Day 364

Well, instead of running 5 km today, I hiked almost that distance at a steep vertical slant up a snowy 4000 ft mountain called Mooselauke in New Hampshire. 

After a partially sleepless night from worry, we were on our way by 5.15am, met the rest of our party at Einstein Bros. Bagel shop where they serve delicious power breakfasts, then on to the mountain!

John had told us what to wear, and had said that long underwear would be too hot, and all we would probably need on our hands were these thin polartec gloves, which can also be used as undergarments for your hands, underneath the big ungainly winter gloves.

So when we got out of the car at the parking lot, I had to organise my pack, and put on my stabilisers, which are these clever things which fit over your hiking boots to give your soles a layer of chains and spikes, so that you don't slip on the ice and snow.  And only then did I put on my little thin polartec gloves, but by then it was already TOO LATE!

As we set off, with each step my hands froze a little more, my body rebelling, saying, "Hey, this isn't our meadow, where the hell do you think you're going?  It's too damn cold here!  I've got to protect the vital organs!"  So that about 50 yards from the car I was just about in tears from the pain in my hands!  (Which didn't really augur well for the rest of the hike straight up a snowy mountain which would get colder and colder as we journeyed higher.)

Da-ra! Da-raaa!  Da-ra!  Da-raaaa! (bugle-sounds) My knight in shining armour to the rescue!  Rip off offending gloves, put hands inside his clothing on to the warm skin of his chest, hold it there for a couple of minutes, put on skinny gloves, then hand-warmers, (another ingenious invention, little puffy things which you shake first, and which then stay warm for about 6 hours), then the big heavyweight gloves on top, and off we go again!

So much snow!  Several trees took on personae, urging you to greet them as you went by. 

You don't so much walk up as crawl up on all fours, because you have these amazing hiking poles, with stabilizing straps which go round your wrists, which your frozen fingers then clamp around like claws, and which you use like a separate pair of limbs. 

We didn't quite make it to the top, the second time this has happened to Tim and I, but John (the seasoned winter-hiker, and autumn, spring and summer-hiker too) reckoned that, even though we only had 300ft, .8 of a mile to go to the summit, it would still take us at least 45 minutes, which could mean that we would be walking out in the dark, which is unwise.

So we managed 2.9 miles up, which took us more than three hours, got to an elevation of 4525 ft, which meant that we climbed probably a little over 3000 feet, slogging through deep snow, an amazing accomplishment, and something that I would never have dreamed I could physically do!

I think if they hadn't had me in the party they would most likely have made it to the summit, with its beautiful 360 degree views.  But everyone was very kind about that.  On our way down, another 2.9 miles, John said, "It's not the destination, it's the journey."  And he hadn't even read Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance!

Your extremities get very cold whenever you stop, so my hands did their frozen thing at least three or four times, although never quite as bad, and more easily remedied with movement.  By the end of the hike they had merged with the hiking poles.

Also, frozen toes are scarily painful.  Next time I will wear two pairs of socks, like Tim did, and we need synthetic trousers, not cotton sweatpants, which we were both wearing, which, by the end of the hike, well, far before the end of the hike, were sodden from walking in the deep snow, and from several spills, one a spectacular balletic attempt at splits by Tim!  Being wet is not good in below freezing temperatures.  And my long underwear will be on, not in my pack, where they are impossibly useless.

It is amazing how little tasks take on enormous proportions, like the fact that I could not be bothered to take out my camera, because it would have involved stopping, taking off my pack, then having to take off my gloves to operate it, which my hands reminded me was just not even a possibility.  Tim slung his camera around his neck and snapped away, as usual, and I knew he would let me use his pictures. 

My lace on my left boot came undone twice, and Tim, with all the great kindness of his soul, did them up for me, so that I wouldn't have to put down my pack, undo my hands from the poles, or take off my gloves. 

And, in South Africa, when you go camping for the first time, you learn how to do a "boskak".  Well, today I learned how to do a "sneeukak"!  Which is rather cold and unpleasant.  And slightly embarrassing, although it was only Tim, keeping chips for me, who knew about it, so not really.

At the top of the world.  Nearly

And you are really quite careful not to injure yourself if at all possible, because you could quite literally die in that cold, very quickly, so everything takes on that added clarity, there is danger in that cold thin air, in that soft white blanket over everything.

So third time lucky, next time we WILL make it to the top!

Day 363

Winter meadow with sky.

I ran 3.16 km this morning in 45 minutes, which is at a rate of 14.15 minutes per km!  It was the snow, I tell you!

Well, it is nigh impossible to run in deep snow, so I had to stop often.  Even when I had worn a track (sort of) it was extremely tiring.  You can see our path with little hopeful circles here and there which is when I stopped and Molly thought it was to throw the ball for her, even though I was bent over and breathing heavily.  Dogs are not good at reading body language, it would seem, well, certainly not this crazy Black Dog.

We are going hiking up a mountain in New Hampshire tomorrow, and were told what to bring by a seasoned winter hiker.  He is going to carry one set of snow-shoes in case there are places with deep snow, when one person will don them and pack down the snow for all those who follow.  Clever idea.  That's what I needed this morning.  Molly could have donned the snow-shoes and made me a track!

