New England Mamas

Moving right along...

When I was six, my mother, father, older brother, younger sister and I moved.

I remember the house on 138 so clearly. I can draw a pretty accurate floor plan of it when I put my mind to it. For the first 6 years of my life, it was my life. My playroom, my world, my universe. I made up stories to entertain my sister and created fantastic worlds of make believe. Our closet was a hideout...a pirate cave, a hidden fort, an invisible room where our characters could come to life. We brought our imaginations outside, to the woodpile, the lawn, the forest behind the house, the path to Nana’s. We would run over to see her multiple times a day. In the twilight, we’d look out for the bats that came out to hunt. We peeked through the trees at the spooky run down house that lay in a think tangle of overgrowth next door. We smashed crabapples with sticks, built “tree-houses” in the wood, learned to ride our bikes on the smooth grassy slope of our back yard.

It was idyllic. And yet, when the time came for us to move, I didn’t feel an overwhelming sadness, primarily because of one thing. In the new house, one town away, I would have my very own room.

So it was that moving became a glorious adventure. I remember absolutely nothing of packing. I remember the truck though. And here is the major difference between then and now. I got to ride in the back of the moving truck. And it was the coolest, most exciting thing I’d ever done. The dim light inside, the last boxes strapped to the sides of the truck. I was a hobo, an adventurer. A stowaway on a huge ship. My six-year-old imagination went wild. Time stood still as my caravan rumbled out and off to adventure.

I didn’t move again until I was 18. Then I moved again at 19, and at 20, 3 times when I was 21, a few more times between ages 22 and 35, until I found myself pretty much back where I started, here in Massachusetts. But the first time I moved was magical. Perhaps everything is magical when you are six. Time moved so slowly. You could bask in your daydreams.

Now I am nearing forty, and this year, I will move again. This time is another first for me. All the other moves I’ve ever had were from rental to rental. Now, we will be moving to a house. Our house.

I’ve never even tried to buy a house. It made no sense, for my lifestyle. But now, in this year of mammoth change, I find myself poring over our finances, navigating a neighborhood eight hours away to try to divine which streets would be the best to try for, learning about points and financing and mortgages and insurance and and and...

When I was renting, I maintained an illusion that I still was, in some slight way, a child. Now I feel like the last vestiges of that childishness are evaporating with each new aspect of home buying I confront. I have to be practical. I have to be diligent. I have to keep my feet on the ground. I have to be the epitome of every grownup cliche you can think of.

Life was so much more pleasant when the moving van was simply a caravan, and my biggest worry was that the ride would be over all too soon.

Some random weirdness.

• I was born on the same day as my youngest uncle. May 27^th. Of course, we are 23 years apart. But 1969 was a pretty fun year to be born.    

     

• When I was a wee one of 5 or 6, my Mom made most of our clothes. She also volunteered us (me, my older brother and younger sister) for modeling her clothes in some fashion show I don't really remember.    

     

• I make a mean Chocolate mousse.

     

• When I was 18 I worked as a volunteer for the Royal National Eisteddfod in Wales. That year it was in Newport, in South Wales. I lived in a little village called Rhiwderyn and walked a couple of miles to work each day through the Welsh countryside. The best part of this walk was climbing over the fence turnstiles at the foot of a grassy hill surmounted by old Roman ruins.
  

     

• When I was a kid, my older brother packed up his huge, five string double bass and headed out to Tanglewood for a summer studying with “Tiny” Martin and other members of the BSO. My little sister and I, for the July 4^th bash, were given the jobs of gate runners. Which meant, basically, that we pressed our little faces up against the gates with hundreds of other concert crazies, waited for it to open, panting and chomping at the bit, and when it finally did, left the gate at full gallop, blankets streaming behind us like superhero capes as we made the mad dash across the green perfect lawns to our favorite spot by the big tree near the main shed. There we spread the blankets and collapsed into jellylike lumps to wait for our parents to catch up. They would bring the lunch/snack/dinner basket. In the meantime we watched a small city spring up around us. A few blankets away, a card table was erected, spread with snowy white linen, and set with china and wine glasses. Over behind the shed on the other side of a line trees, we could see hot air balloons begin to swell and rise over the foliage. A line of cannons waited quietly on the lawn for their moment, hours away as of yet, when they would fire and bring down a rain of fireworks that would all but obliterate the strains of Tchaikovsky blasting from the shed. But what did it matter? We were young, happy, and dreamed young dreams of flying off in those hot air balloons that would eventually rise from the earth and float away over the mountains.

