Christmas Eve

No one predicted snow.

Oh, it's not deep. You can't build a snowman out of it. But it surely adds a delicateness to the landscape.

A petticoat snow.






This is our big day. For this we prepare. And prepare. And prepare.

An early breakfast. Just a tiny one for Ed and me.






... because tradition has it that we all gather at Hubbard Diner for the big breakfast -- a mega breakfast that is to last us until dinner time.

Well, most of us make it to Hubbard. Snowdrop, who so rarely gets sick (having missed zero days of school for reasons of illness since she started attending a year and a half ago) falls a little under the weather. Her dad stays home with her as she recoups her strength. The rest of us eat enough for everyone.

(One thing to note from this photo: my daughter is wearing a dress that I wore when I was pregnant with her...)






After, I pick up breads from my preferred bakery and then I head home.

(The farnmette, under a lovely layer of delicate snow...)






We sweep the walkway, but the dusting of snow covers it again. And again.






I set in on dinner preparations.

The table is set...






The foods are scrubbed, prepped and readied.

The families arrive.







(Parents of the little one)






Snowdrop was to nap a long long time (after all, she is a bit under the weather), but she resists and clamors to join us.

Oh fine! Let's open presents!

Everyone has taken such great care with gift giving!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     




(Snowdrop hands over a picture she painted...)






(Then there's the quilt for a soon to be born baby...)






It all leaves us rather emotional...

... and outside, the snow continues to fall...







Toward evening, the girl rallies. The giggles return!







Full force.













I finish off dinner preparations (with the usual help of my younger girl).






We're doing our traditional Eve beef fondue --  which requires the making of five sauces and the preparation of the cooking broth  and, perhaps most important for those of us (Ed!) who won't eat beef -- a cooking up of a veggie platter: beans, spinach, wild mushrooms and braised endive, and separately -- potato rosti, a dish of shredded herbed potatoes, with a layer of melted cheese on top.

(The veggie platter)






Dinner!






(Trying to understand the madness of cooking your meat at the dinner table...)






And finally, the dessert: the yule log.






No problem. Love it to pieces!






At the end of the evening, we sit down for the yearly photo of grandma and her daughters and granddaughter. Or, we try to sit down for said photo. It's late. The little girl has no more oomph left in her. And still, it is a lovely picture of the four of us. I am grateful for it.






I know that bloggers can exaggerate the upside of life. I know this. But for me, there is no hype, no fabrication: it was a most beautiful Christmas Eve. It will be with me always.

Many of you are just entering the holiday celebrations. Wherever you are and how ever you approach this set of days -- may they be filled with joy.

Happy holidays, with love.

Christmas weekend

Our big family gathering falls on these two days: Saturday and Sunday, culminating in a dinner and, of course, a present exchange. I'm planning to do a retro meal: most of the components are stolen from Christmas dinners I prepared way long ago.

The goal in those years had been to not fuss. There were so many meals to work on! So many other things that demanded my attention! Still, the dessert was important. I got in the habit of fashioning a yule log.

And so today, after Ed and I eat a light breakfast...






... I set in on sculpting the yule log.

For me, the goal is to make it not excessively sweet. Too, I am doing it a day in advance and so I have to keep the orange flavored whipped cream stable.

Here's the log before it gets its chocolate ganache "bark:"







And now I'm off to meet up the young families for brunch.

My girls!











You cannot really tell in the above photos one obvious truth: both my daughters are pregnant.

There, perhaps it's more obvious now? (The same shirt is a total coincidence.)






If all goes well, come spring, I will be a grandma to three: the count will increase to two girls and a boy!


Yes, these are the holidays, but there is always time to just play. With Play-doh!






(With a holiday design motif...)






Dinnertime. We go to Salvatore's for pizza...






And now at Snowdrop's home... Advent calendar.






And the day ends...


Well, after a few more Christmas stories. Books read out loud, recollections recounted from preserved childhood Christmas journals.

Oh, the importance of stories! Did you read this article today in the NYTimes?  Why Holiday Stories Matter -- I think about how my days now are filled with stories, ones I tell to my grandchild and many more that I listen to as she develops her own craft of storytelling. These stories, our stories -- they move us forward. They sort through the trivial and pick out all that matters, that rests in our collective memories.

