Mostly Quiet

January, so far, has been bereft of snow with none of that softness to cover the bleached grass, the rutted earth. Bare trees etch the sky with their tremulous script. The sun is thin. When the wind picks up, the old windows rattle, keeping time. But mostly, it is quiet here in my gray little village with its Main Street ending in the sea.

I haven’t settled into January yet. Even mid-month, I’m still living the tinsel-packed pace of December. Still looking at an overloaded calendar. Still sensing that something is chasing me, and looking over my shoulder, I see nothing, hear nothing, but feel its quick, dry breath.

When I think of the January of my dreams, I think of a month of eternal days and long dark nights with only the stars and the wind for company. I think  of a sameness, of an uneventfulness as comforting as a gray flannel blanket. This sameness is good for me, I think, though for others, it is stultifying, drab, depression-inducing even. My friends long for cities, for palm trees, for parties, for something to look forward to. They miss December and its red dresses and glittery shoes, its sparkling lights and silver bowls of eggnog, its mad-cap pace.

“I dwell in possibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. She was speaking of poetry, I believe, but with its absence of distraction, there is possibility everywhere in January. Possibility in the making of soup, of soda bread, of an orderly sock drawer, of a fire in the hearth, of the knowledge of a brand-new word, of a walk at dusk with the sky all violet and purple, with frozen blue-striped sheets on the line, with the single flash of a cardinal, a conversation of sister crows in the old pine tree across Main Street.

I long for January and wonder if I’ll find it before it’s over. I tell myself to slow down. If I only have an hour before dashing out again then stretch that hour all the way into a lingering afternoon. Read one poem. Mix up the soda bread and bake it later. Toss some rusty pieces of metal on the worktable and see if they assume a shape, whisper the first words of a story. At least start on the sock drawer. Or just look at the sky for long minutes. Stand in the pale sun that comes in the kitchen door and let it soak into my back…so that when I look over my shoulder, there is nothing there but a January morning.

The dry breath is a sparrow’s song.

Kitchen Table Magic

The very best gifts come unbidden and take your breath away: a glorious sunset; a tiny shoot coming out of a very dead pot; the face of a long forgotten friend in a crowded shopping mall; flowers left on the doorstep. Thaumaturgy at work.

A week ago, I wouldn’t have known a word like that, let alone been able to use it. But a friend of mine turned into a thaumaturgist, or maker of magic and miracles, when he gave me my very own two-volume Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary complete with magnifying glass!

For years, I have coveted this weighty tome, longed to look up the whole story of a word without going to the library, but I hardly expected the OED to come to me one ordinary afternoon in December. Thaumaturgy is like that though: sudden and startling and out of the blue.

As with most love stories, I remember the time and place when it all began: the enchantment of words. For me, reading began early, and throughout childhood was a means not only of escape but of encounter with worlds I knew were there beyond and beneath the surface of things. My favorite was Volume I of The Young Junior Classics, a thick book with a red cover (that fell off with so much wear and tear) titled: “Fairy Tales & Fables.”

But the real awakening took place in a nondescript classroom at Sacramento State College in the middle of a blistering July afternoon. Taking a summer course in the Romantic Poets, the first literature class I had ever taken after high school, I was quite lost, young, looking for something but didn’t know what. There was no air- conditioning in the classroom, and as I looked out the open windows to the flat, scorched landscape, the gorgeous, bubbling words of John Keats in “The Eve of St. Agnes,” soaked into me like three days of rain. I knew that finding my way had something to do with words.

And now so many years later, the OED rests on the kitchen table, beckoning me to look up every word I’m not sure of or unfamiliar with, to take off my glasses and peer through the magnifying glass to read the tiny type that explains a word and its parentage and what it has become through the ages, all of this backed up by diverse quotes showing the word at work.

It’s all magic to me: the giving of the gift, the OED itself, the effort and happiness of using words to express what would otherwise lie silent, buried, unborn. Thaumaturgy, indeed.

