The scent of my mom’s home-made “vertabrod” was wafting into my room on a wave of warm air as I woke up from my afternoon nap. My bedroom was filled with sunlight shining in from the windows lining three walls of the spacious, upstairs dwelling my parents built for me. I was in highschool and getting ready to leave home to go sail the seas by the time the room was finished. Until then, my bedrooms had been little attic-like spaces under the eaves. I am actually pretty good with small spaces, making them into cozy little nests, but by the time I had reached the end of highschool, I had too much stuff for my tower/loft above the living room and I was so excited to be able to explode into my new room in the addition.
The floor is all wide, pine boards, and the walls are plastered and then painted a peachy-pink color that my mom and I mixed in “milk paint”. When I was home for Thanksgiving last month, I removed the screens and got through cleaning half my windows. I guess the nice thing about having the job only half done is that now I appreciate the clean ones more. I’ll probably get around to the other half of them next spring right before we put the screens back on.
As I lay there visualizing the warm Swedish tea rings that my mom would be pulling out of the oven soon, I heard my Uncle’s and Aunt’s voices at the door. It was the day before Christmas and they had walked through the woods to deliver our presents: a screech owl house for my mom and dad, and a pair of slightly bulged envelopes for my brother and I.
The topic of conversation was the recent memorial service for my great aunt, the late Peggy Jones (my mother’s namesake, though the first was her great Aunt Margaret, I think.) My uncle Curry had chosen the Presbyterian church because he didn’t see eye to eye with the minister at the Episcopalian church. The Presbyterian minister turned out to be quite the evangelical; He requested 15 minutes of the funeral service to speak and spent that whole time trying to convert them to the church. Apparently my mom and her cousin were laughing so hard they were crying, and crying so hard they were shaking their pew. And her cousin’s husband just wondered why they there were quite so moved at that part of the ceremony. My grandma said later on that it was the sort of thing that made you just want to get up and leave. Uncle Curry said to his daughter, “You’d be surprised how much your mom would have liked that service”, and Carol said, “Yes, you’re right, I would be surprised.”
It’s funny how there are things that I look forward to all year long, like our Swedish tea ring for Christmas breakfast, and fresh tomato pie in the summer, and grape jelly in the autumn, and I wonder, would Vertabrod ever taste quite as good if we had it one morning in August, or would tomato pie be quite as delicious if I made it once every couple of weeks?
Monday, December 31, 2007
Friday, December 28, 2007
Funny Features
Ben's been bugging me lately for a new post, and I promised to write one on the bus, on my way back up to Maine from the Vineyard. And I did. On my laptop. Which is in the car. In the parking garage. And I am upstairs in the windowless office on the third floor being not-quite-content to be here, without even a glimpse of the celestial dance between sun and clouds today.
The massage business is picking up somewhat and I am thankful for that. And I turned down the heat in here so it's no longer a sauna-type atmosphere. The thermostat has this funny feature where it will suddenly start whining shrilly, and the only way to make it stop is to turn the temperature up or down. Apparently, recently, the preferred direction had been towards sauna, and the counteracting movement had not yet been applied. But it's behaving today, and I am happily chillin' at 70 degrees.
Unlike last night when I had mistakenly worn my flannel pajamas (it being winter and all) to bed at Ben's house. He does not have the same funny feature on his thermostat, but he does like the temperature in his bedroom to replicate a sunny summer afternoon, complete with fan to blow the heat around. SO, NEEDless to say, last night I didn't have the NEED for any covers.*
I think I may finally have succeeded in using my time at home on the Vineyard to relax. I was a little under the weather, so my health necessitated taking naps and hanging out at home, and by the time I got back to Maine yesterday afternoon, I was in quite the spaced-out state. Bizarre. So very different from the way I left for Christmas: running around making and wrapping last minute gifts, packing and re-packing, making plans and running out the door. I have to say that I am a lover of the Christmas holiday, and somehow, even though Christmas morning at our house often starts off with someone being grumpy and me threatening to call the whole thing off, we usually manage to have a really nice day.
This year Christmas had an added bonus of babies. Not mine, but close enough to count. Two of my dearest friends have had babies in the last year, and while playing with them, the rest of the world seems to just fall away and I find myself splashing about in baby heaven.
The massage business is picking up somewhat and I am thankful for that. And I turned down the heat in here so it's no longer a sauna-type atmosphere. The thermostat has this funny feature where it will suddenly start whining shrilly, and the only way to make it stop is to turn the temperature up or down. Apparently, recently, the preferred direction had been towards sauna, and the counteracting movement had not yet been applied. But it's behaving today, and I am happily chillin' at 70 degrees.
Unlike last night when I had mistakenly worn my flannel pajamas (it being winter and all) to bed at Ben's house. He does not have the same funny feature on his thermostat, but he does like the temperature in his bedroom to replicate a sunny summer afternoon, complete with fan to blow the heat around. SO, NEEDless to say, last night I didn't have the NEED for any covers.*
I think I may finally have succeeded in using my time at home on the Vineyard to relax. I was a little under the weather, so my health necessitated taking naps and hanging out at home, and by the time I got back to Maine yesterday afternoon, I was in quite the spaced-out state. Bizarre. So very different from the way I left for Christmas: running around making and wrapping last minute gifts, packing and re-packing, making plans and running out the door. I have to say that I am a lover of the Christmas holiday, and somehow, even though Christmas morning at our house often starts off with someone being grumpy and me threatening to call the whole thing off, we usually manage to have a really nice day.
This year Christmas had an added bonus of babies. Not mine, but close enough to count. Two of my dearest friends have had babies in the last year, and while playing with them, the rest of the world seems to just fall away and I find myself splashing about in baby heaven.
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