulled back into the severe bun and the steady gaze and the harsh features that might make us believe that she is ‘man enough’ to take on evil. She’s fluffy, and pink and drinks tea and she knits for god’s sake(another good use of the deity to underscore a point don’t you think? I didn’t make it up so if you don’t like it you can say so.) and she’s frail! We are however not at all surprised to discover that Yoda (frail and bent as he is) is compellingly wise and extremely powerful. We are not surprised that Dumbledore (aww, he did get in here) turns out to be ruthless as well as powerful in spite of all of his maundering (I know – not really maunderings – I had a point to make here - apologies all ‘round) on about love and his extreme age - but the Jane Marples of the world – they surprise us.

The ‘wise ones’ of fiction are rarely the old women. They are more often the gossips, the couch bound and the busy bodies. They don’t save the world or fight for justice. They don’t summon up their waning power for one last crusade - they never had the power to begin with so it could hardly wane. They aren’t secret ninjas. They are rarely Nemesis.

What an unlikely thing Christie did here and how lovely.

(I had a bunch of other crap about stereotypes and flip-sides and waning powers and truth and fiction but I sent where it belonged coz, well it was crap. The Marple stuff, I’m pretty happy with that part so there y’all go)

Sydney the Plucked Duck and Other Majiks

For my younger sister who asked me to write this stuff down with a guest blog excerpt from my old(er) sister

My (our) parents came of age during World War II. Their world ended and began again and was defined by the awful realities of a world at war. My mom once told me that she and her girlfriends would leave their jobs at noon and walk to the downtown post office to read the daily posting of the dead and the lost. My dad was a navigator in a B17 and after dropping his bombs in exactly enough missions to go home his plane was shot out of the sky. He finished his war in a German POW camp. They were young adults in a very real world- they all were.

When the war ended my dad came home to the old neighborhood (and to the girl we kids figured he must had his eye before he went away) and called my mom on the telephone and told her: “C’mon kid, get your dancing shoes on.”

Some time after that they got married and some time after that they started having us.

My dad suffered from terrible nightmares and some pretty severe PTSD (they didn’t call it that then but man, it was real the real deal). We had (as I have said before) some really tough times but we always had fun, we knew we were loved and there was always magic and today I am going to tell you about the magic.

When other children woke up November 1st to the heartbreak of Jack O Lanterns smashed by neighborhood kids we knew that ours had met with an accident while rolling their way to midnight Spooks and Ghouls and Pumpkins Ball.

My younger brother and I took a nighttime walk with my dad (it must have been Halloween coz it wasn’t cold or snowy) pursued by a toy train in stealth mode which stood stock still whenever we turned around to check it’s eerie progress (what do 5 year olds know from fishing line right?).

My dad once did a whole opera, playing all the parts, flinging himself around the living room, while singing only the digits from the automated time service telephone number to the music from Carmen. Our toys and dolls frequently starred in impromptu dramas and drawing room comedies but the most memorable performance was brought to us courtesy of Sydney the Plucked Duck.

Someone had given us a duck. I assume it was hunting season and it must have come from my uncle coz my dad didn’t hunt but I can’t say for sure. I do know that we kids were horrified by the duck. It didn’t have its head but it had a really long neck that flopped around and IT HAD ITS FEET and pinfeathers. Shiver!

My dad set about the process of not looking a gift horse in the mouth and cleaning the duck observed in mute silence by an audience of wide eyed, pale under their freckles, red headed children.

What to do? If you were my dad the answer was clear.

Name the duck Sydney and have it do burlesque.

It was ridiculous and inspired and hilarious. We were in stitches. I don’t remember if we ever cooked and ate Sydney but I can still see him with his wing on his hip telling bad jokes in a vampy falsetto.

Our toys moved, our parents played charades and softball, my dad was Frankenstein during Dr. Cadaverino’s House of Horror Late Night Movie and before I was old enough to know about it my dad found a really-truly Treasure map.