At the Stove

Today is a Jane Austen day: it’s November, it’s raining, it’s chilly, it’s gloomy, and the wet air swirls with russet leaves falling to the ground. Summer and its cotton skirts, open windows, overflowing windowboxes, bathing suits, porch dinners, and night music is a memory and like a lot of memories, tinged with longing, edged with wistfulness.

It is good to live in a place where summer can be recalled on a dreary Jane Austen afternoon, good for the imagination, good for the workings of the soul. Many chapters ago, I lived for a few years in San Francisco, and while the fog was captivating and the food notable, there wasn’t nearly enough distinction between the seasons to satisfy my inner cravings.

In these so-short days when the four o’clocks descend with dusk and darkness, it’s interesting to note that with the leaves gone, more pale light filters through the trees and the spellbinding sunsets are arias in charcoal and silver, as if Nature is offering some compensation for the loss of those broad, sunny hours, that warmth soaking into our shoulders.

Like all of the animals and each of the falling leaves, we know that winter is soon upon us, and increasingly, a New England winter is something to be reckoned with. Snow falls, cold builds, ice jams, trees topple, roads slicken, lights go out, furnaces fail, blizzards happen.

We miss warmth, we need warmth, and so we turn to our stoves and dig out recipes for stew and soup and roasts and casseroles, to our trunks and attics for sweaters and boots and scarves and mittens, to our bookshelves and each other for insights and companionship when the wind roars around the corners of the house and all the world is silent save for that.

It’s a Jane Austen afternoon. I’m going to make soup tonight out of tomatoes and beans and garlic and onions but before that I’m piling on yet another sweater, snapping up the black umbrella, and heading out into the four o’clocks where the wet leaves will dance in the dusk, and I will breathe the November air redolent with earth and the silence of all things returning to it.

If I’m lucky, someone will have a fire going.

Stick Book

In the long ago times, Halloween, or All Hallow’s Eve, marked the beginning of winter and the darker half of the year. The Celts believed that on this night, the border between our world and that of the spirits merged, and those otherworldly beings were free to step over our thresholds and have a look around, scaring the wits out of sensible souls.

I must admit that Halloween has always unsettled me. Even when I was a girl, it was spooky out there on those dark, windy October nights with the clouds racing above the bare trees and all those ghosts and goblins on the loose. The candy was some compensation, as was the novelty of dressing up as a gypsy or a hobo, but I was quite happy to return to our well-lit living room and bite into the prized chocolate bar amid the boring caramels and candy corn.

That said, as I get older, the idea of being a year-round witch is quite appealing. I like wearing black, lots of fluttery layers of it; I like the dreamy idea of taking off on a broom for a midnight ride to anywhere; I like knowing I have access to secrets and feeling at home in mysterious places like deep woods, ancient castles, lonely moors.

I would be a good witch, albeit mischievous, and use my powers sagely. Since of all the witchy skills the casting of spells holds the most allure, I would specialize (there are spells for money, weather, health, home & hearth, success, etc.) in the genre that interests me most: love. For years, I have had in my possession a tattered little handmade book of Love Spells but never knew the name of the witch who gave it to me. Here are a few of her notations:

*If two people eat a four-leaf clover together, mutual love will result.

*To have a dream of a past love, eat a few caraway seeds before retiring.

*If you hold a catnip leaf until it is warm, then hold your lover’s hand, he will go anywhere with you.

*Apricot pits can be included in sachets to attract love. Orris roots, as well.

*Serve a rhubarb pie to your love to help mend a quarrel.

There are many others, and I agree that serving a homemade rhubarb pie will have almost any desired effect.

On this October’s final night, I will wear a sprig of thyme to make myself irresistible, don a diaphanous black skirt, bring the broom out from beside the wood pile, and see what happens when the wind picks up and the moon rises.

