Tuesday

This morning, as I set out our breakfast, wondering whether I should call Ed down or let him sleep, I once more considered where to put the handful of holiday cards that have come to the farmette. They deserve a place of honor.

(Ed comes down. I'm glad. Breakfast is infinitely more special when he joins me, which he does, out of the goodness of his heart, daily.)





It would be completely not for me to even suggest that you or anyone should revert to sending out holiday cards (the time, the money -- all such good arguments for turning your back on them), but I do want to tell you why I myself love them so much.

To put a card in the mail does require more effort than simply saying Happy Holidays on FB or in a text, but the gesture is infinitely more beautiful. The physical presence of the design (or photo), chosen by the sender, expressing something of her or his whimsy, sends forth just about the highest form of hygge (Danish winter coziness), in my view. I'm charmed by each and every card I get and I study each one carefully.

(For now, the small handful can adorn our kitchen window...)





You are going to tell me that you do not want trees to come down for the paper that cards require. I understand your concern. Nonetheless, I'll stay with cards. I'll go so far as to give up my books in favor of  Kindle reading, and I'll part ways with news print in favor of online press. Too, Ed will have called every single company that sends a catalogue in the mail and asked them to take us off their mailing list. Pfft! No more catalogues! But I'm keeping my cards. Because I value so much what is printed or scribbled on a piece of paper, especially now!

We have very confused and confusing emotions at this time of the year, compounded by the stress of having too much on our plates. Still, I'm a big believer in sifting through these complicated  emotions and reaching for the stuff that brings us joy. Stuff that keep our lights of happiness burning brightly. Stuff that make you and me smile. Cards make me smile.

(This cover of the New Yorker also made me smile; too, it's a good reminder to be super kind to the people who make deliveries at this time of the year.)






It's a gray day in Wisconsin and I have a lot of very uninteresting things to attend to, all surrounding my mother's transfer to a rehab facility. She has a new set of needs right now and she can do virtually nothing for herself. Too, the past weeks are a blur for her and this means that I have to step into her shoes and attend to matters of daily life for her. A lost item that is important to her needs to be found. I search her apartment up and down and all around and fail to find it. I see the disappointment in her face when I tell her during my visit. Papers. Endless papers come in the mail. Others don't come in the mail on their own, you have to request them. Details of another person's life are complicated. This week they have become my details.

(driving to my mom's apartment)






I barely make it home in time to drink a quick coffee before I pick up the kids. But the candle burns and the music plays.






The kids, at pickup time.






And now at the farmette, Ed engages Snowdrop in a rousing game of volley ball. With a pillow.






Sparrow is a good cheering squad.






(That's Ed's capture: Olivia, at Christmas.)






Much of the play time with Sparrow today was spent on dressing and undressing this little bear.






Snowdrop is always fascinated by what's on Ed's computer screen. This time she finds a video on the conflict between secular and religious Jews in Israel.






Always interesting: the games the kitties play on the porch.






Evening. I'm glad I have chicken with rice and beans to reheat. Microwaves were invented for days like this!

Monday

This is what you should always remember: the stuff that you think will be hard may in fact be easy and the stuff you dismiss as simple may, in the end, stump you.

I am up early. It's cold. There is a pretty dusting of snow outside...






I know it wont stay. We'll be back to brown tones soon enough. But for now, I like it!

Breakfast, where I say a quiet thanks to the Kalamazoo soy candles that have cast a warm glow over each and every day since we had our first blast of cold air back in early November...






And then I make my way to the hospital, where my mother is ready to be discharged. It's a cold day and my car is not easy to get in and out of and so I worry.

Needlessly. Up, swivel, sit. She is in. And I know from her conversation in the car that this hasn't been dramatic for her: she is quite her old self, albeit still totally fatigued.

The Rehab facility is however you want to see it: one step less brutal than a hospital, but surely less homey than... well, home. And there are the messy parts. The paper work to process, the social worker that I have to find ("oh, we're sorry but we're in the process of hiring and training a new one..."), the lost wallet, the needed clothes, the missing papers, the incorrect papers... Oh, you know. Stuff. And stuff is always never ending. It breeds more stuff. You can't downsize and rid yourself of ongoing stuff. It just keeps coming.

Still, this is life: you move through the gritty chores and if you are lucky (like I am!), you return to your calm space with a candle and you pick up mail and you smile at the holiday cards and holiday box in your mailbox and you heat up an espresso with very frothy milk and you put away chores for now and go pick up the kids at school.