Just a little storm...

February 5th-8th, 1978

 

“...snow...came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss...”

-Dylan Thomas A Child's Christmas in Wales

I've seen this snow, many times in my childhood, but 30 years ago this week, it did not cover our roof with anything like a delicate stippled rime. Snow lay like 30 ton blanket of wool, heavy enough to make the roof groan with the weight of it. The weather men at that time fore-casted a "little storm", hardly anything to worry about...

 

In 1978 I was nine years old, still shorter than my older brother, but bold in his cast off snow suit and bottle green rubber boots. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First I have to wake up.

 

And so I did...to muffled silence. It was February 8th. The whistling and banging of the radiator had stopped. The howling and shrieking of the winds from the days and nights before were silent and still. I lay in my bed, gazing out of all five of my windows (I had the gable room, tiny, but well lit...usually) at nothing but white. This wasn't, as you might think, because it was still snowing...it was...but that wasn't the snow I looked out upon. I was staring at the snow that had already fallen...and completely covered the windows from sill to lintel. A dim cold light shone through the top panes of glass, so I knew somewhere up there was the surface of the snow. But damned if I could see it.

 

I ran down stairs...I wanted to be the first to try the doors. I climbed on the kitchen counter to look out the window over the sink to the driveway. Our car was gone. This was not a small car, but a station wagon. There was no sign of it but a slight rise in the drift...a softly sloped hill that might have just been a whimsy of the wind. Except there was a car somewhere underneath. I crowed with delight and jumped down to the floor as Dad came lumbering up from the cellar, toolbox in tow.

 

“Look out the back door!” he said with a grin. I opened the inner door and laughed. The storm door was completely snowed in. There was nothing to see through the plexiglass window but the bluey gray of packed snow. Dad calmly set down his tool box and began unscrewing the hinges. Soon, he had peeled away the storm door and a good bit of snow fell into the back entry way. We scooped it into the sink, digging a tunnel through the snow until we broke the surface.

Now this might sound like a tall tale right about now, but I assure you, it isn't. Any one who survived the Great Lakes Blizzard of '77 will be familiar with the images of graveyards of buried cars on the highways, and street signs barely breaking through the top of the snow drifts. Some might say that '78 was a flurry in comparison, but comparisons, as someone once said long ago, are odious. Both years, the National Guard was called in, states of emergency declared, people lost their homes and businesses, people died. On February 6th of 1978, in our neck of the woods, the snow fell and the wind blew for 33 hours, at times at a rate of 4 inches an hour. Throw in some thunder and lightning as well, just for good measure. And some 75 Mph winds. And flooding.

 

The Blizzard of '78 wasn't just one storm, but a convergence of three that turned into one mother of a nor' easter that dumped (in our town) almost four feet of snow on top of the almost two feet we already had on the ground from the Jan 25^th storm (our little blast of the Great Blizzard of '78 that nailed the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes). In sea side towns, homes were blown off their foundations by hurricane force winds. Other towns were flooded. In Bristol county...in Easton...we got buried.  There were drifts of 15 feet reported in some areas. The power was out. For a week. Over a week for others. Mom filled the bathtub with water and brought up our camping equipment...the Coleman stove (we had an electric range...useful for storing water that week), the coolers, the lanterns and candles and flashlights and batteries. We stocked up wood for the fireplace on the front porch. The shovels had been brought in and now that the snow was finally tapering off, we began to dig ourselves out of our house. It took the
better part of the day.