Farmstand, Honeoye Falls, NY

I have been spoiled this summer. My sister and brother-in-law gave me bouquets of arugula, swiss chard, salad greens; bags of string beans, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, summer squash; the occasional pepper and cucumber; even wonder of wonders, little dishes of raspberries. A good friend snapped off crunchy leaves of green and purple kale, filled a bag, and said, “Come by for more if you want.”

I am singing an encomium to my sister, brother-in-law, my friend, to all of the front and backyard gardeners who till and compost the earth, plant the seeds, weed and water and watch over so that the rest of us can know goodness, can be truly fed. They give us a gift of grand proportions.

How to even describe the thrill of biting into a sun-warmed tomato or a snappy green bean or an edgy kale leaf or a milk and honey ear of corn? It’s like eating summer itself: the sultry nights and damp breezes; the sound of baseball games and laughter and the earth breathing; the fragrance of nodding roses, grill smoke, salt, and low tide; the feeling of the sun soaking into the back of your neck; the childhood memories of all those years when summer stretched out like a ribbon to the moon.

We have just passed the equinox when the day is equal to the night. Asters and mums, pumpkins and gourds, and tidy bundles of wood have replaced the pots of basil and hanging baskets of petunias by the front doors of supermarkets. The morning comes ever later, the evening ever sooner. The air is blue and edged with crispness that marks the leaves of the chestnut trees that fall brown and brittle in the street.

Summer leaves gently in early September. The gardeners, of course, know before the rest of us, taking note of what is getting spindly, yellow, dried, sparse. They follow the light and its increasing reticence, its thinning, its pulling away as it is called to other landscapes, other horizons. September’s end leaves us pulling on sweaters, checking the furnace, hungering for apples and warm things like socks and soups and books and the company of each other.

My brother-in-law is now growing potatoes. He puts them in a bag and gives them to me, coated with dirt and oddly shaped with funny little specks and eyes. I roast them with rosemary and pepper and oil, grateful for the hot oven and the comforting aroma that warms the rooms of my house, grateful for the steadying flavor of roots and cellars, and most especially grateful for the gardeners still bearing gifts of grand proportions even as September wanes.

Old Knives

In these dog days of August when the milk turns blue and the newspaper is limp and the night rings with crickets and the occasional ribbet/ribbet of a tree frog, I have no desire to go anywhere. It could be that humidity and inertia complement each other; it could be the toss and turn nights and the soporific afternoons; it could just be that the helter-skelter summer is winding down, and I am ready for ease.

On Cape Cod, August is the sun-bleached month, faded and familiar after the intensity of July’s parades, baseball games, bustling restaurants, thronged beaches. It’s still busy, but September looms, casting its blue shadows over the dry leaves and the straw grass. The people who live here only in summer are thinking about Florida, and those of us who live here year-round are contemplating the prospect of quiet mornings and shorter lines at the grocery store.

There are those who go and there are those who stay, and we live differently. I don’t think about closing up a house, pulling down shades, stripping beds, cleaning out the refrigerator, turning off the gas and the water, saying good-bye, setting sail over the bridge for another abode, another set of friends, another landscape. I divide the year into four seasons, not two.

I envy them sometimes, those who go, escaping ice dams and snowbanks, the formidable cold that snaps the trees, the blizzards that blow out the lights and disarm the furnace. Those who leave don’t bundle up to go to the library or quietly live the long strings of gray days. But they miss wood fires and stews, warm socks, the comfort of an old wool sweater, and seeing the bones of things. They miss the lesson that winter relentlessly demonstrates: we are all in this soup together.

Those who go dispute me, finding happiness in the endless sun and the green golf courses and the ease of walking on beach sand and clear sidwalks. For them, there are flowers in February and tropical breezes in December. And in my little village, their ranks are swelling, as they shutter their houses, wave good-bye to the librarians and the Post Office ladies and the Stop and Shop check-out girls and all the rest of Main Street.

One by one, the houses go dark and the streets turn to sleep. For now, I have decided to stay put and keep a candle shining in the upstairs window so that when the snow falls, you know someone is home.

