Matchy-matchy is rarely a good thing, as seen in this coat/hat combo.
Monthly Archives:
January 2013
03
January
2013
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January
2013
03
January
2013
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January
2013
Snow Berries
They aren’t the biggest fruit in the Winter bowl, but they carried just enough color to catch my eye, especially when highlighted by the white of the snow and set against the pale blue of the sky. If my memory of spring blossoms is true, these are cherries. Not the kind you eat (and even the birds seem to have left these largely alone), but the ornamental sort grown for their blooms and foliage.
You have to look a little harder to find such color in the Winter months, and by March these will no longer be half as bright, but for now they’re up, dangling in the wintry sky, daring the wind to take them away.
02
January
2013
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January
2013
Night Into Day
Some people might dread the thought of twelve inches coming in the night, but I welcomed it. From inside I watched the snow fall, seeing how it stuck to the branches of the trees lining the middle of Braddock Park, how it coated the cars and covered the street lamps. Before my eyes nature transformed the fair city, and though it was dark, everything glowed magnificently, like the smoky air surrounding a display of fireworks.
The next day dawned with the splendor only a January morning after a snowstorm could conjure. In the bright light of day, there was a different beauty, a more crystalline, sharp sort of prettiness. Despite the arrival of the wind, the trees hung onto their crystal-carriage, lifting the snow to the loftiest light. Like some enchanted winter wonderland with an elusive ice queen, the city streets were chasms in the woods, the snow providing refuge and hiding places, a buffer in the brutal cold.
Only a scant few times does Winter in Boston afford such brushes with the sublime. This was one of them.
(It helps when someone else has done the shoveling, and the car is parked in a garage. Failing either of those points, I’d be far less thrilled.)
02
January
2013
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January
2013
Boston Blanketed
Outside the window, Braddock Park, and the city of Boston, began to transform. This was a sticky snow, a wet snow that clung to all surfaces, but instead of acting as a treacherous, tenacious parasite intent on bringing its victim down, it stayed light, and the trees were able to hold up its weight as the evening went on. I watched from my warm perch as the street took on the enchantment I’ve only partially captured here. You can’t hear the stillness of the snow, the hush that a snowstorm casts over the city. You can’t smell the scent of snow in the air, almost metallic, like some sort of atmospheric trick the elements play on the nose.
Alone, with the light of a flickering candle behind me, there is no other place I’d rather be than right here, in the midst of the first big snowstorm of the season. It is a comfort to be so stranded and unreachable.
I walk from window to window, straining to see more of the outside world, twisting my head to take in every angle. The city in the snow doesn’t last that long, and the wind will be along soon enough to ruin its pristine blanket. It’s only a question of when. For now, I sip at some tea, cozily ensconced in the warmth of the dim room.
02
January
2013
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January
2013
The Snow in Boston
It started as I was walking down Newbury Street. At first I wasn’t sure if that’s what I was really seeing. For the first hour or so, it was just quick white streaks appearing and disappearing out of the corner of my eye. When the snow first started, it evaporated before it hit the ground, and this went on for quite some time. I’d duck into a store, and come back out expecting to find the world painted with white, but it didn’t start sticking until dinner-time. Once it began, however, it did not let up until morning, though there were breaks of rain and sleet, and we would not get the hyped-up foot of snow that Andy had warned me about.
A snowstorm is best ridden out with a stock of provisions (food stuffs, cocktails, and an ample selection of entertainment options – in this case a book and a DVD of ‘The Man Who Came to Dinner’ with Bette Davis.) It’s also nice when you can ride it out at a condo where someone else is responsible for shoveling you out the next morning (thank you condo fees), even if it packs a lighter whallop than originally reported. On this night, I grabbed a bit of dinner, finished up some shopping, and came back with the ingredients for an easy pasta dish and some bread for toast the next morning. I’d already found a tea kettle and some lavender/oat flower tea. I was ready.
01
January
2013
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January
2013
Greeting the Year with the Gummi Bears
Dashing and daring, courageous and caring,
Faithful and friendly with stories to share
All through the forest, they sing out in chorus
Marching along as their song fills the air…
Sitting on my parents’ family room couch, my brother brings up the above clip on his phone. It is Alica Keys on Jimmy Fallon, singing a theme that is both familiar and foreign. A vague Saturday-morning recollection of cartoons and chaos strikes my mind. Ahh, yes, the Gummi Bear theme – one of the greatest opening cartoon themes ever written. Side by side in the exact spot where we spent many a Saturday morning, my brother and I listened to the Gummi Bears theme, greeting a New Year in our childhood home.
Magic and mystery are part of their history,
Along with the secret of gummi-berry juice
Their legend is growing, they take pride in knowing
They’ll fight for what’s right in whatever they do…
And for extra-old-school authenticity, here’s the original version.
01
January
2013
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January
2013
Raw & Ready
Let’s begin without a lot of fanfare. Let’s begin without any pomposity. Let’s begin where it all began, with a few snapshots – rough and imperfect and rudimentarily raw. Let’s return to the very basic tenets of sharing and exploring and creating. Back then it was the simple notion of telling a story.
It was the way we went around our childhood classrooms, each student giving a brief synopsis of their summer vacation. Some of us listened, some of us merely waited for the chance to speak (so sure that ours was the story of greatest excitement), and some of us did a little of both, leaning in to those who mattered most, politely ignoring those who dismissed us in the past. We each had a part in the play at hand, and it was how we learned to communicate and connect.
This is a far cry from kindergarten, (what I would give for nap time at any point during the day), but many of those lessons remain relevant. It’s not enough to share. It’s not enough to speak. It’s not enough to pretend that the world is only there to hear what your summer story is. Everyone has a summer story. Some are better than others, and sometimes it’s the way in which they’re told that matters most, but all of them matter – to at least one person in the world. That is enough. That is all.
We don’t have to be perfect. We certainly didn’t start off that way. We won’t end that way. And what’s in-between is as far from perfection as we can humanly get. It will be okay to make mistakes, to blink when the shutter goes off, to miss the proper punctuation, to run off with a sentence here and there.
The greatest thing is that we’re all in it together. Like that elementary school circle, when we first faced one another as children – whispering about Halloween costumes, making paper angels dusted with glittery snow, exchanging Valentines, and fidgeting until it was time for kickball – we are still the same in so many ways. There is more that we share than we don’t.
01
January
2013
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January
2013
Restart
New Year’s Day was never one of my favorite holidays. It meant the end of Christmas vacation. It meant the return to the Winter doldrums. It meant a bunch of family had to be endured (and enjoyed, truth be told). And all because of the change of the calendar year. At the very least they could have spaced it out a few months, instead of coming right on the heels of Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Yet here it is – another baby to coddle and coo over, hoping that this time, this year, we can make it all right, make it all okay, send this one off into the world prepared and perfect, even when history, and every other year, tells us differently. We are resilient creatures, if a bit foolish, but it’s all we know, and we still do the best we can do. When I look back at the year that’s gone, and the year to come, it makes me glad that we are still trying, that we still care. The world can and may crumble around us, but we won’t give up. In a place where cynicism so often gets heard above all else, I offer this quiet whisper of hope to start us off. I’ll do my best to keep you entertained, if you’ll do your part to keep me safely grounded.
Happy New Year.
