Hemlock needles

When Beautiful Smart Wonderful Daughter moved back home this week, she brought a laundry basket of clothes and — of course — her laptop computer. Almost as soon as she walked in the door, she claimed a spot on the comfy couch in front of the fire and opened her laptop to begin editing a magazine article due this week. Boy in Black isn't done with his semester either: he has several final exams. After I put another log on the fire and sat down next to my daughter with my laptop, he said, "Hey, if we're having a laptop party, I'll bring down mine."

And that's where we've been this week, cosily settled in front of the fire, getting our work done while we eat and talk. With-a-Why and Shaggy Hair have joined us with their homework or sometimes provided background music on the piano, since they've got their Christmas concert on Saturday. (They are playing a four-hand version of the Tchaikovsky's Russian Dance from The Nutcracker Suite.)

In an unusual surge of domestic activity spurred on by the fact that I had papers to grade, I made hot lentil stew, a big pot of homemade vegetable soup, vegan chocolate cake, and a type of cinnamon oatmeal bread that we all call "Healthy Bread" because it is relentlessly healthy. Spouse has been at work, furiously getting his stuff done so he can enjoy ten days home with us at Christmas. The roads have been icy and snow-covered, but inside, the house smells of cinnamon and woodsmoke and chocolate.

I've taken the time to work on some big cleaning projects, mostly downstairs where I can hang out with the kids and clean at the same time. I'm a binge cleaner, and the end of a semester is when I tackle projects: cleaning out the refrigerator and freezer, tossing anything that is still there from last year, emptying the cupboards, going through the bookshelves behind the kitchen table, sorting through the stacks of books and papers that accumulate everywhere. Billie talked on her blog about the concept of osoji, a ritual of cleaning and purification that comes at the end of a year, and that fits with my mood as we approach the Solstice.

This morning, though, after several days of lounging by the fire, I got a facebook message from Often Erotic Sometimes Blogging Friend: "Perfect day for winter photos. Get out there, girl." She was right. The house was empty. My younger kids had gone off to school, Spouse was at work, Boy in Black had left to take a Physical Chemistry exam, and my daughter had gone with him to hand in a final project. So I pulled on my winter coat and boots, and trudged out in the snowy, windy woods behind my house.

White snow was drifting and clinging to every surface in the woods: branches, trees stumps, mossy logs. The ground was frozen, but the ice still thin on the puddles. Since I had worn my tall rubber boots, I crashed happily through the puddles, stomping through the ice, breaking white into jagged pieces that drifted crazily on muddy water. I am far too noisy in the woods to see much wildlife, but snowy ground was criss-crossed with the tracks of white-tailed deer.

A few times, I stopped to take off my gloves and take out my camera, but really, it's not easy to take photos when the wind is blowing snow onto your eyelashes and camera lens. Mostly, I just tromped around, enjoying the cold, pure air, and admiring the way the white snowflakes clung to green mosses and the gold-brown leaves of young beech trees. I walked east, following an old logging trail until I came to the hemlock grove where the deer bed down sometimes. Here, in this sheltered spot, snow was balanced on the green branches of the hemlocks, waiting only for a careless hiker to brush against the needles and send it whirling down to the ground.

By the time I returned to the warm house, my feet and hands were cold, and my lungs were full of fresh, clean air. I poured myself a cup of hot tea, cut myself a slice of chocolate cake, and sat back down on the comfy couch to write a blog post.

Ultimate player in the house

Boy in Black has a very limited wardrobe, consisting almost entirely of black band t-shirts and a few pairs of black or grey zip-off pants, teamed sometimes with a black hoodie and often a black bandana. Most of his clothes will stay crumpled in the bottom of a duffle bag for the whole month he's home. But not his Ultimate Frisbee jerseys. He has two team jerseys, one black and one white, and he is always careful to hang them up in an appropriate place of honor. The shirts are the first thing I saw yesterday when I walked into the house.

Yes, it's good to have him home.

Desperately seeking

advice on where to buy the perfect pair of black socks.

I've written before about how impossible it is to buy any kind of gift for someone who lives in a small urban apartment. When I get a Christmas present for Urban Sophisticate Sister, I usually buy something like lip gloss, or candy, or a candle — something that can be used up and won't take up any room in her apartment. Usually, I don't buy gifts for grown-ups, but Urban Sophisticate is my little sister, nine years younger, so she doesn't count as a grown-up, even though she is old enough to run for president and would, for that matter, do a far better job as president than the person who currently holds that office. Despite the fact that she has a successful career and a book contract, she is still forced to sit at the kids' table at holiday meals. So she still gets a present.