   

I see pictures of it now but it doesn't match the memories of a four foot something little girl. I don't remember if Dad's head cleared the top of the snow in some places or not. It didn't matter. What did matter was the unbelievably warm memories of one of the coldest times of the year. When we finally dug ourselves out, we met others on the road, their sleds and toboggans and skis making tracks through the flat white expanse where the road used to be. We'd bundled up Michelin man style, and my older brother and I climbed every plow mountain we could find... one that reached almost to the top of the gas station's sign. Do you remember? Did you climb it too? Then we followed the brave souls who'd heard through word of mouth that Fernandez (our local supermarket at the time) had managed to open, so we all set off for a afternoon of it...sleighing and coasting a mile up the road to load up our toboggan with whatever we needed...though I can't remember at all what we could possibly have needed.

Mom and Dad seemed to have everything under control, so we did what New Englanders did best back then...hunkered down. With no electricity, we were, to all intents and purposes, cut off. The only radio station we could get on our transistor was WBZ. We heard sobering reports of people dying in their cars on Route 128. Of flooding in Revere and Hull. Of homes flattened by the wind. We felt grateful, in our cold house, that we had it at all. That we had a fire, and our family and our friends, and our lives. It made us want to enjoy everything we could as if it was the last day we could enjoy it.

Over the next week my brother and I built a rabbit warren of underground tunnels in the front yard. We made snow forts and snow aliens. We came in when we were soaked and dried off before the fire, and played board games. Monopoly, and Scrabble, and Parcheesi, and Mousetrap, and even Candy Land (little sister loved that one). I usually hated board games (except for Scrabble), but somehow, possibly because of the death and destruction the storm had caused, everyone tried to rise above it by being the best possible people they could be (at least in our town...the looters lived somewhere else). There were neighborhood potlucks. Food tasted better, we enjoyed our company as we never had before. There was no pressure. No where to go, no where we had to be. The storm had passed, and we were buried, but we were alive, safe in our iglood house, free of the sadness and worry our parents undoubtedly had, but didn't share. We were free of time, free of concern. The dreadful, wonderful freedom it seems at times only a big storm can give.

Cross-posted from Rock the Cradle
And for a piece of lovely writing about '78, check this out.

1%.

One percent of the population of the US does not watch any TV. I don't know if there are grades of abstinence. Whether you are included in this exclusive one percent if say, like me, we have a big ass, movie house of a set, but no cable. No connection. Really, we don't watch tv.

This is not because I am some holier than thou bitch. It is completely selfish. TV annoys me. I felt a thankful kinship with the Globe writer who outed herself as another member of the 1% in the Sunday Globe Magazine a couple weeks ago. I'm not alone!

 

It's not just because there is nothing on (truly, the only show on now I would watch is Wired) but the commercials. The constant break of concentration. If I was lucky enough to have a show I really enjoyed, why would I want to watch it, only to be yanked out of my enjoyment by ten minutes of commercials every fifteen minutes? Ah, you may say. TiVo or some such recording program can bypass all those things. But I am too lazy. If I can rent the DVD from Netflix, I sure as hell don't need to fork out the cash or the time to set up a program to winnow through the shit and filter out the gold.

 

I'm not sure how the annoyance factor breaks down. It could be a ratio of 80% annoyance at commercials to 20% annoyance at time spent clicking through bullshit. Or vice versa.

 

It wasn't always this way. When I was a kid, I was a TV junkie. Here is just a little of what I remember zoning out to, in no particular order: Grizzly Adams; Good Times; The Jeffersons; Fat Albert; Little House on the Prairie; Julia Child; Sesame Street; The Electric Company; Mr Rogers; The Love Boat (and Fantasy Island, of course); The Gong Show (remember Chuck Barris? That HAIR?), The Price is Right; every holiday special I could stay up for; Barnie Miller; Taxi; Cheers; MASH (oh, how I loved MASH); Silver Spoons; Punky Brewster; All in the Family; Get Smart; That Girl; Mary Tyler Moore; The Facts of Life; Family Ties; MacGyver; Murder She Wrote; Magnum PI; Charlie's Angels; Marcus Welby M.D.; Leave It to Beaver; the A Team; Hollywood Squares; The Bionic Man; The Bionic Woman; Wonder Woman; Batman; Hawaii Five-O; Quantum Leap; Fame; Old classic movies; every musical ever made; after school specials; all those “back to nature” movies with the horrible child non-actors one suspected of being “hired” by the producer or director but who were really sons or daughters who wanted to play on the big screen...