Guest Contribution:

Panhandle Hill

    When I was almost six years old and my brother almost seven, my folks built a small cape cod on the outskirts of town. In less than a year, tho', the town grew up around us in the post-war housing boom.
    But, for that first summer we were almost alone, save for two old farmhouses and a house being built nearby. Some of the roads were paved but many were still just covered with gravel. One such road was Cleveland Avenue, a fancy moniker for a two- lane gravel road of no great distinction - until our father discovered the Treasure Map.
    He came home one day with a blank piece of crumpled paper that he suspected was a secret treasure map. He called us into the kitchen and held the map above the gas flame on the stove. Slowly, gradually, a map began to appear on the old sheet of paper. My brother and I were mesmerized.
   It seems that years ago Cleveland Avenue was known as "Panhandle Hill", and some nefarious brigands had buried their treasure there, made an invisible map and ...
for some reason, lost to time, disappeared before they could reclaim their booty. Yay!
We were rich!
    My brother and I wanted to dig it up right away, but our Dad had timed his discovery well. It was dark out by then and he assured us we would go early the next morning to claim our riches, as it was too dark to see properly.
    The next morning we three set out with the map and followed it, for what would eventually be three or four blocks, to Panhandle Hill. Oh irony! Oh cruel fate! As we came to our destination, (X marked the spot), we were shocked to discover that, just that very morning, the road had been paved with fresh, wet concrete. Oh no! We were too late: Panhandle Hill had been tamed and paved into Cleveland Avenue.
    Dad took the news philosophically, and consoled us with the thought that at least we three would always know of the secret treasure buried under that brand new street.

Wishing you magic this and everyday we remain, ever,

Our Father’s Daughters.

My Mother's Taffeta Dress

My mother was beautiful. Truly, flat out beautiful. Her senior picture is the stuff of which pre-war dreams were made. She was frequently compared to Catherine Hepburn (and my dad - after they two got together – was compared to Spencer Tracy which explains why we ‘uns look how we look- but that polluting of her genes is a rant for another day). She was also tall (nearly 5’9” in the 1940s- a tall woman) and willowy and just a little fragile (my dad used to say that she was a thoroughbred race horse and he a big ‘ol draft horse).

Yep, my mother was beautiful and kind and had a wicked sense of humor and we loved her. Plain and simple, good times and bad (no family can lay claim to only good times and we were no different- we weathered some pretty tough times for sure) we loved her and we knew she loved us.

My memories from childhood are filled with sensory memories of my mother and with snap shots- frozen in time images and sounds and fragrance.

Her voice, low and mellow (and her laugh which my cousin describes as “her wonderful, growly laugh”) as she lay stretched out across the double bed my younger brother and I shared (gimme a break- remember “baby boom”) with my even younger sister in a six year bed in the same room as she read from her own childhood books at bed time. She read us all of the Bobbsey Twins and every Honeybunch book a chapter at time hypnotizing us into sleep by her measured and comfortable voice.

My mom, hair tied up in a scarf wearing shorts and one of my dad’s shirts knotted at her waist, standing barefoot in the sun pegging wet laundry onto the clotheslines.

Me coming down to breakfast the picture of third grade misery, terrified to go to school coz I hadn’t done my math homework, collapsing in tears at the table and my mom: “I think you are just too blue to go to school today. You stay home with me.”

And my mother’s taffeta dress… Man! Just thinking about that dress fills me up with being five or six and remembering my mom splendid in red with little white polka dots. I couldn’t have told you at the time that it was taffeta but my grown up self knows that only taffeta makes the wonderful ‘SWISH-SWISH’ sound that dress made as she walked across the room to kiss us goodnight. I can still see it: full skirted and belted and so unimaginably beautiful it made my little kid heart flutter. She would lean down and the dress would swish and she would leave bright red lipstick on cheeks and faces and lips and as she turned to go we could still smell her perfume…Tailspin. (She wore Tailspin till I think they stopped making it or she stopped being able to afford it. I’m not sure if smelling Tailspin now would fill me up with joy or break my heart- probably both.)

I loved that taffeta dress and the way my mother looked and smelled and smiled in it. (On reflection I can guess the reason I have such firm memories of that dress was that it was the only “dressy-dress” she had coz I certainly don’t remember any other super beautiful, ultra-fantastic mom dress- but who knows I was a little kid.)

