Merrily We Roll

Like many of you, Malcolms are in the final push to Christmas! We fly to England Saturday morning to spend the holiday with Bill’s family. Our family’s December schedule is flip-flopping around like a fish freshly pulled to shore. My mind is carrying me along in the same fashion of fits and bursts…

Last night on my way out to a writers’ meeting, I asked Liam what he had to do as Secret Santa today. “Oh, it’s the last day, so I need a gift under $15 to give him,” he oh-so-casually explained. Liam is in 6th grade, so I’ve had many years of experience with this kind of last-minute information. We gathered six doo-dads I had picked up from Target’s party favor shelves earlier in December. Then, I looked at the four dozen Snickerdoodles I had made that morning. Do I want to part with a few of these for a Secret Santa gift? Yes, a dozen cookies would elevate the value of this gift, particularly if I assigned a dollar amount to the 6 a.m. labor that went into these cinnamon & sugar lovlies.

As something a little different for Christmas treats, I made almond crackers and breadsticks with a batch of hummus early Sunday morning. I put a package together to give to my neighbors who have four little children; they weren’t home so I left the box on the front seat of their pick-up truck. That afternoon we four Malcolms went to a Christmas concert in Boston. In the middle of the Hallelujah chorus, it hit me: Nuts! Oh my God, nuts! Do any of the kids have a nut allergy?!?! Holding my phone under the table, I quickly dimmed the screen light and texted my neighbor. Later, I learned there were no nut allergies. Hallelujah.

Earlier this month, we went out to dinner, and I took the Christmas Chat Pack with us to prime conversation before dinner. I love these cards; in fact, it would’ve been nice to give these to Liam’s Secret Santa buddy. But I digress… One of the questions was “what is your favorite part of Christmas decorations?” Both Will and Liam agreed: lights. That nugget channeled my decorating energy; I didn’t need every single tub of Christmas decorations opened and distributed — I needed some basics, plus a whole bunch of lights. I bought eight new strings of white lights to cheer up the living room and kitchen; I’m averaging hanging two strings each week of December. The string that I hung in 10 minutes yesterday lights garland in the kitchen, plus an empty high shelf. The glow is sweet enough; I don’t feel a real need to add a bauble to that shelf.

Will and Liam are 14 and 11, respectively; they are old enough to sit through Christmas concerts and musicals. Of course, there is a bit of negotiation involved with Liam. “Will there be popcorn?” “Can I have Skittles?” I acquiesce in order to sit through live entertainment with my family at Christmas time. Last Sunday at the concert, Liam proclaimed, “This is food heaven with great music! Good fun!” At 51 years old, I’m no longer above bribery. On the way home, we cinched the seatbelt around Liam extra tight to keep his sugar-bounce in check.

At the end of November, I purchased some small peppermint bath bombs as gifts — and as I write this, I wonder where I hid them. But I digress… Late one evening, I decided to try one out in a foot bath. I wasn’t sure what to expect as I had never used one before. I filled my foot tub with warm water, placed it at the foot of my recliner, and dropped a bath bomb in. I slid my feet in and watched and waited. For being a bath “bomb,” very little was happening; it was just bouncing around on the surface of the water and I smelled no peppermint. I had expected it to dissolve more quickly. A couple minutes later, I plucked it out of the water to inspect it. Did you know that bath bombs are wrapped in plastic which must be removed for them to fizz and add happiness to a tub and aroma to the room?!?!

Hoping you are merrily rolling along this holiday season! Happy Hump Day!

Yankee Living

I started off the morning with a brisk hour-long walk around a lake. It was 22 degrees, and with the windchill, it felt like 12 degrees. I spent the next two hours coaxing my thighs and cheeks back to life. Those were the coldest parts; I think fat draws the cold in and holds onto it longer than other areas, like hands and lower legs.

Winter has finally suggested it is in the vicinity of New England. Saturday I joined three friends, new and old, on an early morning drive to King Arthur Flour in Vermont. A winter storm was in the forecast for that afternoon, but never was the suggestion made that we cancel our plans.

One friend suggested we take cutters to collect winterberries along the way. Another said that those branches break easy enough, so we wouldn’t need cutters. As for me, I wondered to myself, “What exactly are winterberries?”

We headed two hours northwest, through New Hampshire then just over the border of Vermont to Norwich. “Winterberries grow where it’s swampy, so watch for wet areas,” suggested the breaker of winterberry branches.