 

I could go on, but by now, you get the idea. I was a teen couch spud.

 

I'm not sure when it all changed for me. It may have started the year I graduated from high school, and for all intents and purposes, stopped watching. I traveled, I went to college, I didn't have time for it. So by the time I was working nine to five, and had the time again, I watched. But now, there were channels like the cartoon network, and Turner, and HBO. Suddenly I didn't have to deal with commercials. I also realized that there was not as many things I was interested in watching. Beakman, Dexter's Lab, Space Ghost Coast to Coast were regular fare. But these were all short-lived indulgences. We watched Homicide and taped almost every episode. Never watched them a second time, though. What exactly were we taping them for? The VHS tapes are slowly disintegrating in boxes in the basement. We never really talked about what we watched with our friends either. Our tastes were too esoteric.

 

Of course there were reruns. But there were only so many times I could swallow another episode of Andy Griffith or the inevitable Brady Bunch without my feeling guilty afterwards for such a pathetic waste of time. I'd been there, done that. Then I began to be annoyed with the “personalities”. The talk show hosts, the newscasters. Then the stupidity of new sitcoms. The same old things, over. And over. And over.

 

Then, med school started, and financially, we had to make some choices. DSL or cable. It wasn't a difficult choice. We walked away from the cable easily enough. I was done. The addiction was routed, and I kissed the tube goodbye. Netflix now sends us our Wired episodes, which we barely find time to watch, let alone the other 300+ movies and animes in our Q. It is more than enough.

 

As for the Impling, I doubt she would have the interest to sit and watch even if we were inclined to let her watch, which we aren't. There are numerous reasons for this. First, I've no interest in mucking through what looks at a glance to be horribly insipid and stupid and badly animated children's shows to find one that's actually worth watching. I don't want to train her in how to watch. I don't want to deal with a whiny toddler demanding Elmo's or Disney Princesses or neon breakfast cereals. I do want to give the National Association of Pediatritians the benefit of the doubt as they reiterate over and over that TV for children is not so good. They recommend limiting TV viewing to 2 hours a day (for the over 2 set...no TV at ALL for the wee ones). This boggles my mind. Two HOURS? There is the transit time to the Science Museum for us, or a good tramp to a playground, or a new train track creation. Or reading. Or drawing. Or dancing.

So no TV. No DVD's. And sometimes, it's hard. Like when I have a bad cold and there's nothing I'd love more than curling up on the sofa and showing the Impling an old Gene Kelly musical. But I know, as soon as I start, there will be no going back. So I wait, visions of tap shoes dancing in my head, until the Impling and I are ready.

     "Let's do some tracks now Mommy!"

Crossposted from Rock the Cradle

Last year, a little before this time...

"What is Mommy gonna do?"

"Try to finish this post. Some time this millennium."

"Haa haa haa."

Since the Impling is more interested in packing (we're off to NJ tonight) and climbing on my back while I type than in letting me concentrate, I am encouraged to revisit the past.

So, last year, at this time...we were not gazing in wonder at the Trojan Cow.

Nor were we eating snow.

There wasn't any snow, for one thing. But we had plenty of spirit to last us our twelve days of Christmas...

'Tis the Season.

The explanations come naturally, and for that, I'm grateful. I wondered, worried about how I would explain Christmas to the Impling, and yet, I find that the simplest explanations are the easiest, and the most honest. I don't tell her more than she can absorb.

I've started exploring potential traditions with the resurrection of particular things I enjoyed as a child...colored lights, advent calenders, the scent of baked apples, hot chocolate, and spiced cakes.

With each item comes a simple definition of what it is, and as she gets more language, the explanations will grow.