Anyhow, to get to my point: this year, I've discovered that Urban Sophisticate sister is in need of the perfect black socks. To quote her: "I want black socks that I can wear with my dress boots. They shouldn't be too thick (a la athletic "tube" socks) nor should they be too thin (a la "trouser" socks, which are only slightly thicker than stockings.) I'd say the best thickness of the most desirous socks would be the equivalent of putting two paper towels together. Also, in height they should come up to about mid-shin."

Urban Sophisticate claims that she has searched Big City Like No Other, and the perfect socks are nowhere to be found. Obviously, I'm not going to find them in Snowstorm City either. And I am so incapable of choosing clothes for my sophisticated sister that even a pair of socks is beyond my expertise.

So I am appealing to my readers. If you know of an online source for these perfect black socks, send me a link. Please.

Endings

Last week, I drove to my daughter's off-campus apartment for the last Friday lunch of the semester. She lives in a neighborhood of once-beautiful old houses that have been carved up for student housing. The narrow streets, crowded with cars parked as close as they can, curve up and down steep hills, and the bare branches of trees overhang crooked sidewalks. What used to be lovely old porches now hold trash cans and recycling bins.

I noticed a bag of canned goods on my daughter's front porch, a bag that's been there since some time in October. "Yeah," she said, "We got some flyer from the Boy Scouts or someone like that asking us to leave out some canned goods, but no one ever came and picked them up."

It was the last day of classes. Boy in Black and First Extra arrived early, stamping snow off their feet as they came in, taking spots at the little table in the bay window. Film Guy leaned back in his chair and announced, "I just had my last class. Ever." He's graduating a semester early. I'd stopped to pick up Chinese food on my way, and I pulled out the cartoons of food as we talked, piling rice and broccoli with garlic sauce onto my own plate.

I like the end of the semester, the finality of it. I've been going though the piles on my desk, the stacks on my office floor. It's time to file ideas that I didn't have time for, time to toss away material that's outdated, time to sweep the office clean. College students will be doing the same thing, piling textbooks and notebooks onto a closet shelf, tossing away papers, deleting files from their hard drives. At the end of the semester, all the good intentions of August crash into the hard edge of reality. It's a good time to let go of ideas that aren't going to come to fruition, give up incomplete tasks. It's time to accept the fact that no Boy Scout is ever going to come pick up that bag of canned goods that are now gathering snow on the front porch.

The dark side

When I was off in the mountains with my Wild Women friends this fall and decided to take a nap, I grabbed a sleeping bag, went out onto the deck, curled up above the waves that were slapping against the shore, and fell right to sleep. My friend kept telling me that they envied my ability to fall asleep any place, any time. Some of them have insomnia, and they kept telling me that sleeping easily is a gift.

Several of my kids have inherited this gift. But there is a dark side to the gift. We who fall asleep easily are all terrible to wake up. Boy in Black, in particularly, has always been dreadful in the morning. When he was in kindergarten, I would carry him downstairs and get him completely dressed for school, and he would not wake up. Now that he's over six feet tall, I can no longer carry him around in the morning, so I have to content myself with kicking him and yelling at him.

Of course, because he's an adult now, Boy in Black sets his own alarm. That means that every morning, now that's he home from college, I get to hear his cell phone going off over and over and over again. Sometimes it's this obnoxious tune that comes from a Laurel and Hardy clip; sometimes it's his own deep voice saying, "Boy in Black! Wake the fuck up!"

The other day, I asked, "How does your roommate stand it?" His room at college is a split double, which means that he and his roommate are only separated by a partial wall.

Boy in Black told me that last week when he had a lot of work to do, he decided to take a nap at 11 pm. He set his alarm for midnight, with the idea that he would get up and do some work then. He stretched out on his bed, with even his shoes on and the light on, and his cell phone in his hand.

When he woke up, it was 8 am. His alarm had been going off every five minutes for eight hours.

"Yeah, the alarm must have gone off 96 times," he said, grinning.

I figure his roommate is either another sound sleeper, or an extremely tolerant person.



Boy in Black, asleep on the couch, in the full sun, oblivious to the houseful of people who are talking, eating, and playing music around him.

What I learned this semester

At the end of the fall semester, I ask my first year students to write on an index card one thing they learned their first semester in college. I tell them that they can include things they learned in the residence halls or from their friends or in any class. Then I shuffle the cards and read them aloud. Here's what they wrote this year.


How to balance doing work with having fun.

Not to piss off my roommate when he's playing Halo.

Snowstorm City is cold. And it snows a lot.

