Winter Lights

       

  On clear nights, which are rare, the light is gone from the sky by five PM; on cloudy days, it is 4:15 in the weeks before the Solstice. The world is dark. In response, we all turn on our “Winter Lights.”

            When I was little, my parents won awards in Hampstead, New Hampshire for their light displays. It was a daylong project, bringing the lights down from the cold attic, stretching them out and checking the bulbs, and rewinding them for my father to hang. My mother tightened every bulb, giving the recalcitrant ones a quick lap of the tongue to start them. Once they were in order, my father ran extension cords across the yard. Each tree was a different solid color; the house was outlined in multi-colored huge bulbs; a white cross rested in the peak of the house, visible from a mile away. They also lit the manger scene of cement Mary, Joseph, and Baby (they weighed a ton. I moved them for years.) While my father swore at the strands of lights, my mother created wreathes for every window and re-wired window candles so that each reached a plug without an extension cord. I loved walking around the dark house, turning each on in the frosty evenings, bringing light into darkness.

            At the same time, I was haunted by the simple strands of lights hung in various stores around town. We did not live in a wealthy area; people considered their electric bills, even at Christmas.  The drug store where my father bought a bottle of Channel Number Five each Christmas Eve had one strand of bulbs hung over the drug counter, entwined with a tinsel swag. The grocery store might have lights around the windows, but not through the entire store. Houses outlined their front doors, for the most part, or put  candles in all of the windows. Everyone did something and the results glowed along the dark country roads we traveled.

            For several years, after we moved into our house, I ran lights around the roofline, stretching from the top of the ladder to hook the wires over the peaks. It was hairy. When we repainted two years ago, I took them down and did not feel like rehanging them on a rainy night in December, so I wrapped the two strands of large lights around the front porch and covered the arch with three strands of colored twinkle lights. It takes a little less energy—so I turn them on a little early, on the first night of Advent, bringing some light into the darkness of our neighborhood.

Mac and Cheese

I make this in my mother's old casserole dish. It tastes better.

Cook about 2/3 pound of small pasta, like elbows or ears. Pour into the casserole dish.

Make a cheesey white sauce with two cups of milk, two tablespoons of butter, two tablespoons of flour, and a big handful of cheese that melts , like cheddar. our this over the pasta. Add  about two cups of chunks of various cheese ends, like cheddar, provolone, Parmesan,  or Swiss. A mixture is best.

My mother laid slices of orange american cheese over the pasta...I do not. Cover with bread crumbs and bake until bubbly.

You can add various veggies, like roasted cauliflower, or peas, or ....

Beauty Boutique and Facebook

            When I was in my teens and early twenties, my mother owned her own beauty shop. It started out, in 1975, as The Beauty Boutique, with a psychedelic sign painted by my uncle. When she was forced to move out, bought our little ranch house, and turned the garage into her shop, she simplified the name and the sign—black and white, Lorraine Ellis, hair stylist. Her rationale—“That’s how everyone signs their checks, anyways.” The house smelled of perm solution, towels waited by the T.V. to be folded, and the cat sat on the doorstep to be admired, but never crossed the line into the shop. It was a decent living for a working class woman who never graduated from high school; she attended her Aunt Mildred’s beauty school instead.

            I never wanted to do that work. I was a tomboy with tangled hair, torn corduroy coat, and a book and a dog biscuit tucked in my pocket. I didn’t mind answering the phones, helping with taxes, or sweeping up the hair trimmings, which I spread around my gardens to scare off the deer. I liked some of her customers   One took me to volunteer at the local library every week one summer. Others gave me herbs and flowers in exchange for vegetables. Two convinced my mother that yes, we did need that fluffy kitten I cleverly brought in on Saturday afternoon, knowing that they were going to be sitting under the driers.  The work did not appeal.

            But, there was a huge benefit to the shop—whenever you needed something or had a question, we “put it out on the wire” as Malcolm X says. Within a week, the network of women who knew women who knew women, knew the answer. Home repairs, esoteric questions, houses for rent, child care questions…..the topic did not matter. Within a week, the phone would ring with the answer.

 
            Last week, I looked at my Hen on Nest sitting on the porch. “What,” I wondered, “do you actually do with that thing, besides set it on the porch, surrounded by greenery?” So I put it out on the modern-day wire, not my mother’s shop, but Facebook. Before long, the answer was clear. Candy, nuts, jelly beans, and baby teeth. It was a storage container. I have theories about why a hen, but I had the beginnings of an answer, enough to go on. And, for a little while, I was back in my mother’s beauty shop, sitting on the concrete step between the house and shop, cat peering over my shoulder.

Baked Mac and Cheese: a meal we could all agree on, even when I became vegetarian.

 Cook a pound of elbow macaroni (no sense messing around here. We need leftovers.)

While the macaroni is cooking, make a white sauce. Brown four tablespoons of flour in four tablespoons of butter. Add a quart of milk and stir until thickened. Then add grated cheddar cheese, a few handfuls, and slowly melt it in. Add salt, pepper, and dried mustard.

Get out the big casserole dish with the glass lid. Mix sauce and elbows together. (The best mac and cheese comes when you chop up all of your weird cheese ends, like provolone and cheddar, and toss the chunks into the sauced pasta. It really helps to have connections, like a daughter who works there, to the local meat and cheese counter, so you can score a few cheese ends.) Level off the contents, cover it all with sliced American cheese and some bread crumbs, and bake until bubbly.