We were on four-lane interstate roads the whole trip, doing 65 miles an hour. The weather was clear and the traffic was light. Nevertheless, whenever bare bushes with bright red berries were spotted on the side of the road, there was too much traffic behind us to slow down and gather branches. And true to the forecast, all of the bushes were in low-lying wet areas.

As we drove along, my Midwestern brain said not to trespass on other people’s property. God knows, I never went looking for morel mushroom on a stranger’s property. Of course, Iowans may be more protective of their morel patches than New Englanders are of there boggy winterberry bushes.

Thinking about it, I remember Dad and neighbors being very protective of their land. No trespassers. Period. Why? Because it’s a major asset? Land in Massachusetts is rocky and seems unfriendly to plowing and sowing. With the ocean, on the other hand, no one dares pull up a lobster pot marked by a buoy that’s not their own. Each of those beautifully colored buoys is an identifier to the lobsterman who set out the cage.

As a kid, while I was dropping handfuls of protein on small piles of corn in the manger and then holding the cows’ tails so they wouldn’t switch Mom in the face as she milked, a little girl in New England was helping her lobsterman dad repaint hundreds of buoys to put out. First jobs for both of us, very different, hundreds of miles apart. While old milk cans provide decorative nostalgia in the Midwest, old buoys do the same in New England. And, I wouldn’t hesitate to bet that some farmers and some lobsterman find nothing nostalgic in those reminders of hard-earned livings.

Back to Vermont. At King Arthur, we donned aprons and claimed our spots in the front row of the kitchen classroom. One of my new friends mumbled something about attention issues and the front row. I felt a bonding moment with her over that acknowledgment.

We made three different kinds of crackers, not my first choice of baking class, but the words “Saturday, baking class, and Vermont,” plus the thought of an outing with friends, nudged me toward signing up. I went with an open mind and was awed by the three recipes we cranked out in three hours. Grissini, lavash, and almond flour crackers.

 

Becca, the woman who taught the class, seemed to have had a cup of zen before she started the day. We all followed suit, gently rolling the various doughs until they came together. Working out frustrations while kneading dough can lead to tough bread. She seemed to barely touch the dough; her hands glided over the surface and formed soft balls of yeasty goodness.

Incidentally, Becca grew up on a wheat farm in Kansas, approximately six hours southeast of Mom and Dad’s dairy and grain farm in northeast Iowa. And now, we two farmgirls live 1,600-plus miles from our homes. Some of her father’s wheat goes to a processing plant that supplies King Arthur Flour. Perhaps that’s why she had such a soft touch when she worked the dough.

After the crackers had baked, we proudly carried them to the car, along with our purchases from the King Arthur on-site store. That was when we felt the first flurry of snow. At 2:30 in the afternoon, the sky was already darkening to dusk. I took the wheel for the return trip to Massachusetts. And voila: enter snowstorm. At 45 mph, I kept an eye out for wetland and spotted a group of winterberry bushes within the first half hour of the drive. No one was behind me on the snowy road, so I slowed and pulled over at the next bright patch. Only one bush. Our lone winterberry gatherer exited the car; she was the only one with boots on. The snow was falling at a steady clip, and from the warm van, we watched her break and collect oodles of branches. “Now, she is a true Yankee!” declared one of the other women in the car.

And that made me think, what is a true Yankee? While there are many meanings, and not all positive, what constitutes a Yankee culture? A Yankee has a certain grit and get-to-it-tiveness, very similar to a cliche Midwesterner. However, I certainly didn’t feel like a Midwesterner that day: I had traveled from one state through two others to go to a baking class. From northeast Iowa, no one plans to travel two states over to Colorado to bake for a day.

The want or need to live somewhere with four seasons certainly has something to do with being a Yankee. Here, when school is canceled on a Friday for a snowstorm, it’s not uncommon for Massachusetts residents to pack up and head north to the mountains. If a vehicle can maneuver up ski mountains in New Hampshire, Vermont, or Maine, it can surely move through a snowstorm in Massachusetts. In Iowa, I remember hunkering down as blizzard winds blew across the prairie. However, my immediate family here seeks deeper snow on steep inclines. We hailed from different parts of the world and dropped anchor in Massachusetts. So we follow suit in heading north/northwest during snowstorms…

No matter that I’ve woken up every day for the last 13 years feeling like a Midwesterner living in New England, I am getting closer to claiming to be part of the Yankee culture.  And now… I have been the driver of a winterberry expedition van.  That must count for something.  I’ll pack boots next time I head north; my first successful breaking of a winterberry branch should cinch my inclusion in the New England Yankee culture.