How to identify eastern hemlocks.

Styrofoam is the enemy.

More about plants than I ever expected.

With the right people, a loving family can be formed.

Halo is the backbone of an all-nighter.

No matter how hard I try, procrastinating is inevitable.

Chemisty sucks ten times worse in college than it did in high school.

Never pet a burning dog.

College is pretty hard.

Alcohol gets boring after a while.

I learned how to sleep until 3:30 pm on weekends and still get all my work done.

I learned how to mix food in the dining hall to make dining more fun.

Sledding in garbage cans hurts.

That I enjoy botany.

How to live with and work with an entire floor of people.

Invisible index cards become visible when you write on them.

That I need better study habits.

That anything you want is worth working for.

That friends are incredible.

That walking to the Big Grocery Store takes an hour. And it's not open 24 hours a day, like we thought.

Distance is a good thing, and I can survive on my own, without my parents.

Living in a learning community is pretty cool.

I learned that not everything is at it appears and that not all people practice what they preach.

I learned that a floor full of college students are capable of making a lot of noise at any hour of the day or night.

I learned that I do not enjoy derivatives or taking limits.

That cosmetics can kill you.

I learned that plants are too complex for me to understand.

I learned that engineering is not a career I want to pursue.

Paul Farmer fights infectious disease in Haiti.

I learned how to find the area covered by passing a particle through a vector field, and how to find the tendency of that particle to rotate.

It's important to zip the pocket that holds your keys before participating in a snowball fight.

All about the apical meristem.

I learned that science is not my thing.

How to do the Soulja Boy dance.

Ready

From now until spring, the laundry room off our kitchen will be filled with winter clothing. We've got wire racks for mittens and gloves on the wall above the heater, and another wall is filled with hooks for coats and snowpants. On weekends when we've got all kinds of extra kids, the little laundry room can't contain all the clothes: we have hooks on both the inside and outside of the bathroom door, hooks on the door to the basement, hooks on the door to the garage. And every wooden chair is usually draped with a winter coat as well.

We are not a household that spends much money on clothing, but I will spend money on good outerwear. The only way to enjoy the winter in Snowstorm region is to have warm gloves, polypropylene long underwear, and most of all, good socks. I wear thick ski socks, the kind that go all the way up to my knees, under my jeans on most days, even when I am going to class rather than skiing.

Last week, as I pulled all the plastic bins from the garage and began matching up gloves to put them on the wire racks in the laundry room, I felt excited about all the winter activities coming up: snowboarding, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing. Last year, a knee injury kept me inside by the fire, so I am looking forward to being outside this year, enjoying all this wonderful snow.

Survival

Yesterday, I spent much of the day watching student presentations — three classes of my first year students took up the whole afternoon, and then in the evening, the upperclass students who serve as peer mentors did presentations about their experiences as mentors. I love watching presentations because I learn all kinds of interesting things from them, but seven hours of sitting still in a warm classroom tends to get me zoned out no matter how exciting the topics are.

That's why I felt relieved, in the middle of the day, when the four students doing a presentation on outdoor survival skills announced that we would be going outside. Eagerly, we all pulled on coats and mittens, and followed them out of the brick building into the cold, snowy world. A wind filled with wet snowflakes slapped me wide awake. The group had prepared ahead of time; they'd found a spot not too far from our urban campus that could pass for wilderness, if you were willing to ignore the tops of the buildings you could see above the snow-covered trees.

Students in the class, happy to be outside after a day of classes, came sliding and running down the hills, some rolling right through the drifts of snow. Then we gathered around while TossesHisHair showed us how to build a shelter from sticks and tree branches. We built a shelter in no time at all, and then another student talked about sources of food. We learned how to make traps to catch small edible mammals. All this activity was punctuated by occasional skirmishes and snowball fights, but mostly, we were all listening closely.

Students kept turning to me with smiles, just happy to be outside where the branches over our heads were piled with fluffy white snow. Just as we began to feel cold, standing in our semi-circle, QuietStudent cleared a patch of ground, brushing away the snow as best he could, and kindled a small fire using flint and steel. I think we would have all liked to stay there longer, warming ourselves by the fire, but since what the students was doing was most likely illegal, we had to kick the fire out after the demonstration and hide all evidence we'd ever been there. Even though we were outside for only forty minutes, I could felt awake and relaxed as we hiked back to campus.

Snowday

High winds, icy roads, and steadily falling snow made driving difficult last night. All kinds of events were cancelled, including my belly dancing class. I stayed home by a crackling fire with a cup of hot tea.