Tomorrow, the Sunday of our holiday, Christmas Eve in all its magnificence will move us forward as well. And afterwards, there will be the stories, passed on, remembered.

the day before the day before Christmas Eve...

For years and years, grocery shopping was a source of stress for me. You're saving for your kids' college, the car needs new tires, the furnace is dangerously old and once again the grocery bill comes in higher than you had expected. Fresh and honest food is expensive. For a person like me who loved to cook daily dinners for her family, a good grocery store was a minefield of tempting stuff to prepare. I didn't much care for buying clothes or clutter for the house. But I cared about food. Shopping for it was tough.

These days, it's much more predictable and Ed and I have divided household responsibilities in such a way that I no longer fret about groceries. Our bill is the same each week and includes lots of produce (expensive) and beans (cheap). We've found our groove.

Along comes the shopping trip for the holiday family dinner. There is only one big meal that I'm preparing (as opposed to the three or four I would have done in the past). It, too, is predictable. And there are no college bills, my car's tires are fine, and Ed swears he can fix the furnace should it act up. Pffft! The stress is gone. And so after breakfast...







...I indulge in the wonderful task of picking out foods at the grocery store for our holiday feast.

It's magnificent to be thinking about preparing something for Ed, and all the kids, and the grandkid.  A holiday meal is special and today I start in on the preparations.

Or at least I set up all the ingredients for it. In the afternoon, I put cooking thoughts aside. Snowdrop comes over to play. (She is on winter break and so her schedule is a little different now.)







I'm thinking I should shuffle things around for her a little. After her nap (blissful nap!), I suggest we explore her (much neglected, because she always wants to play "school") animal kingdom.

Before long, she has them eating lunch and waiting to be picked up by their mommies, or, should mommies be unavailable due to work, their grandmas....







Snowdrop always sets her own play agenda.





Evening. Ed is in the sheep shed, working through some work issues. The little girl wants to go outside.

It's cold -- I tell her.
I will wear my jacket and my beautiful scarf (she is so complimentary) and my pink mittens and my boots!
Well, just for a few minutes.

What was I thinking? It's never few minutes with her. We visit Ed in the sheep shed, then, with the help of a flashlight, head for the barn to close up the coop. Not done yet. She leads wants to climb the chip pile out back.

She is the queen of the mountain!






Heading back toward the farmhouse, she spies the moon. She never fails to address its splendidness.






Into the house we go -- not because she has given up on the great outdoors. She wants to bring her babies out. Of course she does! A moonlit walk! Who wouldn't want to share this with the babies?!





Night time. I finish my Christmas mystery book. I strategize my meal preparation. I put on my Christmas mix as Ed dozes on the (brand new-ish) couch.

We are happy.

winter days

The shortest day, the longest night, the first day of winter, a quiet day. At about 10:30 in the morning, we, here, in the northern hemisphere, were at the farthest tilt away from the sun. Going forward, it's all rosy and bright.

But there is this day, this cold and gray day and you have to do something to cheer it up a little.

After breakfast (in the sunless sun room)...






... I prod Ed to start our annual seedpod fire.

Our locust tree drops huge pods, in abundance. Millions of them. Well, certainly thousands. Left alone, they sprout. Right in the middle of all my flower fields. And so we pick them out, all Fall long -- hundreds of bucketfuls.  For these, we avoid the compost heap and instead, we light a fire.

I pick up Snowdrop, coaxing her again into her hoodie wrap. (She carries with her a"snowflake" she made in school...)






At the farmette, the fire is in full force. Snowdrop is apprehensive. Last year, she allowed herself to get closer to it, but this year she wants to keep her distance.

Still, she is wildly enthusiastic at collecting the remaining seed pods. She fills buckets, carries them to proper locations and in general, lends an enthusiastic cheer to the whole project.






Never underestimate this girl's willingness to help.






The final clean up...






We're done. The fire diminishes. By evening the last embers will have cooled off. For now, Snowdrop is happy to go along with Ed to the barn to help get things in order for the cheepers. (They're gone for quite a long time and I cannot imagine what order they're creating, but it doesn't matter. She's happy, he's happy, the world is a good place indeed.)






(A selfie, where we do our joint roar...)






Resting...