Also, Tim will carry a sleeping-bag, the only one for the party of five people.  I asked what good that would do us, but apparently it is for if someone is injured, and it is unlikely that more than one will get injured at a time. Oh.

I am very scared and excited at the same time, we are hiking up a 4000 ft mountain, a loop of  seven and a half miles through the snow, something I have never done before.

Mouse tracks coming from a tunnel entrance/exit.  I had no way of knowing where the mouse highways were today, we had 18 inches of snowfall during this blizzard, with huge drifting, so in some places it is 3 ft deep!

My snow angel.  I was so hot and bothered by this stage, that I made it with only my vest on top, and did not feel the cold of the snow, it was really quite welcome!

And everything blue and white and shades thereof.

And my self-portrait as a Native American shadow-woman, with thick skirts and a long braid. 

Day 362 (three to go)

My dear little god-daughter.

We travelled out west through swathes of snow, parking lots piled high with mountains of the stuff, fields deep and white, roads narrowed by plow-packed edges, icy lakes, rivers and roads reflecting the sun so brightly it hurt your eyes.

A visit to old friends whose daughter was visiting from South Africa.  It seemed as though we sat around a table all day eating and drinking and laughing at family stories, old and new, spanning the twenty-one years we have known them. 

There are two members of the next generation now, who were very sweet and well-behaved.

This little boy is very observant and perceptive for his age. 

There was a whole debate about pacifiers (dummies) and how old you should be when forced to give them up.  The final general consensus was that life is so hard as it is, why not let little children have them for going to sleep, until they are not babies anymore, because it doesn't stay for long, that simple security.  And after all, what are you teaching them by letting them scream and cry themselves to sleep?  Nothing good, I would venture.

And then the long drive home through the dark, with a stop-off at the bookstore for browsing, Chai Tea lattes and reading. 

What a lovely idea, to have a coffeeshop inside a bookstore, I love the luxury of it, drinking coffee or hot chocolate or smoothies in the summer, and going through the books you have chosen to explore.  So strange too, to think that it is a place where people are all sitting within a few feet of one another, but all with their eyes scanning the black lines of letters, all lost in different worlds, even Tim and I, sitting almost touching, but far apart, me in a graphic novel in which several people have interpreted the theme Flight.  Some just awful, some wonderful, so that occasionally I gasp at the beauty of the concept, the loveliness of the drawing.  Tim in his world of ... I was so wrapped up in my books that I can't even remember.

I have only three more days to go until the end of this running, writing, drawing resolution, and will have very mixed feelings about giving it all up, well, no, I'm not actually stopping the running or the drawing, but the whole doing of the blog, the making time for it, the discipline, the thoughts flitting about throughout the day, waiting to be plucked out of the air and put down on the page/computer screen, the creative pleasure of it, the idea of an audience, the delectable enjoyment of reading people's comments.

Flower study.

Day 361

Figure in a landscape (after the blizzard).

Molly walking in Tim's footsteps, to save energy.

What a blizzard it was, snow beating against the windows, roaring wind, cold biting at your bones if you ventured outside!   And how beautiful afterwards, walking through the fields, blankets of snow, sculptures of snow which are really trees underneath, deep drifts which swallow your legs up to your knees, and freeze Molly's tummy.

Tim said that he could see that all I wanted to do was run, but it was hard enough trying to walk through those drifts, let alone run!  I did though, every now and then I would run in his footprints, to catch up to him.

Bill Bryson has written a new book on the Home, a kind of history of each room, as I understand it.  I was lying in bed earlier this morning, the blizzard still raging about us, thinking of all the bedrooms I have had in my life.

My first bedroom was probably a pram.  It was one of those very substantial prams with big wheels in which little babies slept as they were proudly walked along the sidewalk to Granny's house, or to the shops, stopping to speak to every acquaintance and show off the bouncing occupant.

When my mother was cleaning the house, she would park the pram outside in the back garden, under the abundant fig tree, which produced literally hundreds of figs each year, in the temperate Cape Town weather.  If I woke up I would watch the ballet of light and leaves and be quite content for ages, apparently.

One day the elderly neighbour knocked on her front door with a horrified expression to inform her that she had forgotten "the baby outside in the rain!".  She smiled at him and told him that I was fine, and to ease his troubled mind she took him to have a look at me, and there I was, wide awake and talking to the tree, some kind of waterproof covering keeping me dry and warm!

Which might account for the fact that always, on waking, I must be able to see a tree, and have always positioned my beds so that that would be the case.

My first little bedroom was painted "sunshine yellow" by my dad, especially for me, apparently that is the colour I chose and named, although I have no recollection of that.

When my big sister moved out I graduated to her larger bedroom, which had always been filled with dainty things, and had two windows!

The same thing happened when my brother left for Edinburgh, when I was a teenager, and I inherited his huge room, with the stains on the ceiling from botched chemistry experiments, and the rifle hidden under the floorboards which my friend and I discovered one horrifying afternoon, and the balcony to which you could gain access by climbing out of the window, which was so private that you could sunbathe naked.

