Yule, 2020

                 Thursday afternoon was the last day of classes for 2020. As I left the building, I was struck, once again, by the weirdness of this time. Usually, the day before Winter Break is packed—ramped up students who have been up all night finishing projects they put off until the last minute and staying awake by eating more sugar in seven hours than they do all month plus exhausted teachers who have been scrambling to finish up their own work and track the stuff coming in so that they are free over break, also eating far more sugar and caffeine than is healthy or natural. Santa hats. Candy canes sharpened to points. Movies in the afternoon.  This year, it was silent. Kids were tired, but in  drawn out way, not in an I achieved something meaningful way. Teachers, too, I suppose, although I did not see anyone as I left the almost empty building.

 It was cloudy and blowy, with a scent of ocean storm in the air, as I walked home. Yule, too, is going to be different this year. Usually it is a balancing act between long hours in solitude, reading, hiking, watching the birds at the feeder, staring at the fires on the hearth at night and visiting people, traveling to Portland, meeting friends in coffee shops, moving in and out of each other’s homes with platters of food. This year, no one is coming into our house and we are going nowhere to visit. It’s ok; we do this so that we can all gather again when this pandemic is over. The trade is fair.

So, this year,  I will invite you all in via the internet—one image, every day of Yule,-- our time out of time, the bridge between past and future --  which begins on the last day of school and runs until Twelfth Night, January sixth, when we take down the tree. 

                

December 18: The tree is up.

December 19: Cookies-- 1950s gingerbread and whole wheat anise seed.

December 20-- wet walk to the covered bridge and back.

December 21: Solstice. We begin reading a Christmas Carol.

December 22: second cup of tea and a good book, post walk.

December 23: Mantel figures.

December 24: Christmas Stollen

December 25: A seas of contrasts.

December 26: Seed catalogs arrive.

December 27: Sunny Sunday

December 28: Knitting socks (I started in late November...)

December 29: Frosty morning walk.

December 30: Painting the kitchen cabinets.

December 31: Long walk to Mulkey Creek and then Tarn Tip for dinner.

January 1:  Black Eyed Peas in the crockpot.

And, on January 2nd, the camera battery died. 

Feeding the Birds

 

  

              When we first moved into our house, we had a bird feeder. Our cat at the time was elderly; the juncos looked at her perched by the cat door, shrugged, and went on eating, even on the ground. Over Winter Breaks, Mabel and I were transfixed by the feeder. There was something soothing in the flutter of wings, small dances of dominance, and occasional new sight. We at in the window for hours.    When Mabel died and we acquired young cats, we put the feeder away. It didn’t seem fair to lure the birds in with the promise of sunflower and thistle seed and then have them caught and hauled into the house. Besides, the dropped seed attracted rodents.

 

               This winter, the young cat has become older—she’s sixteen, after all. And it has been a lonely time, without human visitors in the house.  Last week, as the sun set at four thirty and the clouds came down, I bought a bag of bird seed at Fred Meyers. Not the fancy expensive stuff, but decent enough to lure in juncos and finches, the big jays occasionally. I spread it on the top of an old ladder that doubles as a sweet pea trellis in the summer, right outside the living room window. Within two days, the birds had found the seeds and were swooping in once more, resting on the bay and plum tree branches, taking turns, tossing  seed hulls into the garden bed below. Once again, I watch, transfixed, as the wings flutter outside the window. Life in dark times.