My mother died when I was twenty-eight. The years between the taffeta dress and her death were filled with joy and heartbreak, trials and triumphs, four more babies, eight teenagers, laughter, loss and love. We were a big ‘ol post-war family and we were filled up with life and all that it meant and my mom, she was the heart of that life and the image of her in her red taffeta dress, well, it’s one of the most joyous memories in my arsenal and it always makes me cry.

Small Graces

This title, this thought, these small graces have been nagging at me and I’m not even sure what they want. I just keep thinking about the idea of ‘small graces’. I think I know what they mean (what I mean) when I think about them but I’m not at all sure how to make what I think I mean mean something (if you know what I mean).

I’m not talking about “there but for the grace of god” or grace before meals or a state of grace or ballerina-type grace or even my small dog Grace (though she is rather small and is Grace)

Small dog Grace

I am talking about the kind of grace we associate with people who light up a room without being conscious of it or accept an award with just the right words or always know what to say to ease tension or the people who are Jacqueline Kennedy or that pilot (Sully) who landed his plane on the Hudson River (the definition of grace under pressure I’m thinking). That kind of grace but in small doses. Little things that bring grace to our lives. People who’s grace make us feel better. Actions that give us a moment of admiration in the middle of a normal old run of the mill day.

(I know, I know-blah-blah, blather-blather. I did tell you I was struggling here.)

Let’s try this:

The first time ‘Small Graces” popped itself into my consciousness I was at work. I work with a young RN (Nakia, you know who you are). Nakia is always willing to help out and is unfailingly polite but one afternoon it occurred to me that Nakia ALWAYS does something that not everyone does (even polite people, well mannered people - or me). When one says ‘Thank you’ to Nakia she always says ‘You’re welcome’. She doesn’t say ‘sure thing’ or ‘you bet’ or (my go-to) ‘no problem.’ No, she says: ‘You’re welcome’ and every time she says it I feel good. She brings a bit of grace to my day. When I recognized it, that day, I stopped what I was doing, went back down the hall and told her what a lovely thing her “You’re welcome’ was.

I’m trying to remember to say ‘you’re welcome’ now. Trying to pay Nakia’s small grace forward. Trying not to toss off my classic ‘No problem.’ (I realized that ‘no problem’ was indeed a toss-off when one day, in response to it, my daughter said: “Well, but I still get to thank you.”) How graceless am I? ‘No problem’ I say, making the THANK YOU somehow less important. Other people should get to feel the same warm fuzzy I feel when Nakia says: “You’re welcome” so I’m working on it.

Many people bring these graces to my life.

My darling daughter, who facing a basket and a half of adversity this last year, still laughs herself silly over the weird side-effects her newest medication has thereby giving us all leave to laugh with her at “stroke tongue.”

My WORDS WITH FRIENDS friend James who never forgets whose turn it is to start the next game.

My friend Mary who fears losing her house but makes hilarious plans to live on a park bench with all of her belongings and her parrot Stanley. (Don’t worry-we won’t none of us let Mary live on a park bench. She has way too much stuff.)

Nancy from WeBook who always takes the time to give feed back.

My son-in-law, Joe, who doesn’t complain that I stopped keeping up with networking technology (or almost any computer technology) and leave it all to him.

My sister who drove across town (a lot of geography in the Midwest) coz I broke my foot and wanted chocolate chip cookies.

My husband who unfailingly holds the door open for everyone (even when my less-than-patient-self is thinking: “Oh COME ON!!! It’s freezing AND we’re late!”).

My dad who, as post-polio advanced, simply furnished every room in his house with stools so he could always sit down.

My mom who, when we were part of the little red-headed horde that left her little time for herself, would sometimes keep one of us home from school for a day simply because we were “blue” and needed to be with just her.

...and this place, this cyber-place, where I can think my thoughts and cast them out onto distant ears where time and distance slips away and people from all over the world offer laughter and comfort and friendship all at my fingertips, here for the reading.
(I know, getting sappy again - better wind this up)

Actually, I have no wind-up, no conclusion, no summation. These are some of the people that bring grace and joy and poise and civility to my life. I’m finished. I just wanted to talk about this and now I have.