So I was the child who had the most intimate knowledge of that house, being the only member of the family to have lived in three different rooms during her childhood, the one who could hide in cupboards and could have told you which person it belonged to with her eyes shut, as I knew what each person smelled like.  I was the one who liked to climb out of the window of the little sunshine yellow room, and to sit on the comfortable roof over the back-door stoep, and who learned how to shimmy down it when necessary.  Likewise the balcony, as a teenager.

At university I had to share a room in a student residence with a strange girl who had scars on her wrists and who was pernickety about neatness, which I wasn't.  I was expelled from this residence after about eight months, to my parents' chagrin, for not fitting in, and for not being present when I should have been.

I then moved in with my boyfriend, where he lived in "the stables" which were actually that, converted stables, with a fig tree outside our stable door, which was perfect, and very soon after that we rented this beautiful old spacious house in Fitzroy Street, with a wonderful upstairs bedroom with a view of a big Yellow-wood tree and a huge field next door.

There have been several bedrooms since, in King William's Town, in Nahoon and Bonza Bay, and my beloved 16 Cross Street, and the yellow house on the hill in Winthrop, and the little poky house on the knoll, and now this house in the woods, and isn't it amazing, how we can "walk" through a house after twenty, thirty, forty years, and still see it all in our mind's eye, every little detail, how it felt, how it smelled, what we did there.

A bedroom is your personal space, your own private spot, when you are little, if you are lucky enough to have one of your own.  It is where you think, where you grow into the person you will become.

Later it is the place where you make love, a space still your own, but shared, so compromises as to decoration and whatnot have to be made.

And later still it is the place you share with your husband and your new baby, or babies, full of baby clothes and nappies and creams for baby's bottoms and all the frightening trappings of newborns.

It is the room where you share your most intimate moments, where you breastfeed your babies at night, when you are so exhausted you just want to weep, where you wake up in the morning to find you have lost one of the babies, he is nowhere to be seen, and after much panic and confusion, you find him safely swaddled right at the bottom of the bed, fast asleep.  It is the place where you cuddle your children woken by nightmares, where you go to cry when something bad has happened, where you retire when you are sick, where you experience passion, ecstasy, and the most wondrous connection with another human being.

It is the place where you look out of the window at the snow swirling around the trees and snuggle down into the warmth of your husband's back for a few more minutes.

Drawing on my car today.

Day 360

Convergence.

A blizzard expected later in the day and only finishing up tomorrow evening, so she runs a long way, encountering the same difficulties with the snow, which gets into the backs of her sky-blue shoes at Refrigerator Corner, where the snow is deeper.  However, her feet are so warm that they don't notice.

Pine Siskins and Dark-eyed Juncos flit from their hiding places in the grasses again.  Under the little grass canopies, in the kingdom of the mice, they obviously feel safe from the red-tailed hawk she sees floating pewter in the snowy sky, but her stomping feet are obviously a greater threat, making them feel the need for the safety of the high branches.

During the 50 or so minutes she is running, it snows, then stops, the sky lightens, then darkens again, and small flakes are floating about again as she makes her way home. 

She runs 5.80 km, thinking, as she runs up Heartbreak Hill, how it has transformed over the year into Easy-as-Pie Slight Slope. 

Jogging past the beehives she is in a running reverie, when suddenly an animal charges silently towards her and as her eyes first perceive, her immediate reaction is a long scream, and then, in the next instant, as she recognises the creature as the neighbour's awful dog, she transforms into a screaming banshee and utilises several choice words her mother would have been shocked to hear issuing from her mouth, whereupon he leaps sideways in shock and begins barking at her in his irritating (to say the very least) way.  If she had a BB gun she would happily have shot him.

Her time is not terribly good, 8.37 minutes per km, but she attributes that to the snow. 

And now it is snowing like crazy, horizontally, as she dresses up so that just her eyes are showing, to brave the storm and take the dog out for her last pee.  They both run about bravely for a bit, caught up in the storm's mad rush, Molly lolloping into a snowdrift at one point, completely swallowed! 

And her boys have chosen to join their friends at another boy's house where they will all get snowed in together, and she had been looking forward to being isolated in the blizzard, the four of them, the little family, watching movies or reading in front of the woodstove beaming out its lovely heat, eating their meals together, playing board games if the power goes out.  Oh well, now it is just the two of them, a taste of things to come next winter when the boys will be off at college.  And it's fine, they are Darby and Joan, after all.

Merry Christmas Apple Pie.

Self-portrait as monolith with Molly

Day 359

Lego

Christmas Day.

Waking up to the sound of Molly vomiting in our room at 6.30, great start to the day, settling you right in reality.

Father and daughter

The rest of the day spent missing absent daughters, talking on the phone to them, crying, pulling yourself together.

Talking on the phone to other loved people, cleaning, cooking, greeting the friends who have come with goodies, feeling so glad they are your friends, glad that you have this history of several shared Christmases now.

Making lego, playing, laughing, running about, drinking mulled wine made by your son, eating delicious food, talking, watching the wonderful movie of Roald Dahl's Matilda.

