Blessings

• Warm slippers, PJs and robe
  
• A pellet stove and two tons of pellets in the barn
• Coffee and oatmeal
• Shearling coat (thank you Jay), double knit hat (thank you Tamar), gloves (thank you Peter), good boots (thank you Keen’s)
  
• A car that starts every morning
• A sweet husband who plows the driveway
• Snow tires
• Friendly greetings at the gym
• A hot sauna after aqua aerobics
• Soup (made by that same sweet husband)
• A dog to snuggle with on the couch
• A well insulated house
• That same dog who gets me out at night to see stars, or no stars, or falling snow
• A heated mattress pad and an electric blanket (we’re a pannini!)
  

These are blessings in winter. I’m grateful for what I have all year round, but winter makes me especially aware of how blessed my life is, of the mostly unearned privileges I enjoy, and of how bleakly hard life can be absent those privileges. I drive past snug houses with beautifully lit Christmas trees in cozy living rooms, with shoveled walks, and smoke curling from chimneys. And I drive past trailers with cardboard plugging holes in the windows. Winter makes our inequities so much crueler. There is the difference between those who choose between turkey or ham, and those who choose between heating oil or rent.

It’s easy for me, in my richly blessed life, to just pay attention to how beautiful winter is. I don’t know why it should be so, but snowfall seems to bring a hush to the air. Margaret Renkl, who writes so beautifully about the natural world from her home in Tennessee, reminds me that the songbirds leave a void in the winter air. The crows call back and forth, but even they are quiet when it snows. Peter gave me a wonderful headlamp to wear when I walk Charlie at night, and with the light shining from my forehead the snowflakes are illuminated right in front of my eyes as they fall. As I turn my head to follow Charlie’s wanderings, the light picks out paths of gleaming snow. Here on the hill there are only our own footprints to mark the snow, joined sometimes by deer prints, and sometimes by the prints of big birds (crows? owls? hawks?) and sometimes by little prints I can’t recognize at all.

Peter and Aviva left Thursday, heading for Panama, and Aviva has written to say they arrived safely. Cooperstown feels a little lonelier without them already, and their house looks so empty as I drive past it on my way to and from the gym. It’s hard to think of them in flip flops and bathing suits buying pineapples while we are in our winter layers buying beets and carrots and potatoes. Today was the last day the guy from the farm with the greenhouse was at the farmers market with spinach and kale and salad greens.  We can get fresh vegetables at the grocery store, of course.  But there’s a deep difference between local produce and the produce that has been shipped in from a distance. We’re happy to shop at the farmers’ market all we can in the winter, even if the selection is limited.  It’s nice to see friends there, and a good feeling to help the farmers and crafts people get through the cold, untouristed months. And there’s plenty of parking. Plenty of parking at the gym too, as the snowbirds start leaving for Florida and Arizona and anywhere warm.

Winter is taking a little break today.  The heater hadn’t even come on when I came out this morning. The snow has pulled back, leaving a little moraine of dog poop on the patio. The fields where Zen used to graze are green today, and the deer are feasting.  A doe and her two yearling fawns browsed there on and off since dawn, doing their best to fatten up for the cold weather they know is coming right back. I imagine that they know they survived hunting season. Now the question is whether they can survive winter too. When we make a little noise in the house, even just talking, the doe looks up, alert for trouble.  But she has figured out that we’re not a threat, and goes right back to eating as quickly as she can. A warm day with exposed grass is precious – not a minute of it to be wasted. Her coat is darker and thicker looking than it was in the summer. We don’t have any trees or shrubs she’ll destroy, so she and the little ones are just welcome guests, lovely to watch. I find myself rooting for their survival.

Last spring I found half a robin’s egg shell alongside the driveway.  Its color and shape were so lovely, I set it on a windowsill near the kitchen sink. It became one of those familiar objects you stop noticing. But now, seeing it on a warmer day, with deer grazing beyond it on the green grass, it is a little reminder that winter comes and goes, that robins will be back. But really, I’m in no hurry for winter to be over, and I know it’s barely begun.

We drove back into Cooperstown this afternoon for a performance of Handel’s Messiah in the beautiful Episcopal church. It’s a beautiful setting for anything, but especially for this music at this season. The church has warm, carved wooden beams; elegant gold leaf decoration over a dark red background around the Sanctuary arch; more rich gold leaf around the hopeful painting of a rising Christ at the back of the altar. The whole place seems to glow with warmth, and the acoustics are terrific. The performance was fine – a very good local choir, and imported soloists. It’s music that always makes me think of my Dad, music he loved and loved to sing. Even with the choir and soloists singing, it’s his voice I hear. Living out here in the country almost everything reminds me of my mom and all she knew and loved and taught me. But there’s more to my inheritance, and I think of it reading the Times and listening to Handel. Dad took such great pleasure in music, and though I inherited neither his fine voice nor his musical ear, I did inherit that pleasure. “All we like sheep” was my favorite line in the Messiah, until I found out it didn’t mean we were fond of sheep.

Outside the church the pathway is lit by luminarios, opened white paper bags with sand in the bottoms lit by candles in the sand. In Santa Fe they were the predominant Christmas decoration, lining flat adobe walls and roofs and walkways. It’s a beautiful time of year. And so much easier to feel blessed by the beauty when there are no worries to diminish it.