Missing My Dad and the Comfort of Yarn

I’ve been missing my dad lately. Really missing him. Palpably, consciously missing him. I just want to talk to him. I want to talk to him more than any combination of words and extraneous punctuation can possibly express. It’s better now but it wasn’t then...a few days ago the missing and the desire to just talk to him (just effing talk to him about this stuff, this crazy consuming stuff, all this STUFF) became a physical sensation, a lump sitting just under my solar plexus threatening to immobilize with teary reflections and throat clenching need. So (as I often do) I took a really hot shower and (while making brain soup in the delicious steam) I remembered the yarn (I do some of my best remembering in the shower).

To explain the yarn and I need to talk about Christmas and my dad and Christmas. My dad loved Christmas (my dad was Christmas). Christmas was near death and life renewed and joy and giving and wonder and salvation for my dad and he loved it. In the last years of his life he couldn’t get around very well to shop but he was a terror with a computer and a credit card. He shopped for everyone he knew (and many he didn’t know). He loved the gift hunting almost as much as he loved the giving and he loved a challenge. The thrill of the chase. A Victorian pill box, an out of print-not-especially-valuable-but-treasured-children’s book, an obscure Zydeco Band’s self produced CD or a knitting loom. He loved finding things.

One year I had been doing a lot of knitting and crocheting for a program at the Labor and Delivery Unit on which my daughter worked. Hats and booties and blankets for preemies and for babies who might not make it through the night but got their very own layette nonetheless. My dad was taken with this program and with the teeny-tiny hats and feet and arranged to have all manner of baby yarn arriving at my door with abundant regularity. During this time I wondered at him if perhaps there was such a thing as a knitting loom (or whatever the inventor might have called it) and he was off to find the beast (don’t get me wrong-I pretty much knew he would be-it was the kind of thing he loved to find). Christmas came and there it was: an Amish Knitting Loom. Hand crafted and signed by the Amish man who made it. I can only imagine what it takes to find an Amish man who makes handcrafted knitting looms using only on-line sources. I know my dad maintained an email correspondence with the woman who put him touch with the source for the loom.

Included with the loom were two skeins of hand spun yarn. Beautiful creamy wool spun with angora. Carefully wound with tightly twisted lengths leading to lovely thick sections of light as air wisps of angora. This yarn, my dad said, was to be something special for my very own self and this was the yarn I remembered in the shower.

I had never used that special, lovely yarn. I haven’t knitted much since my dad died (what with one thing and another). The loom looks at me occasionally (but not with malice or accusation-it knows I’ll be back) from atop a bookshelf and the yarn-it got packed away...somewhere.

It took me a while (a semi-desperate search through under-bed and top-of-closet boxes) but I found it. Still wrapped in tissue in a plastic bag. Two skeins of creamy white looped upon themselves in the traditional way waiting I guess, (for Laura Ingalls to hold out across extended hands while Ma winds careful balls for knitting and Pa plays his fiddle by the firelight or) for me for that night that I missed my dad so terribly.

I sat on the bed and looped the lovely confection around my knees (Laura wasn’t available to do her part) and set to the rhythm of winding the loose ball of yarn ready for use.

I’d love to tell you that I sat in contemplative silence and ruminated and reflected on the mystery of life and death and memory but I didn’t. I turned on the TV and relaxed into the pillow at my back and the steady task of the yarn and I didn’t miss my dad so vey much. I’d still love to talk to him but I felt much better. I still do.

I’ve still got the second skein to wind.  

I think I’ll make a hat-a jaunty beret.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE GOVERNOR OF WISCONSIN-FEBRUARY 2011

Dear Governor Walker,

I have written to you before to ask you to rethink your position on collective bargaining for public employees in the State of Wisconsin. Although you didn’t respond personally to my enquiry you have made it very clear in other ways that you just plain aren’t about to rethink anything at all ever so let’s just leave that issue alone. We are going to have to agree to disagree, more’s the pity but there you have it.

I have a different question to put to you today.