When I woke up this morning, fluffy snow was piled on the cars, the trees, and the roads, making everything look clean and white. As we listened to the school closings, we were disappointed to hear that East Snowstorm-Traintrack Village School, where my youngest two kids go, was not on the list. Our school district likes to save its snowdays until absolutely needed, a policy which always leads to rumors that the superintendant is from Alaska. Many schools were closed, but my kids had only a one-hour delay.

Older Neighbor Boy and Philosophical Boy, who live nearby but go to the Catholic High School, had a snowday. Schoolteacher Niece, who teaches in an elementary school northwest of us, had a snowday. Every school in the city was closed. But not East Snowstorm-Traintrack Village. We kept listening to the list, hopefully, waiting for the announcement, but it did not come.

Teenagers in the district decided to take matters into their own hands. Blonde Niece and Skater Boy chimed in messages over the computer announcing that they had both decided to take the day off. Shaggy Hair Boy, who had been up late writing a paper for English class and was proofreading it one last time, looked sleepily over at his younger brother: "Hey, maybe we should take a snowday. You got anything important today?"

With-a-Why looked up from his bowl of cereal. He was half-asleep, but didn't even pause to think about what his school day might hold. "Nope. I'll stay home."

My husband had already left for work: he doesn't have very far to go. And my college was open, of course. I drove to campus slowly, thankful for the snowtires we put on the car last week. The students were in good spirits, building snow figures and throwing snowballs, and running and sliding on the slushy sidewalks. Students from other parts of the country are always excited about the amount of snow we get here, and their enthusiasm is fun to watch. And the kind of fluffy snow we get this time of year is pretty, coating branches, piling onto surfaces, transforming every building and fence post.

By the time I drove home again, it was dark. I hate winter driving, but once I was off the highway, I was able to relax and enjoy how pretty the night was. My headlights picked up the swirling white snow that was still falling. My own street was quiet, with no tracks at all on the white road, which means I gotten home ahead of my husband. We have no street lights, but the white snow on the pine trees glowed. As I pulled up to my own mailbox, I saw my two hooky-playing sons had shoveled the long driveway. I felt grateful for their unlimited energy as I came into the warm house to put on sweatpants and settle into the comfy couch, ready to retreat from the snowstorm.

The photo is a picture of my mother, taken by my father, out behind their house.

Back online

Surviving without my computer for three days was surprisingly easy. On Saturday, I went with some friends to a big arts and crafts show that included a booth full of my friend Quilt Artist's work. We all wandered about, supposedly doing our holiday shopping but mostly chatting with everyone there and buying things for ourselves in the name of supporting local artists. I like it when I can talk to the person who made the item I'm buying, whether it's a handmade necklace or an earth-colored mug or a quilted potholder. I don't do a whole lot of holiday shopping because I don't want to support evil corporations, but it's my opinion that everyone in family can always use another locally made mug.

In the afternoon, I ate lunch with Reiki Friend at a new coffee place downtown, a cosy place with funky decor and an incredible vegan menu. We talked about teenage sons while we ate steaming lentil soup, a tofu wrap, and thick carrot cake. I came home that afternoon with the intention of grading papers, a whole big stack of them, but instead somehow ended up building a fire, hanging out with the kids, and then taking a nap on the couch. I just love to sit by the fire when it's cold and snowing outside.

Saturday night, for the first time in about 21 years, Spouse and I had the house to ourselves. The boys went over to visit Quick, the extra who had surgery over Thanksgiving and who is still house-bound. Spouse braved the cold winter night to go get us some take-out food, which we ate in front of the fire. Needless to say, grading papers was not on the agenda.

But Sunday, I was determined. With my husband off doing errands, the boys working on homework, and my computer still broken, I had no excuse. I sat on the couch by the fire and graded paper after paper, stopping only every five minutes or so to get something to eat. By late afternoon, just as blue shadows were creeping across the snow-covered lawn outside the windows, I had finished the whole stack.

As much as I complain about grading student papers, I will admit that I learn all kinds of things from read them. I read about the nutritional facts of the Big Mac, I learned ways that schizophrenia is treated, I read the history of the Endangered Species Act, I learned why willows are an ideal source of biomass. But from all the papers I read, one bit of information sticks out most in my mind. It was a sentence taken from a paper about surviving in the wilderness: "When lost, it is important to be able to distinguish between poisonous and non-poisonous snakes, as the latter is a valuable food source." I am still thinking about the implications of that.

Today, the replacement part for my computer came in, and I raced over icy roads to get the computer fixed. And now I am home by the fire, with the winds wailing outside the window, a cat at my side, and a warm computer in my lap.