Right now, things go something like this:

The Impling stares with wide eyes at lights on a tree.

“That's a Christmas tree, sweetie. People put up pretty lights in the winter to cheer up. See how dark it is? People miss the sun, so this month people do lots of different things to cheer themselves up. And one thing they do is put up lots of lights!”

Light as hope, as life. It is one of the oldest universal symbols we have. Why not celebrate?

So we made cookies today, an impromptu affair that provided entertainment for my Impling, and our play date friends. The Impling made a tentative peace with the electric mixer, which up until today held a primal terror for her. We pressed out hearts and trees and wreaths, and put dollops of black raspberry jam in the middles. We almost burnt our first batch, but calmly went on to the second. I poured tea, and we sat in comfortable companionship, the kind of low key space that let us relax and dump our tea bags in the flour covered measuring cup that lay complacently in a pile of flour and sugar. I brought out the cello (my friend is an amateur violinist from Philly which grants us the ability to make musical in- jokes...a rare treat), and we had a dance party to “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and all it's variations.

Yesterday was another day of impromptu visits, the kind of open door “Hi! Come on in! We're making snowflakes! Want some tea?” time that doesn't happen enough. Toddlers running around, chatting with friends, losing track of time in our relaxation. No present exchanges, no obligations, just sitting around, doing lazy things.

We don't have a tree this year, but we have an advent calender, and everyday the Impling opens a window and stares at the picture that appears. I try to remember a time when I did not know what a snowman was, or a Christmas tree, or Santa Claus. She loves the windows, more for the excitement of a new word than anything else, and tries to wrap her little tongue around “Sanna Kaws” and “Krimmas trwee” with such glee.

The stories and symbols of Christmas, the evergreen wreaths, the holly, the ivy, the trees and lights and yule logs and carols, are all now a happy jumble of ancient Roman holidays, ancient Celtic ritual, etc etc. etc.

To add a story of birth in the cold of winter is not only appropriate, but inevitable. It's hard to create a better, or more accessible tale...a young pregnant teenager, thrust into an early adulthood, rising to her fate and making do with what she had. We all know now what birth is really like, so for mothers, the image is automatically a powerful one.

What would this scene look like today? When I was still in school, I developed a 20^th century nativity. In my tableau, Mary was a 14 year old runaway, Joseph a homeless veteran, trying to break into the carpenters union, and the stable a sewer duct. Today, I would probably change the stable to a shelter. The three wise “men” were once Mark Twain, Maya Angelou, and Gore Vidal. Today, I'd still have Mark and Maya, But Natalie Angier may take over for Gore. Charles Kuralt would be one of the shepherds.

Oh, and Jesus...she would be black. Just so there's no confusion about it.

But in the here and now, all these stories are just too complicated. My Uncle asked me at Thanksgiving if the Impling knew about Santa Claus. I laughed and said we were taking it one holiday at a time. But I heard the unspoken question behind the innocuous one...are you bringing up your child as a Christian? I heard this only because, for my uncle, having a God to be angry at and rage against is paramount. Because my aunt has cervical cancer. He needs to ask why. He needs to rage.

But he was wonderful with the Impling, playing with the old 1970's Fisher Price castle we all played with when we were young. Those moments were glorious...pure enjoyment of life and creativity and curiosity. There was no need for explanations, or blame, or expectations. There were just the little iconic wooden figures of a knight, a queen, and a woodman with the little Errol Flynn mustache. A pink dragon peeking from behind the stairs. A golden laugh, and a tired but joyful smile. At that moment, the Impling showed her God to my uncle, who felt his own in a way he hadn't in a long while.

These are the gifts we make for ourselves. These unconscious moments of clarity, of being completely in the moment, celebrating our wondrous lives. Celebrating the light, not by itself, but surrounded by darkness.

Peace, all.

Originally posted December, 2006, on Rock the Cradle

At the moment...

It's snowing like a mo fo. See?

 

The Impling is warm and cozy in her nap, and I sit in the dark and try to type as quietly as I can. 