(Where is my sister??)






(Lost in a story...)






(At the farmhouse, she goes for the stack of books...)






(He's hoping for "office play")






(No office game today, but all's forgiven!)






(Love triumphs.)





Yes it does!

Kids go home, daylight recedes and I go back to my various chores and obligations. Much has been done. Much is still left to do.

Sunday

Here are a few sources of pleasure that we underestimate over and over again: sunshine heads the list! I wake up to single digit temps (so, like, -13C), but the skies are silky blue and in my trudge to the shed and barn to feed the animals, I don't feel cold!






Here's another: oatmeal in the morning. With stuff added. Include in that honey. It's like bringing your summer flower garden into your winter routines! Heaven. (Ed isn't convinced. His loss.)





And another: music! Sweet gentle sounds, easily adaptable to your mood. I'd been reluctant to turn it on since I've moved to the farmhouse. It seemed unfair: Ed's not one who would love sound for its own sake. But I fell into the habit of turning on music in November, when he was gone and I've stuck with it, to no protest. It's quiet and gentle -- holiday-ish these days, more vocal jazzy in normal times, the kind of stuff you'd hear at a sun drenched coffee shop, and it takes me into pleasant spaces.



Today I am absolutely on board with going out for a walk. Ed suggests the city park by Lake Monona. I'll take any place that's woodsy and quiet.






The lake is just starting to freeze over. It's pretty right now! And the views toward our city skyline are sublime!





I need this walk to clear my mind. Much of the day had been spent on reviewing options for my mom. The doctor deems her ready to be discharged from the hospital and I think that's correct: she is stable (and sharp as ever!), if very weak. Tomorrow she'll be moved (possibly by me) to a nursing home rehab facility. It's a slower track than the Rehab Hospital and I agree with that choice as well. She needs time. And honestly, I need time as well to figure out the next step.

After our walk, Ed and I go over to her apartment. He fixes some of the mechanical issues that had gone awry in the last months and I clear out her refrigerator and pack a few needed items for tomorrow's move.

We return to the farmhouse just before sunset. (Our sun set at 4:23 pm. today. Isn't it grand that in exactly a week, the days will start to grow long again?!) The shed cats have been infiltrating the porch, not so much to terrorize Stop Sign and her two kitties, but because they know I can see them, and they can see me, and we stare thus at each other, until I relent and send Ed out to feed them in their proper place (the shed).


No young family for dinner tonight. It's surely been the weekend for holiday parties and events for them! I had asked Ed to find a recipe for chicken and rice that he would like me to cook for him. Comfort food. Simple and good.

Saturday

Take stock, restock, reconsider. Those would be good words for today.

Much of my brain power is devoted to thinking/planning/conferring about my mom's next step. Even as she still is unable to take any steps at all. Still, we must plan for what happens now that she is getting to be more stable.

And my physical activity today? Well, Ed asked if I wanted to go for a hike. One stroll to the barn was enough for me. Too cold, too gray, too uninviting. Instead, I devote my exertions to wrapping packages. Just a few. And after breakfast of course.





I do feel a tad sorry for Ed, who is so much not a Christmas guy, even as he goes along with all my ideas on how these days should be spent. (We're discussing Christmas Day dinner. I'm sure he'd be happy with a can of beans, but no, I need to make it special and so we talk about the possibilities.)

Sometimes I did wonder if a more Jewish orientation toward this season on my part would have made him feel more comfortable with these weeks of holiday activity (though his family, much like the Jewish family I nannied for in my young adult years, was happy to put up a Christmas tree for the kids when they were little).
Did you celebrate Hanukkah? -- I asked him today.
No...

Oh well. Each family creates their own pool of traditions. My attachment will always be to Christmas. Even if the grandkids lived far away and I did not see them around the holidays, sad as this would be, I would wake up on December 24th and think -- it's Christmas Eve. How special!

Friday

It's a different kind of Friday. I'm not pointing fingers to the "13th," because I have always rather liked that number and never understood why it should get a bad rap, especially when paired with a Friday (a day I also like), but still, I'd say this day tilts toward the complicated end of things.

And it's gray and misty... (notice the wee kitty in the tree?)


 



Which would make one gloomy were it not for the twinkly lights in one's kitchen... (so delicious, especially in the evening!)






And the soy candle burning next to me. Even at breakfast.