After Snowdrop returns home, Ed and I head out to the very last local farmers market (until spring). Ed wants to stock up on cheese curds, but we're too late. Curds gone. But our friendly cheese farmer is still there and since not many people come to shop at this late evening hour, he has time to chat. About everything, including on how to single handedly impregnate the cows he raises.





Winter solstice. Burning fires, cheerful children, fresh cheese.  Brief but beautiful. All of it.

the week before Christmas

I vote for moving Christmas to the end of January.

I have good arguments for it. If we accept the fact that Jesus was not really born on December 25th (and we should: no shepherd worth his flock would be out in the fields in December weather in Bethlehem) then we are free to set a date of our choosing. So I vote for the end of January.

The economic arguments are stacked in favor of this. Online shopping gets a full four more weeks of keyboard clicking, in a month where, at least in the northern hemisphere, you do not want to be outside. An extended shopping period! A boon, no? (Let's ignore the credit card debt that would follow. The extended shopping period would boost the economy, create jobs, raise wages. Ergo: eventually credit card debt would go away. If I say it often enough, it will be true.)

But I'm not pushing economics. I'm pushing sanity. The pre-Christmas period is now too short. Whether you cook, bake, sing, do crafts, plays, dances associated with the holidays -- there's too little time for even a fraction of it. And then boom! December 26 comes and it's all over and what you have before you is a three month spell of winter. (If Christmas came on January 25th, you'd have short February and then voila! Spring! Well, just around the corner.)

I write this because I was thinking this morning how quickly these weeks have gone by. And how the weekend is going to bring family members together and that's great, but there are not enough hours in the day to do all that you'd love to do with said family members. (My second proposal would be to give everyone a week off following January 25, to indulge us in family time, friend time, free time.)

Of course, some would object. Christmas, you'll argue, is for Christians who comprise just 31% of the world's population. I'm amenable to changing the name of the holiday to embrace all the peoples of the world. We could just borrow from the French and call it Noel, which actually is on loan from the Latin world natalis -- meaning "of birth." A celebration of birth. How lovely is that!

For now, we have what we have: December 24th and 25th. They come in just four days. That'a an insanely short period of time!



Time... Holiday time... Christmas time... Why do I need time? My dinner menu lists were made long ago, as were the grocery lists. The brioche has been ordered (Madame at the bakery asks over the phone -- Is that you Nina? You want us to bake you a brioche? Yes please... I'll bake my own another time...). The presents are wrapped, ribboned, tagged. Cards mailed, house cleaned.

Time... Retired as I am, I especially love these days before the holiday. To make that steamy frothy cup of cafe creme and munch on a delicious biscotti send to us for Christmas... To finish reading my book so that I can get to the one I meant for this week -- a holiday story from a beloved mystery series. To listen to more music, to stare at the magnificence of the petite tree. To spend even more hours with my daughters. To watch treasured Christmas films together and read out loud from their own Christmas memory books, written some 25 or 30 years ago. Time to take in how beautiful the farmhouse looks, especially with the lights outside and one single delicious candle burning inside. Time for all that.


For now, breakfast. In the sun room, though without sunshine.






Afternoon: I pick up Snowdrop.

On my way to her school, I stop for my CSA two pound bag of winter spinach. This takes me by the lesser lake. It strikes me how dramatically everything changes in a place that lives by four seasons. Snowdrop and I would hunt for shade here in the summer months. Now, one day short of winter, there's a thick layer of ice on the lake...






It's cold today. Our high yesterday was 45F (7C). Today the high will be 25F (-4C). The little girl resists wearing any coat or jacket in the car, but yesterday I scored a success by getting her into something that I (deliberately misleadingly) called a hoodie. I bring it with me to school and offer it to her. She accepts it. Phew! It really feels cold today.

And yet, when we leave the car to go to the farmhouse (you gotta walk a bit), she feels the tug of the great outdoors.





I nudge her inside. She's not really dressed for this. But as we go in, she asks to put on her "farmhouse pink mitts" and her "farmhouse cap" and her "farmhouse boots" and out she goes again! Okay, this will surely be short lived. It really is cold!





She is intoxicated with the pleasure of being outside.  Let me bring my babies out for a walk! 

We do that.

Her laughter now is so contagious that we surely must look foolish as we romp around the front yard. Two laughing hyenas. Pretending to be airplanes.