 

I am hungry, but I don't know what I would like to eat. Maybe some hot chocolate. It's snowing, after all.

 

I'm wearing my “Mom” jeans. The ones that cut me off at the waist. I hate that. On the other hand, they're lined in flannel. So that part's cozy. My kingdom for some lined, dropped waist jeans.

 

I'm also wearing a cozy, beat up red cardigan with funky buttons that I only wear on my “off” days.

 

It is one of those “off” days. I feel not so much tired as just sort of pale. Like my face isn't getting enough blood or something.

 

I'm mildly annoyed at fund-raisers who call during nap-time. Even if it is for Obama.

 

I have no idea what we are having for supper. Soup, maybe. Or breakfast. Pancakes?

 

I don't give a shit that no-one cares what I want for supper.

 

I feel distinctly un-profound. I could write about the quality of the winter light...nah.

 

One wall is the Impling's gallery of art. Her first finger-paintings, and her own collage she hung/made  herself. See?

 

I'm growing annoyed with this list, but I can't think of anything better to write. Besides the book I'm supposed to be working on, that is.

 

I don't have a publisher. Or an agent. Or connections.

 

I need to eat chocolate.

 

We have no Christmas tree.

 

There are white lights quietly brightening our Ficus Ali. I want to look at it now because it's cheerful and pleasant to look at. Of course, our Japanese screen is in the way. And I'm too not interested to actually get up and move to see it.

 

I wonder how our new colored LED lights will look on our little tree once we actually get it. Get a load of my bad green ass self. Insert snort of derision here.

 

It's still snowing.

 

At least the Impling is ready for it.

See?

 

This stream of consciousness brought to you by an absolute lack of motivation, and the letter L. For Lazy.

One Big Pipedream.

Welcome to December.

I am not going do indulge myself this year in my annual rant about the behemoth of marketing and capitalism that wraps itself up as Christmas. Nor will I go on and on about the fact that the first signs of Christmas now appear just after HALLOWEEN. Less is more folks. Really. But I promised not to rant. So I won't.

Instead, here is my own personal pipe-dream of a Christmas that exists mostly in my head. You are all invited to share your own holiday pipe dreams as well. Don't feel confined to Christmas. Any holiday will do. After all is said and done, they really do begin to look a lot alike, a mish mash of cultures and customs of days gone by. Christmas is really an essentially pagan holiday at it's roots, (before Jesus came into the picture) a holiday conveniently acquired by Christians of old to help stamp out the old pagan celebrations. Religious and non-religious fantasies (agnostic, here) are welcome. So let the holiday pipe-dreams commence.

************

Thanksgiving is over, and I walk with my family under starry skies. We are far enough out of the city to see constellations. In a few weeks, houses will begin to twinkle with their own stars. The sun disappears too early for many to enjoy the afternoon rays, so up go the lights...icicles, and wreaths, and wrapped trees. Candles warm windowsills. Neighborhoods shine, and chase away the depressing knowledge that it will be dark for a good long while before the sun returns.

On December 1rst, we set up the advent calender. It is made of wood...a winter forest with lots of animals and a curious little house with glowing windows. No candy or toys inside, just beautiful little pictures. I've always liked advent calenders. They create a wonderful sense of anticipation, kind of like an egg timer for the holidays.

December 5^th, Saint Nicholas Eve. Dr. Science and I help the Impling find her old klompjes. I set up a little centerpiece on the table. Wooden shoes filled with hay and a carrot for the Saint's horse. Water in an ornate glass. A big red candle to light the way. The flame casts a warm light over the glass and golden wood of the shoes. A poem sits beneath the glass, a collaborative effort until the Impling can write her own. It is a wish list for Christmas.

 

 

In the morning, the glass will be empty, the hay and carrot will have mysteriously vanished. The poem has also vanished, but the wooden shoes are now filled and surrounded by rolls of sweet tarts, chocolate letters, speculaas and stroopwafels. A small toy peeks from behind the pillar candle.