Taking photographs, talking about taking photographs, giving presents, receiving gifts, having deep conversations, having interesting conversations, getting picked up by your tall son and swung around, knocking a humidifier off the table with your feet, but not being personally responsible for that.

Lovely children who know how to play and keep themselves entertained, no fights, just laughing, even when I heard them playing on the stairs, I stilled my instant "Don't play on the stairs" fears and knew they would be fine.

Altogether a lovely day, would have been perfect with the girls here.

 Tim giving pointers to proud new camera-owner.

Matthew wrestling with three children.

Nick posing uncomfortably with his self-portrait.

Playing on the stairs.

End of the day.

Not a self-portrait but one by Tim with his new camera.

Day 358

Snow and breath and the meadow.

Missing my daughters so much, aching with it, but spoke with each of them today, good conversations.

Running was hard-going in the snow, which is about four or five inches deep in parts, like Refrigerator Corner, where I carefully leapt over mouse tunnels, wherever I could see them, the little open highways of a day or so ago having become real tunnels rather than half-pipes, with all the extra snow.  We ran 3.39 km at a rate of 7.04 minutes per km, not bad.  Coming around on the second circuit, I noticed that Molly didn't care about mouse-tunnels as much as I had.

So much socialising during this time, your mouth gets tired from smiling and talking so much!  A lovely dinner tonight, everyone dressed up in shirts and ties and posh dresses.  When the hostess originally invited us, she told us to come in "fancy dress", which Tim and I thought was a bit strange. I was wracking my brains as to what I would wear, thinking, "Shall I just go as Frida Kahlo again?"

So this evening when it was time to get ready, Tim came running up the stairs with a Father Christmas hat on, asking if he could go as Santa Claus?  And the boys said, no, you silly old people, it means smart clothes, posh clothes, that's what fancy means in America!  So we all got dressed in our lovely special clothes, and when we got there we discovered that everyone was dressed in black and red, or black, or red, except that I had a bright orange scarf.  It would have made a wonderful photograph, or painting.

Arethusa.

Day 357

Snow collage.

A walk instead of a run today, through the gently falling snow, with Mad Molly Malone, the crazy black dog of very little brain.

We saw red berries against the white snow, deer-prints, trees all painted white on their left sides, and everywhere shades of grey with stark black and snowy white.  Dark-eyed juncos which are half-dark and half-light, flew up from their shelter of grasses bent over by the snow to form a shallow roof over the ground.  

Well, I saw all these things, Molly only sees in black and white anyway, but I doubt if she noticed any of this, fixated as she is on the yellow ball, which is either being chased, or being watched in anticipation of chasing it again.

Crazy shopping day with Tim, crowded stores, traffic jams, what fun!

We saw a little boy of about three and a baby boy of about eight months, both with the bluest eyes, being seated on the lap of Father Christmas/Santa for a photograph.  The mum and dad then went behind the photographer to get both boys to smile, going through all kinds of grimaces and funny actions in order to do this.  The little boy obliged with a beatific smile, while the baby was so busy looking at all the tinsel and bright decorations around Santa's chair that his attention was completely lost on the camera and the people trying to obtain it!  Eventually he glanced up and gave a vague Mona Lisa kind of smile, looking fairly content in the firm grip of the red-coated man with the big white beard.  I hope the photographer captured that moment.

Later I saw the same little family and went up to talk to the mum and the baby, whose name turned out to be Quinn, which is a lovely name, and his brother of the wide smile is Connor.  Strange these little human interactions we have, especially with babies, who we will probably never see again, but our brief inquiry into their little lives perhaps goes with them as a blessing, and our pleasant remarks about the lovely little family etc, find their way into the hearts of the mother and the father who will perhaps remember them with some pride and have a little stir of happiness at another time in life.

A manipulated photograph of Tim tonight, after supper.  He was my willing companion today, my brother-in-arms against those vast armies of Christmas shoppers, my fellow traveler in the immense Barnes & Noble bookstore, my driver, the pusher of the trolley/carriage in the supermarket, my collaborator, my joker, and, driving home in the dark at last, my exhausted compatriot.

 

Day 356

Soft winter light.

I ran 3.40 km quite early this morning, so many things to do today.  Ice-crystals crunched under my feet.  My path was much used by deer in the night or early morning, it seemed to me from all the cloven hoof-prints on the snowy path, almost as if a whole bunch of deer had run my circuit!

As children avoid the lines on sidewalks, so I avoided mouse-highways, which criss-crossed my path every few feet, especially in the vicinity of Refrigerator Corner.  And there were the tiny little mouse footprints, after sprinting through their snow tunnels which suddenly became half-pipes as they spewed out on to the path.

I drifted through the soft light for twenty-six minutes, crunch crunch, thoughts flying through the air, sadness hovering around me, like my own personal dark cloud.  7.38 minutes per km.

It was strange to drive the boys around again today, as their car was at the garage being fixed.  I took them to work at the Y, and, having finished what I set out to do in that town, I went in to wait for them, with about 20 minutes left of their last swim-lesson of the day. 

