On snow and solace
and staying out of my email for one more day
It’s Monday morning and we’re up before the sun, candles lit, coffee in our cups, Coltrane on the stereo. We’re both wrapped in a blanket, sitting at the window, watching the back woods gradually brighten.
“What are you thinking about,” I say.
“Nothing much,” says my spouse Janyce.
We’re quiet together in our living room, drinking coffee. Swirls runs at us to say she needs to go out and then just as abruptly trots back into the bedroom, her nails making clacking sounds on the wood floors.
“Did you threaten her with breakfast?” I say.
“I did,” says Janyce. “I’ve got to go out and shovel a path for her.”
She gets up to leave the room and I turn my attention back to the window, check my cellphone messages, open my laptop that is right beside me. It’s Martin Luther King Jr. day—a Monday holiday for both of us. It’s also another momentous day today, too. But in this house, we’re trying our best to ignore that altogether, hoping to have a cozy day to focus on instead. Yesterday, I ran out to pick up some suet cakes for the birds (chili pepper and nuts and berries) and now, just as the sun is starting to splash the base of the tree trunks in gold light, here come the woodpeckers.
In anticipation of snow today, we both agreed that we’d make a fire in the wood stove, linger over buckwheat pancakes with blueberry syrup, ease into a lazy morning in pajamas intent on doing nothing. But that isn’t so easy. Not for Janyce, who is buzzing around the house, washing pans at the kitchen sink, scrubbing the wax that dripped off the candle and onto the tray. I hear the sound of the Dyson overpowering the music on the stereo and I look over my shoulder to see her bent over the ottoman using the tiny attachment to suck up some crumbs leftover from the popcorn bowl.
“Is it impossible for you to relax?” I say. “Come back and let’s read the next chapter in the book.”
I gifted her the best-selling book The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl for Christmas and we’ve been reading it out loud together. Each chapter is a short couple of pages that muses on some facet of local wildlife, often viewed from a window. Today’s entry ended with the vivid image of a suburban woman saving the fate of her beloved bluebirds by cutting the snake (about to enter the birdhouse and get at the nest) in half with a pair of hedge clippers.
“Wow, that’s a bit violent isn’t it?” I say.
“Agree,” she says, closing the book.
Janyce seems antsy, and if I’m honest, I’m feeling antsy too, and a bit cranky. Now that it is fully morning, the sunlight is blinding, reflecting off the whiteness of the yard. It hurts my eyes. For me, it’s also proving to be more difficult to block out the events of the day and I switch over to my inbox to open a newsletter and listen to Heather Cox Richardson and Jen Rubin have a brief video conversation about history and the need for resistance. I’m looking for words of solace and I don’t get many.
“I thought you were going to stay away from all of that today,” says Janyce.
“I was. I should,” I say, and slap my laptop closed.
Swirls has given up coming to me for snacks and scratches and some sign that we will be leaving for a long romp in the snow soon. Instead, she sprawls out on the braided rug in front of the stove, her whole body outstretched and belly exposed in front of the fire now roaring to life.
COPING by P. H. Crosby how it eats at you, the news, always it’s in the news, not even a story needed, just a snippet of headline finds you scrubbing a little harder with something you shouldn’t, a piece of steel wool in your fist that will take off enamel, finds your jaw clenched as you seek some solace in the yard, icy white clouds rocketing above you in the desolate blue; and when your wife comes in later from chopping wood, her face a little gray already with weariness, you convince her to listen to music instead of turning on the news, so she won’t one more time have to sit in the grip of powerlessness with you, unable to affect the course let alone the outcome, least of all with the lines belting out of your smart little machine, which ricochet while you pause, searching for the g, and see you have savaged the very letter off your key.