For the next few weeks, life goes on as usual. Here and there little embellishments and decorations begin to appear. Shops begin to play carols, and decorate their windows. The most I do is purchase a few things, mostly for the Impling, as Dr. Science and I don't gift each other. I send pictures of the Impling to all our friends and relatives, and keep a steady supply of hot chocolate and peppermint Jo Jo's on hand. And dark chocolate caramels. I might feel ambitious enough to bake butter cookies, or gingerbread, or not. I will if I feel like it. It is enough to smell cider warming on the stove top, fragrant with cinnamon and cloves. Sometimes I will drink it steaming with a good splash of dark rum and a knob of butter. We listen to carols on the radio...Bing, and Nat, all the good old tunes. We enjoy the anticipation of good things to come.

Ah, the presents. No wrapping paper to be seen, just wonderful glittering boxes that are used year after year, much the same way the ornaments are used. Some of them are old friends. Every year they are dressed up with extravagant bows, and every year they look tantalizing. They have to. Most of them will be opened over the course of twelve days.

Christmas Eve, we bring home a tree. A beautiful, fragrant balsam that freshens the whole house. The night's entertainment is decorating it, listening to King's College choir, eating junk food. There is, of course, a roaring fire. We roast hot dogs and cheese and marshmallows. Not necessarily in that order. After the Impling goes to bed (cookies and milk left in generous quantities), Dr. Science and I watch Tokyo Godfathers, feast on the cookies and milk, and get to bed at a reasonable hour after setting up all the presents, and filling the stockings. We leave the Christmas tree lights on.

Christmas dawns. By the time it does, the Impling has already been up for ages. She bounces into our bedroom, climbs up, and plops down between us. She eventually falls asleep for a short while, then awakes and starts waving her hands in the air and singing her own little songs until we all wake up. We have a leisurely morning watching the Impling open her gifts. We build another fire, turn on some early morning music, Vivaldi, or a Bach Christmas cantata or something. We eat fresh cinnamon rolls and drink chocolate and mocha and perhaps a mimosa or so. The kitchen, of course, is all ready for me to start cooking the feast.

This is the part I love. I love my chef's knife, a big roasting pan, and plenty of wine to baste with and drink. During the next twelve days, we eat all our favorite feasting foods, turkey, goose, tarragon chicken, roast beef, roasted potatoes, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, butternut squash soup, fresh greens with sugared almonds and mandarin slices, cranberry relish with ginger and oranges, acorn squash stuffed with wild rice, hazelnuts and cranberries, oyster stews, oysters on the half shell, huge pots of mussels cooked in wine and garlic, a decadent yule log cake, pies of all kinds for breakfast lunch and dinner. There are three major feasts. Christmas (goose) New Years (roast beef), and Twelfth Night (anything and everything). I never have to clean up afterwards. I just sit by the fire with a good book, a glass of port, and a little dish of Colston Bassett.

On Twelfth Night, we have a costume party. A huge themed blow out for all our friends. We all look forward to this one last bash...wassail and dancing and games and eating until, at last, the festivities are over. Decorations are quickly packed away, the mistletoe and ivy and holly returned to the earth. The tree comes down with some relief, and is mulched. The lights stay up in various configurations in the windows to brighten the remaining winter until the end of February. But just the clear lights. Colored lights are just for Christmas.

 

Of Turkeys, Pilgrims and...Maypoles?

Ah, it's that time of year again...the annual slaughter of the turkeys; the inevitable inaccurate images of drably dressed pilgrims; the old American legends of Pilgrims and Indians sitting together in harmony in some vaguely horrible but much more idyllic circumstance, to give thanks for being alive; Algonquins and indentured servants erecting a Maypole in celebration of their new found freedom and new homes...

Say what?
 

I'd like to introduce you all to my new personal hero for the Thanksgiving season, Thomas Morton.

Thomas was well-educated, opinionated, inclined to fight, and got on well with his Algonquin neighbors. All of which did not endear him to the good folks of Plimouth, particularly William Bradford. 