Until then, I’ll identify more closely as a daughter of the Midwest.

To you, wherever and whoever you are, Happy Hump Day!

The Rotund Tree's Slow Evolution

I write this to you while sitting next to the lit Christmas tree; it's not decorated, just lit. The tree is a round-as-it-is-tall Frasier Fir. While picking it out on Sunday, we Malcolms stuck close to our annual tradition: Scene 1, me pointing to the perfect tree; then Bill raising his arm straight up to prove he is unable to touch the top bough, saying, “This one is too tall for our living room.” Before resigning to that opinion, I drop my head to the trunk and see how much we can cut off; decide that’s too much of a gamble; and concede that we should not pay for an extra two feet when that’s how much needs to be chopped off the bottom before it goes into the house.

Scene 2, Malcolms move on to the neighboring tree, looking for one with the same shape as that first tree.

Scene 3, finally a four-way consensus on the perfect tree.

On Sunday, it took the tree salesman longer to explain the difference between a fir and a spruce than it did for us to find the tree. Our rotund tree was the second tree we looked at, only three trees down from the too big 10-footer.

We went to a new Christmas tree lot this year and had elves deliver the tree to our house via a sleigh on wheels. They pulled it behind their work truck that they use in their irrigation business the other three seasons. The elves even brought the tree inside and set in up in our tree stand. I thought this experience would be a welcome change for my Chief Tree-putting-up Elf, Bill, pictured here under the 2016 Christmas tree.

It made so much more sense for two professional elves to take care of this job as opposed to the Chief Elf and his three un-trained helpers.

While the tree was still wrapped in netting, I fed it two tablespoons of sugar in warm water, per the elves' direction. The elves told us to leave it for about an hour before we cut the netting off and released the branches. During that time, Bill noticed it was slightly askew, so he, Will, and I adjusted the angle of the trunk just a little bit, looking for 90-degree angles between trunk and floor from all vantage points. Finally, I cut the netting off and the branches shyly released. When I went to bed, they were still reaching for the ceiling.

At first sight of the tree the next morning, I gasped – for many reasons. There’s the tree! Yay, we have a tree! It’s so beautiful! ...Oh, my goodness, how did it get so big? How will I drag it out of here in January when it’s now twice as wide as the back door? The tree is nearly hugging the love seat! I need to re-arrange the furniture!

Sidebar: I have visual perspective issues. Salmon fillets double in size from the fish counter to my kitchen counter. Soup recipes calling for 10 cups of stock surely would be better if doubled. Hanging a picture on the wall usually ends in scratches on the paint because I can’t accurately visualize the placement of the hook on the photo relative to the nail on the wall. For me to get a golf ball into the hole in the green? Forget about it. So goes it with this tree. However, now that I’ve moved the computer hutch over twelve inches and the love seat back two feet, this over-sized tree is magnificent. The green breadth of the tree has stolen the living room focal point away from the wide-screen TV.

Last night I found the small tub of white tree lights from last year and pushed the strings into the depths of the branches toward the trunk. Eight strings later, I had hardly made a visible glow. I had two brand new strings of colored lights so added those to the mix. This could work… but I saw plenty of room for more twinkle. Once the wattage is at an acceptable level, I’ll start adding the decorations. From past experience, I know it makes the most sense to be happy with the lighting BEFORE putting ornaments on the tree.

Every year I get a bit better at accepting the fact that I do not, cannot, shall not put the tree up in one day, like I did when I was in my twenties. Now, there are more lights to buy, 25 years of accumulated ornaments to hang, and four schedules to coordinate. I might get twenty ornaments on today, none tomorrow, five on Friday, and finish over the weekend.

Acknowledging this fact makes tree trimming much more enjoyable than fretting over the slowness of the process. The rides to and from basketball, gymnastics, scouts, trumpet lessons, drum lessons, STEM classes – not to mention the daily school drop-off and pick-up – make for intermittent decorating. Fact.

Yes, today I’ve decided that I will appreciate the few minutes it takes to put on this year’s new baubles from Maine, NASA, Vermont, Boston, and Iowa. And, I will be grateful for the friends and our family who have weaved memories with us throughout the year.

We have a lovely, pudgy Frasier Fir from which to hang years’ worth of commemorations, celebrations, and reminiscences. And this intermittent decorating means several days for which to remember, to be thankful, and to be present. And of course, to laugh at year's past.

Happy Merry-Making!