I know how to work my hygge (Danish inner cosy).


I spend the morning and at least part of the afternoon at the hospital, visiting my mom and talking to the team of docs, nurses, therapists, and service coordinators charged with her care. This probably requires clarification: my mom had a stroke earlier in the week and though her cognitive functions remain good, there is a lot in her life right now that is not up to speed. What happens next is the big question and I listened to all these people as they made their case for where she should go after she is discharged from the hospital (probably on Monday).

Making arrangements for this takes time and patience. I do not have the kids this afternoon (they were lucky to win the lottery and get tickets for the women's volleyball game, which is a BIG DEAL, if you follow college sports, as the team will advance, by virtue of today's win, to the Elite Eight in the NCAA tournament). So I have time. And I have a more than modest amount of patience.

And I realize that in many ways, the next step for my mom is the easy one: essentially she goes into slow rehab or fast track rehab. Those are her choices. (And I'm sure I can gently nudge her toward the one that the med team thinks is optimal for her.) But what happens after that? Figuring this out will not be easy.

After a crazy quick grocery shopping trip (some things stay the same, even on Friday the 13th!), I go to my daughter's house for a quick visit with the kids...

("at home, they let me use markers!')






 ("look! a present with my name on it!")






And a quick-ish outing with their mom for a glass of wine and a bit of catch up conversation and then I'm home again.

Candle burns, lights twinkle, popcorn is popped and the search for the rare good movie is on. Not so lucky with that today: we cycle through a handful of indifferent ones before giving up for the night.

I think back to the days when Ed and I used to go over to Blockbuster and later to the library, searching through endless movie boxes before picking a handful of DVDs for the night. These days, we merely stay put, on the couch, and click the remote several times. On a cold December night, I am grateful that we needn't go anywhere at all to indulge a movie fancy. Still, at other times I think we've lost something. We hardly go out in the evenings, because, well, we don't have to. That may be a good thing. Most of the time.

Thursday

How times have changed! With one final click, today I finished shopping for the holidays. It's not a small pile: being a grandmother, a mother, and a friend to a handful of deserving folk, the list for the seasons grew large. But out of that whole stack, only two gifts were purchased on foot. The rest? On line.

Yes, this has its virtues. As compared to slogging through shopping malls in a small Midwestern city, shopping online places no limits on what you can find. Still, I'd say the time spent isn't less. I'm exhausted with searching on my computer screen. With the barrage of email ads (and knowing that with every new merchant, I add more email clutter in my box). With the pile up of shipping boxes. With always thinking "I can do better than that item!"

And, there is the inevitable disappointment. I ordered two boxes of certain sweets. One went directly to the recipient, the other came here. When I opened it, I was shocked at how small it looked! All that money for that?? I don't care how good they may be, they look puny! That's what you get for not picking something off a shelf of a store.

No matter, I'm done. Now comes the time to start thinking about presentation (aka wrapping). I'll get to that on weekend days.

In the meantime, around me I have a spring board of falling and rising dominoes: my November illness is almost a thing of the past, Ed is almost well, a daughter is now sniffling, as is Sparrow, and of course, my mother is still in the hospital. Our ages and the season explain it all.

Still, we are not complaining. There is ice in the air (really!), but the house is warm, and the other day Ed found a long string of white lights that he had gotten as a freebie in some decade long ago, and so we are aglow with the twinkle of little lights, inside and out. Fa la la la la...



In the afternoon, I pick up the two kids at school. First Sparrow, then Snowdrop. (How the little guy loves a good routine!)






(In her class, her friends are his friends...)






At the farmhouse, they play side by side, but in a sort of intertwined way. He wants so much to be included and she manages to give away enough of her props and story line to keep him deeply satisfied.












Today is also the last day of dance class for the year. That means families are invited. (I can take a photo or two without the interference of a one-way looking glass!)






(the dress up part...)






And after, I return home, picking up our winter spinach, carrots and kale from our CSA farmer along the way. They say these cold snaps are good for winter hoop veggies. Makes them sweet. I open up a bag of spinach and grab a few fistfuls to munch on during the drive home.

Wednesday

On this bitter cold morning, my computer (temporarily) died. It was, of course, a significant event because it meant that I would have to devote time to its resurrection. How unfortunate! Our local Apple store is chaos in the off season. It is many multiples of chaos at this time of the year. Still, I go through the steps of finding a slot to have a repair person take a look at it. And Apple directs me to a tech store that is actually a stand alone shop, rather than an offshoot of the tech giant.