 

So in 1624, while the poor wretches at the plantation were ostracizing the various indigenous peoples who had saved their asses the previous years, Tom settled a small outpost with his trading associate Captain Wollaston and about 30 indentured men. They were given a bit of land by the local Algonquin people (we now know this land as Quincy) and set up a trading post. Thomas Morton was a man ahead of his time. He respected and admired the Algonquins, and preferred their company to that of his Puritan neighbors. His own particular brand of Christianity, (which just happened to rub the Puritans the wrong way) may have had something to do with this preference. It also helps if you treat the people you are trying to convert in a friendly and helpful manner, but I digress.

 

So they set up a healthy trade in guns and liquor for furs and provisions. The trade was so successful the post was expanded into an agrarian colony named Mount Wollaston. Unfortunately, Captain Wollaston decided to start his own trade on the side...in slaves, with the Virginia tobacco plantations. Also unfortunately, the people being sold into slavery were the indentured servants they had brought with them. Morton encouraged the remaining servants to rebel. In a rare triumph of the underdog, Wollaston left with his supporters for Virginia in 1626, and Morton became “host” of the colony, which he promptly renamed Mount Ma-re or Merrymount.

 

And now began a short, idyllic interlude. All the indentured colonists were declared free men, and a community of tolerant Europeans and Algonquins began to coexist in quite a friendly and prosperous manner.

 

The good folks at Wikipedia have a great entry about Tom, so I'll let them do the writing for a bit.

 

“Morton’s ‘Christianity’, however, was strongly condemned by the Puritans of the nearby Plymouth Colony as little more than a thinly disguised heathenism, and they suspected him of essentially ‘going native’. Scandalous rumours were spread of the debauchery at Merrymount, which they claimed included immoral sexual liaisons with native women during what amounted to drunken pagan orgies in honour of Bacchus and Aphrodite. Or as the Puritan Gov. William Bradford wrote with horror in his history Of Plymouth Plantation: "They ... set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting the Indian women, for their consorts, dancing and frisking together (like so many fairies, or furies rather) and worse practices. As if they had anew revived & celebrated the feasts of ye Roman Goddess Flora, or ye beastly practices of ye mad Bacchanalians." 

 

In truth Morton had merely transplanted traditional West Country May Day customs to the colony, and combined them with fashionable classical myth, couched according to his own libertine tastes, and fueled by the enthusiasm of his newly-freed fellow colonists. On a practical level the annual May Day festival was not only a reward for his hardworking colonists but also a joint celebration with the Native Tribes who also marked the day, and a chance for the mostly male colonists to find brides amongst the native population. Puritan ire was no doubt also fueled by the fact that Merrymount was the fastest-growing colony in New England and rapidly becoming the most prosperous, both as an agricultural producer and in the fur trade in which the Plymouth Colony was trying to build a monopoly. The Puritan account of this was very different, regarding the colony as a decadent nest of good-for-nothings that annually attracted “all the scum of the country” to the area. Or as Peter Lamborn Wilson more romantically puts it, ‘a Comus-crew of disaffected fur traders, antinomians, loose women, Indians and bon-vivants’. The reality as ever was probably somewhere between the two.”

 

And so they all existed quite happily until the summer of 1628, when Bradford sent Miles Standish to shut down the operation.

 

Apparently, the Mayday revels that year, with it's eighty foot, deer antler topped maypole, was just a little too over the top for our Puritan fore fathers. Or maybe they were singing this too loudly:

 

Give to the Nymphe thats free from scorne,
No Irish stuff* nor Scotch* over worn,
Lasses in beaver coats, come away,
Ye shall be welcome to us night and day.

Drinke and be merry, merry, merry boyes,
Let all your delight be in Hymens joyes,
Iô! to Hymen now the day is come,
About the merry Maypole take a Roome.

   

Personally, I think they were just jealous of the drinking song.
And they couldn't take the competition.

 

But, while it lasted, it was a hell of a party. Thanks, Tom, for some of our first real Thanksgivings. Even if they were in May.

*not whiskey, you bad people, woolens.

Testing

Just to test the categories.