Hydrangeas. Twilight.

This is my backyard, freshly mowed. The midsummer light falls in the early evening on the old hydrangeas, while I watch it ebb into the green every night I can.

I don’t mow this yard any more. It has joined the list of things I’ve given up: washing windows; playing tennis; living with someone; cleaning gutters; writing in cubicles; sleeping the whole night through; shoveling out the driveway; walking miles and miles in New York and Paris; making roast beef and Yorkshire pudding; cocktail parties; staying up late.

It’s a great luxury not to mow. I hear the roar of the landscaper’s monster machine and the mosquito-pitched whine of the weed-eater and in spite of the racket, feel a sense of well-being, of relief, of pleasure in the not doing. It’s like a wealthy friend treating for an elegant dinner or the man at the hardware store kindly assembling the boxed table fan or waking to the rumble of thunder in the wee hours, knowing the windows are shut to the rain.

All this not doing should leave more space in my life, but it seems I’m rather like an extra guest room or a big attic or a nice dry cellar: I expand to fill it. As a friend wrote, “You are called to busyness.” Summer is busy for me: there is a large craft fair I foolishly sign up for year after year; more orders come in from my stores; the social calendar picks up; flower boxes and bird baths beg for water; and the dreary dehumidifier bucket has to be dragged up steep cellar steps every morning.

And yet, with all this to do, I feel a compelling inclination towards leisure. I want to eavesdrop on the conversations of birds; to breathe in the moody, damp air on a slow afternoon walk; to feel the sun sink into my shoulders as I read a paperback full of sand and purple prose; to watch the moon come up over the tops of cedars and warm roofs; to sleep late or get up early depending on whim; to chatter aimlessly with my neighbors; to sit every evening and watch the sun sink into the trunks of maples; to follow the upward trails of the ghost planes; and to stare at the twilight falling on the hydrangeas and the grass I no longer have to mow.

More and more, I would like to be called to that.

Headdress by Stephen Jones

You should only wear a hat on the days you’re in love with yourself. If you wear a hat on a day that you aren’t, the hat will become bigger than you, and it will wear you instead of the other way around.

Sometimes I wear a hat around my house when I’m working in the little factory or vacuuming or drinking a cup of coffee. It makes me feel spirited, brave, eccentric, mysterious. Often though, I take the hat off when I go out the door because I know on that particular day, the hat will wear me and people will stare and I won’t be able to take the heat. This is especially true on the Cape where I live, since most people dress for comfort and sartorial statements issue too much of a proclamation.

A couple of days ago in a little Provincetown shop, I bought a beautiful hat and even though it’s wool, I wore it all day and felt radiant and quite at home with myself. This confidence was no doubt attributable to the prior three days spent in Manhattan, observing New York in full summer regalia: floaty trapeze dresses worn with black socks and short boots; long black dresses with sliced wispy skirts and thick platform shoes; big baggy trousers with tight muscle-y tops; and lively sneakers all over the place.

It was also a delight to visit the Metropolitan’s Costume Institute’s exhibition: “China: Through the Looking Glass,” a full-scale, multi-media spectacle showing the strong influence of China on Western fashion. All the headdresses on the splendid mannequins were created by Stephen Jones, a designer who knows a thing or two about imagination and probably wears a hat every day.

Such sights are good for my soul. I come home refreshed and reconfigured, ready to mix a pair of stylish black sneakers with Charlie Chaplin pants; ready to try a shimmering platter of freshly dug littleneck clams on a summer night; ready to take down the tattered lace curtains and put up valances of crumpled moving paper; ready to sit in the dusky twilight and count fireflies; ready to hang an old door out in the Italian courtyard; and quite ready to wear a spunky little hat with all systems go, all the quite necessary aplomb.

