Just Like That
The Thanksgiving dishes are barely put away and just like that the holiday season is on us, inclusive of two inches of snow that fell on southern New Hampshire last week. We went to a comedy show earlier in the year at the Colonial Theatre in nearby Keene, and one of the performers (Ken Rogerson, a very funny guy) opened with a jab at New England weather. Pulling on your clothes in the morning, he explained, the day outside looks bright and clear. Except that in the time it takes to bend over and tie your shoe, it starts snowing outside!
True, amplified by the fact that the southern border of New Hampshire is a weather line. I collected my son from Logan airport on the snowy day in question and drove home through light drizzle unimpeded until we hit the higher altitudes of the hills around us, whereupon we crept the last several miles through near-blizzard conditions.
The first snow of the year reduces us to feeling clumsy and awkward behind the wheel. We are all Californians at that moment. It takes a few attempts to get our snow-driving game on. Likewise, true for the state highway departments, apparently bent over tying their shoes as we slid gingerly down the western slope of Temple Mountain that night—snow accumulating on the roads, obscuring the lines, and coming straight at our windshield.
Concentrating fully to keep from going off the road, my son and I swapped snow-driving stories of the past. Coming of age in Western New York, I have many of those. They are made more electrifying by the nature of the vehicles we drove in those days, which were big, spongy, eight-cylinder cars with rear-wheel-drive, handed down from family or friends, possibly with one headlight not working, and no such thing as intermittent wipers. My good friend had one of those cars. We called it Big Moe.
I can’t help it; I still pump the brakes despite modern anti-lock systems. You had to be there, road-tripping back to school in the dark after a weekend of no sleep, in blinding snow, unable to see past the end of an enormous front hood, trying not to spin off the New York Thruway.
The snow delighted our visiting three-year-old grandson and nine-month-old puppy Huckleberry, who stepped cautiously from the house into the white stuff. There is nothing burdensome about snow when you are too young to be asked to work a shovel. Over the course of a full morning playing outside making snow angels, tracking ‘wild animal’ footprints, and building a snowman, the only inconvenience of the arriving season for our grandson was a sock that kept slipping to the bottom of his boot. Admittedly, that is irritating. And you know that once a sock has shimmied off a foot it is permanently broken no matter how many times you stop to remove the boot . . . pull up the sock . . . replace the boot . . . brush off snow pants . . . and carry on your way. We proved this again but heard nothing from him about going inside. Snow here today could be gone tomorrow.
Anyway, Thanksgiving—poof—and just like that our inboxes are full of Black Friday offers. The world is released to fill the airways with carols, string holiday lights, and buy Christmas trees; although when I see the SUVs with trees strapped to the roof at this stage, I think of the profusion of dry pine needles on the floor several weeks from now.
We live among the pines and will cut down a small one in another couple of weeks. We will keep it up for at least the twelve days of Christmas, more likely for another week after that. So almost a month. There will be very few pine needles afterward on the floor, the benefit of a tree straight from the backyard.
My late, great, mother-in-law was one of those people who would have her holiday shopping finished and wrapped by Halloween. She chipped away at it all year. I am one of those people who will open a bag of peanuts in the check-out line of the grocery store and finish it before I get to the register. How, then, can I be expected to buy a present in March and wait to give it to someone in December? Inspiration does not work that far in advance for me. I may lose or forget I have the item as a consequence of hiding it well enough to remain undiscovered and out of the way. Dogs can evidently remember the location of up to twelve bones they have buried in the ground. Each morning I am responsible for gathering a set of car keys, a mobile telephone, and my wallet—things I use every day—and it is a circus show.
I have a friend whose wife does not cook, as in never. Nor does he. Neither of them cooks. They go out for dinner every night. (No kidding.) He hides presents for her in the oven. My situation is different. My wife is the only person who knows where every item is in the house (except my keys, phone, and wallet, although she tries). She sorts, folds, and puts away my laundry. She uses every closet to its maximum fill capacity. She loves baskets and boxes and squirrels everything in them. I have one place I can possibly hide something that might escape her attention and that is this studio where I write, but it is exactly in this place that she discovered an old present for my daughter tucked into the eaves that was to have been under the Christmas tree two years ago! “What’s this?” she asked. We had to open it to find out.
The Black Friday deals keep extending, which suggests there are others like me, slow to get their holiday shopping act together. The wood is stacked, the outdoor furniture stowed, the window screens are off. But the holidays always sneak up on me. Thanksgiving comes and goes, and just like that--I have to find my wallet.
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