This is a fantastic outcome! Never again will I go and push my way toward the Genius Bar at Apple (if you've had to do it, you'll know what I mean). I can work with the tech support in a quiet, gentle setting, where you can get an appointment the same day!

It is an example of how a bad start to a day can flip and become a lesson learnt. And by the way, the fix was simple and pure. I am typing away as if nothing had happened.

There is little reason to go out otherwise. Yes, the skies are blue, but the cold is starting to really penetrate everything. The car takes a long while to warm up. The ground is frozen hard. The cheepers do their one legged stand in a sunny spot, the porch cats huddle on their flimsy little heating pad. It feels like February out there.






Breakfast preparations -- just before my run to the tech store.






And in the afternoon, I play with the kids.






We spend the early evening in the "office."






Sparrow loves being included in the very serious business of writing and drawing stuff. (Snowdrop is making a case for keeping a flying pig hat I had placed in a pile of Goodwill stuff.)











And the full winter moon shines brightly on all of us...





... even on my mom, who is in the hospital again tonight. It's so fortunate that she made the move here from California last year. She may be in a cold climate now, but she is a stone's throw away from where we live. And that's such a good thing.

Tuesday

I am lucky in travel. Most of the time I've had good outcomes. Even when things go wrong, they don't quite reach horrible levels of misfortune. I never come home thinking - that was one awful trip! Nothing went right!

Right now, I am also thinking that I am lucky when I choose not to travel. For the past couple of decades, I've always gone to Poland and France in December. Initially it was to see my father, with whom I had little other contact. When he died, I continued my winter travels. I wanted to spend time with my sister and with my Polish friends. Stopping in Paris on the way back was routine: Paris is delightful before Christmas. This year, I decided not to go in December. And that is such a good thing! The travel chaos in France right now is of monumental proportion. It may well have been the trip that would have had me come back thinking - that was one disastrous set of days!

So here I am, in south central Wisconsin, sipping a cafe au lait and eating a pain au chocolat, while the TV in the background lets loose a torrent of French words.






I'm at La Baguette, a cafe bakery that I used to come to when I lived closer to it (and when Ed and I had a greater bread addiction). It's run by a French family and it is really simple, homey and, well, kind of nice. The buche de Noel wouldn't catch your eye in Paris, but it's the kind of cake you'd find at this time of the year at your local bakery down the road, in a small French town.





Despite the fact that the owners have lived in Wisconsin for probably upwards of a decade, they haven't lost their Frenchness. And they speak French to each other and anyone who wishes to join in and so I am having my December French moment. In Madison.

It's very cold outside. The Arctic blast may be a few degrees tamer than the one we had in early November, but still, when I went out in the morning to feed the animals, we were at 12F (-11C). I had early morning errands and so I skipped breakfast (sacrilegious but necessary) and this is how I found myself at La Baguette in late morning.



In the afternoon, of course, the kids are at the farmhouse. Again, I am lucky: Snowdrop and Sparrow are in good form right now.Today was a great example of their best. He let me zip through a whole bunch of books that she wanted and he couldn't possibly understand. Then she created stories out of the most extraordinary nothings while I played happy games with the little guy.












We hardly noticed that it was a super cold day today. Hardly.

Monday

I have three little elves on the little farmhouse tree. Symbols. One for each grandchild.






This, in addition to the simple ornament of the two little children (girls!) looking out a window pane. I've had that for decades. My two little girls.

There are a few other symbols hanging down from the branches: chickens, for our farmette life. A pine cone Santa. Candles of light. Macarons. And that's it. I like to look up at the tree and one or another of these comes into focus and it always makes me smile. My deepest affections, summarized on a tree.

One may well look at the colors on that tree, because it is, otherwise, a gray and foggy day. The cheepers hide in the the barn. The porch cats stay on the porch, playing.






We're waiting for real winter weather. It's expected, within hours.

Breakfast prep: this is when you remind yourself how utterly warm and cozy your home is.






In the afternoon, I head to the kids' school. First, I go for Sparrow.






Then Snowdrop. We make our way home. (She is wearing a dress of her choice. The young family is heading to a holiday party in the evening. She'll surely be a conversational ice breaker!)






Sparrow, not that book again!!






(The prancing unicorn...)






And then the sun sets and the clouds clear and the temperature falls. Tomorrow will surely feel like the thick of winter.