Froggie & Peunias

May is upon us. The air is scented with lilacs and lily of the valley. Swirls of cherry blossoms mix with clouds of raspy pollen. Soft gray light drifts through the bedroom window at 4:30, turns clear and bold by noon, and settles into dusk just after eight. The woodpecker, tapping his amorous code into the garden shed, is my alarm clock, compelling me to fly out of bed, slide my bare feet into wellies, race out to the back yard, flail my arms, and convince him to take his staccatos elsewhere.

May is the month Cape Cod really wakes up. Lights come on in the big, dark houses nearest the water; landscapers’ ubiquitous trucks roar down Main Street, shedding mulch and grass clippings; clam shacks unshutter; “See You In The Spring,” signs disappear; and everyone, including me, is flocking to the nurseries for plants.

My house has three windowboxes; the Mary Jane Merritt School for Girls (an outbuilding named for my mother) has two; and there are pots to be filled at the clothesline, the patio, the Italian courtyard. All of this is a daunting task for a person who likes to dress up every day, dislikes work clothes, and has no gardening aptitude at all. My father, who grew glorious gardens and loved the whole process, would wonder at this genetic deviation.

I am a lost soul at the nurseries, wandering in tattered petticoats and silken shreds like Miss Havisham in the once-upon-a-time gardens of Satis House. The flowers and plants are beautiful, yes, but what goes where, what goes with what, what likes this, what can’t tolerate that! For me, it’s an algebraic nightmare…except that the numbers and letters have names like Thunbergia, Dichondra, Centaurea cyanus, Helenium amarum.

But this year, the gods have intervened and sent me to a little family-owned nursery near my house. The people there are kind and patient, overlooking my ineptitude, confusion, and fight/flight emotional responses. They sell the kind of plants children understand: petunias, geraniums, marigolds, nasturtiums, morning glories, zinnias. They offer simple advice as to what goes where and what likes what, making this planting challenge if not fun, at least feasible.

And so I wrap a black apron over the party skirts and don the dirty gardening gloves and slice open the bags of potting soil and tuck the baby plants into the warm earth and whisper a little prayer and hope that my father hears, understands, smiles, and offers his blessing: a green thumbs-up.

Crocus Field

“Dig where your tears fall,” Santiago’s heart advises in The Alchemist. I read the book a long time ago but often call upon those words when I’m a bit lost or when the old ways have stopped working or when I find myself at odds with where I am.

Digging where your tears fall is a good place to begin anything: a poem, a garden, a move to distant lands. In these first few glorious, coatless spring days, I’m thinking primarily of joyful tears, leaving the wounded, melancholic ones for other seasons, darker days.

In mid-April, after a winter that shook us like a dog’s tattered toy, my tears are falling into the open mouths of crocuses that skirt the dogwood trees and spread like a deep violet breath across whole back yards. When the crocuses first appear, we know spring is sweeping winter out the door, and our grateful houses, relieved of their massive icicles and frozen roof dams and lost driveways, take in that violet breath and sigh up to the rafters, down into the cellars.

Suddenly the salt-streaked boots, the threadbare mittens, the cumbersome coats, the layered windows, the quilts, wool blankets, stews, soups, and hearty casseroles all seem heavy, weary, wrong. The first day I raise the storm windows, tug down the screens, and fill my furnace-breathing house with sweet air that smells like unborn buds and crumbling earth, I feel like a child again, ready for a bike ride, a romp, a song.

So much seems possible these April days when just a walk without boots and coat is a miracle in itself. I rake oak leaves and burn the dead wood and hang out the sheets and tear into the closets and listen to the rain and think about where my tears are falling now that the morning light drifts across the pillows before six and the birds call through the screens and the dusk stays steady until well after seven.

Maybe a poem. Maybe a new dress. Maybe a love story. Maybe a big pot of pansies. Maybe a whole dinner of asparagus. Maybe a rollicking house-hooshing, moving the furniture, taking up the rugs, finding lost buttons and cracker crumbs and fireplace ash and settled dust and memories of a winter all past and gone.

My tears fall into that.