Snow Day

It is snowing today. Looked innocent enough this morning when I left to sing at the nursing home: a flake here, a flake there. You had to watch closely to see that it was snow.
“Oh, it’s not going to stick,” I told Sonya. We got in the car and took off.
Sang at the nursing home for an hour – long enough to wear through my voice and my energy. Ended with “You Are My Sunshine,” and “Good Night, Ladies.” Looking out the windows, I could see the snow coming down quite visibly now.
I visited Christine Tokar Weil for a few minutes, giving her some photos I had printed up of the Australian branch of the Blakemore family. By that time the snow was coming down steadily, but not sticking.
We drove across the street to my church to use the facilities and of course stop and chat with people coming out of the weekly silent listening group. When we left there it was snowing heavily, but, still, not sticking.
Stopped off at Reva’s for a while and when we left there, the snow was starting to produce a white sheen on the pavement and sticking a little on the grass.
Went to Vashon Market to pick up a few necessities, and when we came out of there, there was a thick slush on the ground, and the snow was still coming down hard and definitely sticking. We beat it for home.
Which is where we are now, listening to YoYo Ma playing “The Cello Suites” “inspired by Bach.” Huh. I thought the cello suites were written by Bach. Live and learn. Cello music goes well with falling snow, I think.
The air is sweet with the fragrance of the onions and bits of ham Sonya is sautéing in preparation of a pea soup dinner. Pea soup goes good with falling snow, at least when you’re inside a warm house looking out at the snow. When it’s about done, we’ll bake some corn bread, and put together a salad of some sort. That’s dinner tonight.
We had intended to go up town to see “Milk” at the Vashon Theater this evening, but it’s snowing, and we live at the top of perhaps the worst hill on the island to go up or down in slick conditions. A veritable ski jump of a hill. So the movie is probably not going to happen.
The snow is wet and sloppy; sticking, yes, but also melting underneath, so that it doesn’t get deeper than an inch or two. Ropes of rotten snow drape off the back of the outdoor chairs and fall to the deck. Finches and juncos continue to forage on the deck where we feed them, not regarding the snow.
It’s mid-afternoon, so even though it is snowing the sky is bright and so is the world. It’s almost mid-February, and all the bulbs have pushed up outside, so I know spring is on the way and it can’t be stopped. In a few weeks, ah, the snow will be last winter’s memories and the daffodils will be in bloom. Not my daffodils; mine are still in the mesh bag I bought them in, unplanted. Oh well.
All in all, though, conditions are perfect for an afternoon snowfall. Guess I’ll finally get all those clean towels folded.

Living the Boring Life

Winter weather makes me a little nervous. This house I’m living in has no wood stove, so if the electricity goes off, it will get cold, and stay that way. When I asked the owner of the house what she did when the power was out, she told me that her kind neighbors took her in for a day or two, and after that she flew to California.
I am considering whether I shall follow her sensible course of action if the electricity goes off for an extended period of time. I haven’t been to California for a while.
California is where I was born and where I grew up until my early 20s, when I moved to Vashon Island. I was born in a little town called Watsonville, a farming community on the southern end of Santa Cruz County.
Today at the store I stood in front of a large Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider display, picking up bottles and looking at the pictures from Martinelli’s history on the labels, trying to see if I could recognize anything in them.
The Martinelli’s plant was across the street from my high school. I remember sitting in Mr. Plummer’s freshman English class in the basement of the old high school building (built in 1903, now long gone), staring out the ground level windows at Martinelli’s on the other side of Beach Street. I was waiting for life to begin, waiting to be free from school, and bells, and petty tyrants, of which there seemed to be so many, both adult and student.
One day a man who looked like Gabby Hayes, or a prospector straight out of the Gold Rush, came walking down Beach Street leading a donkey that was carrying a pack. This would have been in 1962 or so. I was curious, but I never found out who he was or why he and his donkey walked by the high school. He was a character, no doubt, one of the people at whom we rolled our eyes and twirled our fingers around our ears to indicate, “crazy.” In 1962 there weren’t many characters. Characters came in a few years later when we all decided to let our hair grow.
I wish I could say that I saw other interesting things while gazing out the windows of my high school classes, but that was pretty much it, just that one guy and his donkey. Other than that it was four years of boredom.
Growing up in California in the fifties and sixties felt pretty boring. I know now that I was living a comfortable life in a place where the temperature stayed between 50 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit all year ‘round. I guess that being safe and comfortable can seem boring to a kid.
My cousin and I are planning a road trip to California next spring. We’ll drive out to Green Valley to see the ranches, both my grandfather’s and my father’s. My father’s apple trees are gone, replaced by dwarf varieties that produce more apples. Also gone are the peach, apricot, fig, and lemon trees that we had for our personal use. Once the place was sold and became a part of agribusiness, no longer a family farm, those oddities had to go. Too bad. I remember how happy my dad looked when he sat down to a bowl of fresh peach slices drenched in cream.
Now when I go up to the top of the hill and look at the views I so loved as a child, I am trespassing on someone else’s land. But I go, anyway, so I can look at the flat orchard-covered floor of Green Valley to the north, and the long vista over the Pajaro Valley and off to Fremont Peak in the hazy distance to the south, and drink the view in.
I must be getting old, to mourn times and people that are no more. Makes me wonder why we want long life, when the older we get, the more losses we carry. Still, you know I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
I wish you all a warm and wonderful Christmas, or whatever the heck you celebrate. May it be safe, and comfortable, and boring. You know: enough to eat, clothes to wear, a roof over your head, family and friends, no sickness or death or other catastrophes. Boring. Let’s hear it for boring.