Don't you just love the day before the day before? If you're anticipating the pleasure of, say, a family gathering to celebrate Christmas, foods, music, presents and all, then Christmas Eve is your big deal moment. Anticipation, about to be realized. (Of course, if you observe the religious aspects of Christmas or more strictly the traditions that lead up to it, then Eve is important in its own right. In Poland, Eve is more important than Day.) No matter how you slice it, with a heavy or light dose of religion, or perhaps no religion at all, Eve and Day are big! So, the day before Eve and Day is grand -- you have finally reached those heavily awaited days and they are just before you.
In other words, by this logic, December 23rd is the best!
Here, at the farmette, we wake to a misty morning. It'll be on the warm side today, tomorrow, and on Christmas Day. Second warmest in Madison's record keeping history. Rudolph's nose will be much in demand.
Breakfast. I seem to have forsaken oatmeal in favor of cinnamon. What can I say... my love of coffee with a yeasty or buttery pastry knows no bounds.
We have a quiet morning. Ed's head is in his machine design project and he spends many hours working through the details in the sheep shed. This frees me to play music without restraint in the farmhouse. I do promise him that in three days, I'll shut off my playlist for a whole eleven months!
In the afternoon, we take out our bikes. I cant say that it's a beautiful day for it (in the low 40sF, so maybe 6 or 7C), but we need the movement. I need the movement!
Misty, a bit wet. Dramatic. I swerve to avoid a car I hadn't initially spotted and throw out my wheel. Three fire engines and an ambulance come zipping our way. And birds. In the thick of a fog, we see the birds. Geese, crows maybe. And these two. See them? Cranes.
The lake is lost in the fog. We pause to stare into white space.
And then we go home, where my hero takes on the bike repair and I retreat inside for a warm cup of tea.
In the evening I have a date with my daughter and her two older kids. Sparrow had been asking to see the Nutcracker. We hesitated. He's a chatterbox and keeping him quiet in the auditorium is not easy. Snowdrop has seen the Nutcracker several times and though she likes it and was enthusiastic about an outing, she's a girl who favors words over music so I wondered if she'd get impatient with it. Still, we decided to go for it!
The four of us meet up at Cento for a pre-theater supper downtown.
(here they come!)
And now it's time for the show! I got side tickets that afforded some privacy in case things got a little too wiggly.
For me, personally, the Nutcracker is a big deal. I'd first seen it in New York, as a little girl and I was enchanted by it then. I came back to the ballet when my younger daughter ascended the Madison Nutcracker ladder, first performing as a 9 year old -- as one of the polichinelle children that come out of Mother Ginger's hoop skirts, eventually moving up to a party girl and then, at age 12 to Clara. That was her first en pointe performance and of course, it was thrilling for all of us to see her grace and artistry on stage. The last Nutcracker I attended was some two dozen years ago when she danced the snowflake dance. Somehow once she left the production and indeed, left ballet altogether (at her level of dance, it's very much an all or nothing activity), I shut the Nutcracker door for myself. This is the first time I return to it, looking at it afresh, with the eyes of the two older grandkids sitting by my side. Same theater, same stage, different generation.
Tears were shed.
Did they like it? Yes, very much so, we all did, in our own way (during the Sugar Plum Pas de Deux, I leaned over to whisper something to Snowdrop and she tells me -- gaga, please, no words during this dance), each looking at it from her own perspective -- of dance, of story telling, of music, of time.
I drive home with the music in my head. The misty skies hide the stars, the moon. The warm air is too warm. The lakes were solidly frozen last year in December. There's not a hint of ice on them this year. The eve before the Eve. All is calm. For that and for everything else, I am so profoundly grateful.
with so much love...