It is amazing to watch your own kids teach others, to realise that they are completely grownup, to see how sweetly they interact with the little ones, what fun the children have, how simple it all is really, and yet how complex a skill, learning to swim, something they will know the rest of their lives. 

What competent boys they are, sensitive to the feelings of these small swimmers. When one of Nick's skinny little kids tried to dive off the starting block and did a complete belly-flop, Nick winced as it happened, and then jollied the kid when he came up, making light of it, so that by the time the little boy got to the side he was laughing, and willing to try again!  And Matthew helped all the kids in his group put on bright orange life-preservers, after which he taught them how to get into a boat, then put the boat on the actual water, asked them to get in in the safe way he had taught them, then dove in and pulled them around like a sea-monster, so that they giggled and squeaked, until he persuaded each of them to leap into the water and swim to "shore".  I was standing there watching through the window, my heart just glowing with pride inside this mother's body.

The Lighthouse.

Day 355 (only 10 more days to go!)

Whites.

The longest day of the year, the winter solstice, the beginning of the long cold, of which we had no experience whatsoever when we arrived here in this strange country.

No run today, as I sat in an office for hours with three men working and chatting intermittently, and five fir trees waving their woolly arms at me through the window.  I was trapped, waiting for my car to be serviced.

Eventually the car was ready and I drove home the Pretty Way, as opposed to the Quick Way, which takes you on the more ugly highway.  The Pretty Way runs through farmland, winding roads with bridges over little icy rivers, dark water lined with white ice and snow.

There were three fleecy sheep looking almost yellow against the snowy hill.

There were fifty cows huddled together near the fence, waiting to be led into the warm cowshed with its bountiful troughs.

There was a long line of geese, like a search party about to cover a large field.  When I got out of the car to take a photograph, one goose became a drill sergeant, marching up and down the line shouting at the troops, "Beware, a human approaches!". 

Beautiful awkward walkers on those enormous feet, like boys like Nick who grow too quickly, their feet becoming large clown-shoes at the ends of their legs. 

I must admit, guiltily, that I was no better than a thoughtless child, that I ran at them eventually, just for the thrill of watching those big birds take off, hearing the beat of those powerful wings, so many, their indignant voices pealing out, "She's chasing us away!  Where are we going?"

There was a beautiful silvery-white red-tailed hawk practicing aerobatics right above my head.

There were two horses, warm in their blankety coats, nuzzling one another, looking up briefly as I went by in my big friendly reliable old car, shiny green after its free carwash, having just received a clean bill of health, even though it is 11 years old!

The Christmas Tree.
When she finally gets all the bags, cardboard and plastic bins in a row to go out to the car, it has begun to snow.  As she opens the door, the phone rings and it is her dear friend, with whom she must speak and listen, and so she sits down in her coat, which she soon has to remove due to a hot flush creeping up from her uterus, it would seem, spreading in waves outwards, her personal heater without a reliable thermostat.

It is snowing harder when she eventually gets going again, hauling all the trashbags and recycling from the last four weeks to the dump, wishing once again that her town employed trash collectors.  Up the hill she drives, reverses into place with her view obstructed by huge crushed cardboard boxes, resorting to the rear-view mirrors, remembering her dad's lessons, how he congratulated her on her reversing skills, then said, "Ok, now do it with your tongue inside your mouth!" with that twinkle in his blue blue eyes.  Thinking how she and her sister both reverse exactly as he used to, flinging their non-steering arm across the back of the passenger seat, half-turning in the seat so that they have a clear view back in the direction they want to go, then effortlessly steering one-handedly into the parking space, or around the corner, or whichever is the desired destination of the reversing car. 

She greets the man with the withered arm, who runs the dump, and then heaves the huge outside trash-bins off the back of the van, and lugs them along the ground to the precipitous drop, over which one must empty the heavy bins.  The man with the withered arm turns on the noisy machine and with her next hoist she sees how everything is being crushed, and is glad that she hasn't fallen in with the force of her hefting of the heavy burden.

It is snowing hard now, and after she has gone up and down the steps to the dumpsters which fill up with plastics and glass, and the other with cardboard, she pours in the bags of clothing for the Salvation Army, and heads to the swap-shop, a wonderful place, (which wouldn't exist if there were trash-collectors), where she finds some pretty glasses and a game.

It is snowing heavily by now, as she makes her way to John's Farm stand, just down the road from her house, where John, the cheerful old Greek man, gives out hot cider to all his customers, and then invites them to sit next to his fire, where there is at least a half-hour "catching-up" to do with his "African friend" before she can buy what she has come for, in this case, a Christmas tree.    At long last he walks with her past all the trees, pointing out their beauties and their flaws, until she recognises one, a little short stocky one, like her. 

The snow-flakes hitting the windscreen from a horizontal angle in the already darkening sky, make it seem as though she were going into timewarp speed, and the little Balsam Fir kindly spreads its sweet scent throughout the car, making first her nose and then the rest of her very happy.  She has to turn the car around so as to come upon the treacherous driveway at a fair speed, because by now it is white and slick with snow. 