We collect spent flowers, twigs and cones for a picnic with her babes.






And now she wants to bring it all inside. All fine, except that I watch my carefully cleaned for the holidays floors take on the litter of dried debris. But who would mind? Snowdrop, despite a napless day, has been utterly joyous.






Time to take things down a notch. We play inside.






For Snowdrop, Christmas is still made up of strung together stories, books and memories. She looks at my potted Norfolk Island Pine and asks -- is this your Christmas tree?  Well she might wonder. Last year and the year before, I used it as such. Does she remember?


Evening. The feeling of too little time eases a bit. Maybe we're too hell bent on wanting more of what we already have. Time. I remember Christmas in the years when I had two little ones in tow. I was a law student. Final exams took up the first two weeks of December. I had four meals to plan and execute (eve dinner, day breakfast, day lunch, day dinner). Tree, purchase, trimming, house decorating, school events, teacher presents, in-law presents, and of course, daughter presents! Purchased after endless trips to stores (can you imagine -- no online shopping!).

Thirty years from now, our grandkids will tell a smarter, more capable Siri to do it all and then they'll still bemoan how there is just not enough time. Perhaps those words -- not enough time -- are just a short cut for admitting that things are going well and life can be so good and can we just continue like this for a while, a long while longer?

cornflower blue

I bring my daily morning animal report to Ed: I think Apple is hiding her eggs. Also, I searched the whole barn but found no kittens.
They're gone?
They're gone.

We'll never know what brings them here and what drives them away. Are they somewhere in the fields to the north of us?





We don't know.

Do you notice the wisps of blue in the sky this morning? Within a few hours, the clouds disperse. We're in for a lovely day -- perhaps the last of the days when we climb above freezing.

(Breakfast)






It's a perfect day for Ed and I to play disc golf, under skies that turn a beautiful cornflower blue.

Playing disc golf... we do it on the sly, creating our own goal points, as the real ones have been removed. (The course is closed for the winter.) Why would a park close for winter? Why wouldn't you encourage people to come out and play, especially on the occasional warm day?






Soon after, I head out to pick up Snowdrop.

The girl isn't napping today. This means that I have to proceed cautiously: she may be up for a lot, or she may be more fragile.

But those cornflower blue skies help: I tell her that we can go out to her school playground for a while. She rallies.






And she stays upbeat...





... all the rest of the day.

I don't intend Ocean to be a record of her life, and yet it feels incomplete not to mention two strong, and I mean really strong currents in my time with Snowdrop these days: first of all, she loves (and I mean really loves) when (in the car, because I refuse to take it outside the car) I tell her a (made up on the spot) story about this penguin family, which in some ways resembles her family, but in many ways has anxiety producing adventures that Snowdrop would not immediately think of as her own. (For example: a baby seal wonders to the penguin household on a stormy day ... what now???).

Secondly, she, herself, has become the consummate story teller.

Snowdrop knows how to hold her audience. She uses anything and everything in her knowledge base to enrich her stories, and when she is on a roll, you are spellbound! If she ever becomes a standup comic, do remember -- it started at age two.


I'll add just a few small details of our play together today. Here she is, working with a toy that you may think is rather conventional: you dress the kid. Yawn! Girlie stuff. But in fact, two months ago, she couldn't have done it. Too, the options are a bit funky, with unconventional garb and accoutrements.






I was late for everything thereafter because I could not get Snowdrop away from this new exploration of the creative and unusual.











It seems to me that at Snowdrop's age, allowing her to grow confident in manipulating her world is possibly the most important skill that I can support. And I know, too, that her creativity knows no bounds. Throw in her verbal strengths and she is a person you'll easily be able to hire for your next geeky invention project! (I'm only the grandma... but this is what I see.)


We're leaving the farmhouse. I'm about to drive her home. She begs to put on farmhouse clothes that I keep as a backup, especially for outdoor play. She is bubbling with excitement: mommy will be so surprised to see me like this! She will open the door and she will be so surprised!






We drive a bit and I note how gorgeous the post-sunset sky is. The plumes of cloud left by airplanes only add to the beauty of the evening. I stop the car and direct her attention to it.
She asks --  Is that a rocket? Did a rocket go by?





And then, as we resume our journey  -- please, grandma, can you tell me the penguin story now?