You have made it abundantly clear that you are sticking to your guns on the budget repair bill because:

1. You believe that each and every provision in the bill is necessary for you to balance your budget (as a quick aside here I have noticed that you frequently refer to the budget for the State of Wisconsin as “my “ budget…is that a slip of the tongue or do you, in fact, see it as your own personal budget to manage as you see fit? Just asking…).  Okay, let’s take that as given.
2. You believe what you are saying. It is not politically motivated. You are not union-busting for the sake of a larger agenda AND you actually believe collective bargaining is a budget issue. You need these things now to repair a shortfall in the 2009-11 budget (coz this isn’t your 2011-13 budget right? There’s more stuff hiding in there.)
3. You really do respect and appreciate the large workforce you have become CEO over. (I gotta say that one’s a little harder to swallow. You say you respect and appreciate these people but you don’t actually trust them- well, you don’t trust them enough to even answer the phone to them nor do you believe that they might bargain responsibly in regards to the fiscal crisis the state is facing in spite of the fact that they have already agreed to all the pay cuts. Oh well, for purposes of this enquiry we’ll have to accept even that one. Trust and respect and appreciate public employees in your employ whom you refer to as the “haves”. Got it)

What you have not been clear about is why you have chosen to do this in this manner.

Why have you pitted the population of your state against itself?

Why have you called public workers the “haves” and taxpayers the “have-nots”?

Clearly you can’t have been in government this long and actually believe that public employees don’t pay taxes. I mean, come on! You do know that public employees pay taxes right? You did know what you were doing when you said that whole “have and have-not” catch phrase in that debate. You were driving a wedge, even then, back during the campaign, you were driving a wedge and you knew it. You did, didn’t you?

What was your motivation for doing that, saying that, if not to pit neighbor against neighbor; to divide your citizens by making them suspicious and resentful of each other in order to advance your agenda through a divided and defensive population? I’d really like to know. Not the WHY of the agenda (we’ve already agreed that you’ve made that clear) but the WHY of the method…WHY do it this way?

Here’s another WHY.

Why did you exempt Police and Fire and State Patrol from the increases and the sanctions in the Budget Repair Bill on the grounds that they work for the public safety and not include Correctional Officers? That’s a real stumper in my book.

What could possibly have motivated you to exclude and insult an entire group of dedicated public safety officers in this way? Was it in hopes of provoking a blue flu in the prisons so you might make good your threats of bringing the National Guard into the prisons and then bringing in that private security company from Ohio you’ve been talking with? (You do know that Correctional Officers are unarmed within the walls of our prisons where they deal with the same violent criminals that the police apprehend, right?) Why don’t you see them and their very dangerous job(s) as part of our public safety services?

I guess I had heard that you wanted to privatize the Milwaukee County House of Corrections. Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe you hoped the officers would stage a work action and you would just plain have to fire them for it, shucks and darn. After that who could blame you if you brought in a private firm? Can’t keep the National Guard there forever and well, the officers, they would have asked for it right? You had warned about job actions. You’d be backed into a corner. What could you do? Who could blame you? (Oops! another quick aside here. Do you realize that hiring Out of State Private Security Firms sends money OUT OF WISCONSIN? Just checking. Just making sure we’re clear here.)

Why do you keep saying that public employees should have been ready for this because it’s what you’ve been saying right along?

No it isn’t! You hadn’t previously mentioned stripping public employees of bargaining rights. That hasn’t been part of your drum beat or your campaign promises. Public employees heard what you said. They were ready for the cuts and increases. They knew you were coming for them about the money but you never talked about the bargaining.

Why do you want this state in this social crisis? Why do you promote resentment and mistrust?

I don’t get it. I truly do not understand.

Why did you do this in this way unless this mess was EXACTLY what you did want? A state divided upon itself at the mercy of a governor with a nationally promoted agenda and men of money and commerce standing back to take full advantage of a masterful, if ruthless, political conspiracy cloaked in a budget crisis.

But let’s be fair, that’s just my take. You give me yours.

Why did you do it this way?

Winter Exacts a Hefty Fee for Her Beauty- a Veteran’s View

(We just shoveled and plowed and salted our way out from under an epic blizzard and, although I wrote this last year, it came back to mind as I watched the drifts pile up hip-height and the plow struggle mightily to get "unstuck" from our driveway.)

Where I live winter is the greediest of seasons grabbing hold in November she often doesn’t let go her grasp till March is completely played out and an April snow fall is not unusual.