The car takes a flying leap up the first part, thunders around the corner, then slows, slides, edges up and Yay! she is over the steep hump and on the flat, she and the little tree have made it!  And it is not so hard to get inside, to set it upright in the big white bucket, using bricks to steady and support it.  The Christmas tree seems very helpful, knowing that she has no one to lend a hand, and she pours good clean life-giving water into the bucket, to give it some comfort.

The Tree waits a full day, standing in its greenery, and then tonight some boys and a man decorate it, rather haphazardly, in the manner of boys, and the tree can see that there are still decorations in the box, but everyone has gone to do their homework, or to potter around on the computer, or to sit by the fire and write their blog, and so it waits patiently, content in its festive finery, with little lights shining out, proud and tall, arms outstretched in the eternally generous manner of its kind.

Day 354

Snow on the beach.

Horrible sensor smudges on the picture.

Perhaps Father Christmas will bring me a new camera on Saturday!  When the boys were little they called him "Farmer Kismas" which was very apt, seeing as we lived in the very rural Eastern Cape in South Africa.

It is a strange thing that we do to little children, telling them to believe in this big burly bearded man dressed in red who drives a sleigh pulled by reindeer across the sky, and delivers presents to children who have been good, on the birthday of Jesus! 

And how they all find out that there is no Santa, or Father Christmas, is always a bit sad, the loss of that belief in magic, the beginning of reasoning to work things out, like how could a fat man possibly shimmy down the narrow chimneys of our homes, and what about homes with no chimneys?  Little Madeleine's dad told her that as they had no chimney he didn't think Santa would be able to come to their house, "That's it, Madeleine, no presents!" and instead of bursting into indignant tears, this little two and a half year old just smiled and said, "Oh Daddy!"  like, "Honestly, do you think I'm going to fall for that?". Wonderful perceptive child!  Such a well-developed sense of humour in one so tiny!

Matthew was nine and still believed, the innocent he was, until I was making supper one cold December night while the boys were doing their homework in the next room, at the dining room table.  I was listening to the radio, and a rather sad woman came on who had lost her job and didn't know how she was going to buy any presents for her three little children.  Matthew, who had come in to ask me something, looked up at me with those big blue eyes of his and said, "But what about Father Christmas, Mom?"  and he looked into my eyes, which were full of tears, and realisation dawned in him, and betrayal registered in his eyes, as he said, "There isn't any Father Christmas, is there?" and I said, "No, there isn't, I'm so sorry, Matt."  He was devastated.  His first big reality check - the world is not such a wonderful place.

A cold run today, lovely, fairly easy, I ran through pain in my right hip, sent my thoughts elsewhere, to my Hymn to the Whale, and when I thought of the pain again it had magically gone, the hip oiled and not creaking anymore! 

Running so fast around Refrigerator Corner and the Corner Before, that I noticed myself leaning like a motorcyclist leans on a corner! 

Running past grasses bleached to a fine Naples yellow by the frost, and the once thick stands of Goldenrod diminished to slender stalks, like everything else, thinned out by the cold, almost transparent, until one day you run along and you notice they are no longer there at all, everything flattened, battered by the cold and the snow.  

Running 5.27 km, down Babbling Brook hill and up it again, several leaps over the fallen tree, up Heartbreak Hill, ducking under the other half-fallen tree, and along the other side of the meadow, up-a-little, down-a-little, and all at a rate of 7.12 minutes per km.

And then it began to snow!  The first snow is always beautiful, painting the trees white, covering everything in a magical sparkling new coat.  Just for a few days it is like this, and then you begin to be tired of all the time spent shovelling, the high adrenalin alert your body succumbs to each time you attempt the ridiculously steep driveway after snowfall, the ugliness of dirty snow on the roadsides.

 Doing my warm-up exercises, still dressed to the nines, before the shedding happens.

Day 353

Christmas lights on a house.

Some people go a bit crazy at this time of year with angels, santas, reindeer, snowmen, and all the other trappings of Christmas, all created by little lights!  This is a private house we saw on the way to the party last night. 

Some neighbourhoods you drive through, it seems as though the houses are competing for a prize for the most decorated!   In addition to figures created by many little lights, there are all these blow-up figures, tin soldiers, snowmen, the Mary, Joseph and Jesus family, the Three Wise Men, Santa and his sleigh with reindeer, sheep with their shepherds etc., which not only sit there all billowing and round, but are also sometimes lit from within, so they glow in the dark. 

I used to think that it was all just American excess, and still do to a certain extent, but it is also a throwback to ancient times, lighting a lantern against the darkness of this time of year, which descends early in the afternoon and lasts the long night through.  So a few tasteful lights are lovely, are like a bright welcome, a beacon lighting your way. 

The Bouwers, as usual, are late putting up lights or a Christmas tree.  Maybe tomorrow. 

Too busy a day today to run, and a lovely visitor, one of my favourite people.

Self-portrait looking up slightly.

Day 352

Molly and the frosty path.

A decision to run only 3km, because of a late start to the morning.  And no breakfast, and no water either, having been forgotten.   So 3.19 over the frosty grass crunching beneath what aspire to winged feet, at 7.12 minutes per km. 