So- here I stand - in nearly two feet of drifting snow. (NEW snow- on top of the several inches of ice covered, rock solid, brittle and broken snow that  remain after a partial thaw and a couple of weeks of single digit temperatures with sub-zero wind chills <BUT, I digress>)
...Where was I?

Oh, nearly two feet of new snow (right! - focus)  in my 50-somethingth winter in the north and I can tell you that the beauty of snow is a fleeting thing and that after 77th or 108th or 254th or (well, you get the idea) time one has to get on the road at 6:00am (before the plows are even up) and drive over snow-covered, icy roads placing your safety and your life at the whim of mother nature and in the hands of other drivers the romance begins to pale a bit as well. The shine comes off that new snow feeling pretty quickly.

Where I live we don’t shut down for snow. We wonder if the plows will be out early or all night but we go to work. Schools may close for a day (if the snow started past midnight and there’s enough of it and the plows and busses couldn’t get on the road) but not for a week, never for a week. It’s just snow! (Random small factoid inserted for your edification: Did you know that car seat manufacturers don’t certify the safety and efficacy of the seat for a child wearing a winter coat? Our kids can either be safe or warm…not both.) Around here even Pizza Hut stays open (talk about essential services, right?)!

The first snow (even the first couple of snows) of any season always casts it’s seductive coat over the landscape and I look out and say…”it IS pretty” and “if I didn’t have to drive in it…”  and “well, we’ll have a white Christmas anyway”.

It is ALWAYS beautiful (while it is falling and immediately thereafter). It is ALWAYS breath-taking to see the world blanketed so thoroughly in crisp, icy white. It is ALWAYS fun to get out in it with a small-person booted and bundled and mittened and make snow angels. A few inches of the stuff (that means 6 or less around here) while temperatures hover in the balmy twenties can even can even be fun to shovel...at first…when you still have somewhere to go with it and it’s only the first, or the second, or the third time that year that you have shoveled.  (With this last storm the drifting was so deep in front of our house that the front doors were hard to open and we now have 5 and 6 foot piles at the end of the driveway and along side the garage courtesy of the neighbor’s Bob-cat <yes, it took small construction equipment to dig out this time>).

There is another always to add this list of beautiful always(s). It is ALWAYS going to thaw and freeze and get dirty and get snowed over again and make parking lots un-navigable and country lanes narrow and intersections hazardous and it’s gonna be cold, cold, cold.

Then there it is going to thaw for real. Not the fake thaws that fool you into thinking it might be over and maybe that was the last of it. No-o-o-o, not those thaws. This is THE SPRING THAW (the one after that freak storm in late March or even April) that brings with it the black, gravel infused piles of compressed snow that seem like they are never going to melt. Oh, and the flooding, that’s always fun as well. Let’s not forget the beauty of the debris that got frozen into the strata of each snow storm and now melts down along roadways and walkways and in your yard (not just modern waste and litter either- in really snowy years <when the accumulation of the white stuff out-paced me and the scooper>I could watch the dog poop break the surface as the sun shone it's melty-face on the dirty white expanse and remark to myself “Oh, looks like she DID eat that tinsel back in December, huh!”). Additionally, at least where I live, we use gravel and salt together in the interest of both ecology and economy (a good idea on both counts) that results in an ever increasing (again due to the timeline of individual storms preserved in the melting strata) coating of gravel on almost all roadways and verges and carried down the driveway on car tires and in the garage and brought into the house on shoes and boots and paws. Finally there is the certain, sure feeling that it will never, ever be warm or green or clean or ice free again.

And then it is.

Almost overnight it seems that spring finally, gloriously arrives and winter (unbelievably) begins to fade and I remember why anyone would live here (coz you see, by this time I’m pretty much greeting every day with the thought “Why do I live here again? <Aside from the whole family and friends part>?).

I live here for the other seasons: the glorious Springs, the hot-hot-hot Summers, the spectacular Falls and (a little-tiny bit) for the snowy, brutal winters. I just wish winter didn’t take up so much of our year and I wish it only snowed on the grass and REALLY, does it need to get below zero?? Really?? Is that necessary?

So, I do make lemonade but I heat it up and add honey and make it into a toddy.  

***Oh, by the way, we’re expecting six to nine more inches tonight and on into the Monday morning commute. Fun, huh?