Two Christmas parties tonight, one at the home of our boys' oldest American friend, lovely, met his niece for the first time, little Madeleine, who reminded me so of Emma at two and a half, hardly any hair, those big blue eyes, wary of strangers but with a great sense of humour and a wonderful giggle.

Delicious food, and the discovery that there is another family which is noisier than ours when we are all together!  They have five children, missing just one for Christmas, he had to stay in Colorado because of the exorbitant price of a root canal process, which he bought instead of a ticket home, wise boy!  Lovely warmth, great-grandmother still driving her car, everyone happy to see one another, little sad stories, little happy stories, a typical family.

And then home, where Tim decided that he couldn't do another party, his shoulder has been bothering him all day for some reason, and so he said that I should go alone.  This is quite a thing, to go without your spouse, quite brave actually, and off I went, first buying a lovely bottle of red wine as a gift, from the local bottlestore, where the owner is so sweet and, when she heard I was taking it to a party, gift-wrapped it so beautifully, that I felt certain I had made the right decision. 

It was a lovely party, lots of talking to various people that I knew, easy as can be, and then a woman I was talking to asked me to dance, and we danced the rest of the evening, to the live band, composed of middle-aged people, husbands and wives of those present, aptly named Mid-Life Crisis.  They sang many Van Morrison songs tonight, and I remembered how much I love to dance!  That flowing movement, arms and legs in unison, free-spirited carousing, energised, twirling, individualistic, hair flying, feet bare, arms wide as hips jiggle, shoulders rise and fall, happy face smiling at your partner!

A self-portrait done this afternoon in a few minutes' breather.  I look like an old Janis Joplin!

Day 351

Flowers and winter sunshine trying hard.

My eighth graders have been drawing self-portraits and then choosing a daemon for themselves, and drawing that too.  This concept comes from Phillip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials, comprised of The Golden Compass (in America) /Northern Lights (everywhere else, how weird is that?), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, which tells the story of Lyra Belacqua and her friend Will as they discover a series of parallel universes and various epic events unfold. 

We listened to the audio version of the first book in the car on the long drive to Philadelphia when the boys were eleven or twelve.  We were all enthralled after the first few words.  I remember all four of us sitting under its spell in a parking garage, not wanting to get out of the car and give up our enchanted journey across the worlds with the two children and all the other people and creatures.  Even though we were on our own exciting adventure to a new place, the story gripped us so, that even in the landscape of the city we were talking about the book, about what had happened and how we thought things would pan out, that wonderful power of literature to fascinate and beguile.

The most lovely concept in the book is that everyone has a daemon, which is a kind of physical manifestation of your soul, I think.  It takes the form of an animal, which can change its identity when you are still young, so it can be a moth, or a cat, or a monkey, whatever, but when you hit puberty it chooses just one animal, which most represents the person, and stays that animal thereafter.  Everyone's daemon is the opposite sex, and cannot bear to be more than a few feet away from its human, there is a kind of invisible thread linking the two. 

So each student had to think about what animal most represented themselves.  Which was hard for some kids, and easy for others.  One girl painstakingly drew a beautiful owl sitting on her shoulder, both of them looking out at the viewer with solemn eyes.  She has a great tragedy in her life, and the final work is a beautiful picture.  Another little boy, who is still very young, drew himself as a guinea pig, which has all kinds of connotations, and is also very sweet.  After all, guinea pigs are the most innocent of creatures.

Most of the children finished these pictures a while back, but of course there are always the stragglers, some because they struggle with drawing, others as a consequence of being perfectionists, creating a beautiful background as well as the two linked personae.  Today one girl finally finished her drawing and brought it to me to give judgement.  It was lovely, light and lithe like her, and the animal was a lynx stretching on a tree behind her, which was just perfect.  While we were talking, I experienced that purity of gaze of which I spoke a while ago telling the story of my choir-teacher.  This girl has blue-green eyes and while we were talking she stared into mine with such intent, such youth, such sincerity, such a love of art and life.  I felt quite honoured after our conversation. 

Their next project is a grid-based painting, which, when all put together, will make up Chagall's La femme et les roses.  This painting, although it is mostly of flowers, has one of Chagall's signature rosy naked women at the top of the painting.  A 14-year old boy got the piece with the breasts and head, and I thought he would enjoy painting it, but he churned out a really poor very fast job, perhaps he was embarrassed.  So I worked on it today, because really, if that is not done well, the whole thing will look awful.  It is interesting to see how differently everyone paints, how some observe so carefully, while others don't even seem able to distinguish between light and darker tones.  I think it is going to look beautiful though, because in general this class is very good and strives to perform well in every project.

A drawing from our back garden at 16 Cross Street.

Day 350

The black dog pretending to be a bear. 

Another cold day but with a shining sun.  I waited until noon to get the full benefit, but this sun does not so much cross the sky anymore, Helios driving his chariot pulled by the solar steeds.  Instead it just climbs a little imaginary knoll and then strolls off into the distance again. 

However, running in the meadow I could feel its little friendly glow on my back and it was good. 

The first hill just about killed me and I actually had to stop at the top, fling off all my warm clothes, unsure whether I was suffering from a hot flush or just the running.  I was wheezing and coughing until I cleared my complaining lungs and started off again, slowly, then gradually gained my second wind, and then off I went!  I decided only to run for 30 minutes, but ended up doing about 35, quite slow, 4.39 km at 7.58 minutes per km.

I have decided that the application process for college in America is crazy.  Parents basically have to do so much research, it's like a whole extra job!  How is the child supposed to spend time looking up schools, deadlines, scholarships etc., and still manage to keep up with all their schoolwork, extra-curricular activities, work, and friends?  Every college seems to require something different, each college has different deadlines for different things, and then there is the college essay, of which there are numerous examples on the college websites of "essays that worked", after reading which you immediately can think of nothing but what was in that essay!  And then way in the fine print somewhere on the website is the dreaded title Tuition and Fees, which you click on with some trepidation, only to find that for most colleges which are not state schools, (all the schools your children want to go to) the total cost per year is around $45 000 to $50 000 per year!  Which is just ridiculous, actually.  Incomprehensible, really. 

So there are thousands of kids going to college on loans, some ending up with debts of $200 000, and no hope of a job which will help them pay this back quickly, so that they begin their working life with this enormous gigantic millstone around their necks!  What sense is there in that?  The whole system is absurdly overblown, like the housing bubble of a few years' ago, threatening to burst. 

I went upstairs to fetch something this evening and ended up trying out my new pastels on a clean sheet of paper for about half an hour, until Nick called me to ask about supper, as he had to be at school in 45 minutes to sing in the Winter Concert. 

It's called Dream of Water.

Day 349

Baby elephant snowman, in 2005.

Bitter, bone-chilling cold, -15C wind-chill, heavy sky, let's go for a run!

So I dress up until I look vaguely like a Muslim woman, only my eyes showing,  if Muslim women wore sweatsuit pants, balaclavas with hoodies on top, bright green down jackets, their husbands' black socks pulled up over the bottoms of the trousers, and all this on top of sky-blue running shoes! 

And off we go!  I have a problem though, because even though I like to be warm, I am also highly claustrophobic, and so after about 15 seconds of running my mouth panics behind the balaclava, thinking, "I can't breathe!  I can't breathe!" and my hand reaches up and pulls it down below my chin as the frozen air rushes into my astonished lungs.  I briefly wonder, as I hurtle down the first hill, how they are managing, but they seem to have got over themselves until I turn and start uphill, when it all becomes rather difficult. 

But at last we regain our equilibrium and everything is going quite well.  I think I see a couple of Pine Siskins which scoot across my path into the undergrowth,  otherwise the meadow is still, as all the birds are probably visiting my feeders.  This morning from the bathroom window I spy a whole flock of about twenty dark-eyed juncos, all happily stocking up on the seed I threw out for the ground feeders, filling their dear little white tummies, which give them the appearance of having bathed in snow. 

The intense cold causes water to stream from my eyes and I find myself wondering if there are ice drops on my face, but I think my skin is too warm for that.  After a couple of km I even have to take off my sweaty gloves, but the hoodie never comes off, it is just THAT cold.

When I come down the home stretch past the beehive, I feel like Roald Amundsen having successfully negotiated the cold of the Antarctic, must be my Scandinavian blood!  I find I have run 4.96 km, at a rate of 7.05 minutes per km.  (I must have run so fast to hurry up and get back home!)

So my self-portrait for tonight is my frozen footprints next to Molly's, everything icy-hard and brittle, that just a few days ago was soft and mushy mud.

Day 348

Big feet, little footprints, hair, snow.

The Big Chill has us in its thrall, sweeping down through Canada, traveling all the way to Florida!  Helicopters are being used to hover over vegetable crops there, trying to bathe them with warm air and keep the hard frost at bay.

I am sitting almost on top of the wood stove in an effort to keep warm, and tomorrow morning, after spending the night in -10C temperatures, the jaunty chickadees, singing spiritedly, will plunge from the tall white pines, diving to the feeder for a sunflower seed, looping up to a perch where they will heartily rip it apart, extricate the sweet kernel, then flit their tiny bodies back for more, as though they had not just accomplished the most amazing feat by not freezing to death in the night!

Everyone was happy at school today, knowing that the Christmas holidays are nearly upon us!  The last day of art class before the holidays has traditionally become one where we make Christmas cards, or "holiday" cards, as it is not politically correct to call them the Christmas Holidays.  In Boston in 2005 the huge Christmas tree which decorates Boston common was renamed the "Holiday Tree" until a number of threatened lawsuits encouraged its return to the "Christmas Tree"  (Amazing that people care enough about something like that to go to court!)

So each child went home with a colourful card decorated with presents, or a green fir tree (which harks back to pagan times anyway) or with beautiful six-sided snowflakes.  They worked at their tables surrounded by their friends, happy and quietly contented, breaking out into Christmas song every now and then, such a peaceful day, such wonderful creativity animating the room.

Here are some of the snowflakes I made to demonstrate the process.