weight

I step into my skis and glide through the frozen apple orchards of my youth. Through farm animals and the smell of musty sleeping bags, through the innocence of ice skates and metal runner sleds, and then on through long summer days as a skinny no hips loose pants two braids 11 year old. I ski through the confused and anxious years of wanting attention from boys but being terrified by it. Over snowmobile trails and through beaver meadows, I keep skiing as I revisit the day I got my period. The shock of seeing rusty stains on my underwear and the quiet confusing three days that passed before I mustered the courage to tell my mom.  And still not tight enough pants to be noticed by the boys.

Breadloaf mountain’s spine presses into the morning blue. I ski past last night’s meandering fox tracks and the unwavering laser-focused path of a pre-dawn coyote. My mother is dying. This is a fact delivered by science. I believe it. I understand it. But I don’t yet see it.

My whole life, ever since I can remember, my mother has been a mystery to me. Now, staring into the face of her end, I remember with a jolt something I read once about how people will show you who they are if you only will listen, if you only will really see them. Has she been showing me all along? I only saw the parts she was willing to reveal, but I always wanted more. Our relationship has been complicated. There is little time left and the things I want to know are not for this daughter to know about this mother in this lifetime. Acceptance of this has been hard won.

These are the things that come in the dark night when my mother is dying for real this time — not like the other times when we pulled her from the bottom of her bottle. This time her organs are riddled with cancer and there are no more second chances left and we don’t quite know what to do or how to balance the doing with the letting happen.

I am sitting on the bed, mom to my left, and the sunny window to my right. I’m reading some of my journal entries to her as the wind sends sharp blasts across the snow, creating wispy strands that float from east to west. The smell of death is in the room, even with the window slightly cracked to the bitter cold fresh air. I want you to know me, I tell her. I’m reading you these things because I want you to know who I am and because I always wanted to know such things about you.

The sun streams through the window and I find myself settled in the quiet confusion of weepy and broken gratitude that I can be here with her, even if only to sit uselessly by her side. She seems so peaceful, and the space is bright and comforting. Mary Oliver says, “it’s not the weight you carry but how you carry it — books, bricks, grief — it’s all in the way you embrace it, balance it, carry it, when you cannot and would not put it down.” Sometimes the load feels impossibly heavy, other times, we forget we are carrying anything at all.

Nat the Therapy Dog is curled up next to mom’s left shoulder, his head tucked into the crook of her neck just a few inches from her face. I hold my mom’s tiny bony hand and watch her face. All the complications of our relationship no longer important, I feel only empathy now. Just compassion for her struggles and acceptance that like all of us, she is a person with flaws who did her best. I watch her breathe and think Someday this will be each of us. 

I step outside and into 4 inches of cold blowing snow. The drive home is slow going — dark, snow covered, and wind-blown. It takes a long time, which is okay. As I approach the house, a barred owl leaves its perch near the front deck and flies across the garden into the woods, weightless, showing my mother the way.

the feels

It is the not sleeping hours, the late night early morning in between time, dark and cold. I take to the wood stove, bare feet on the warm brick. The blue cast iron pan sizzles away with chunks of butternut squash and salt and red pepper flakes. It is the wood fire that does the hard work of turning them tender crisp for my eventual midday meal. I rub Lewie’s ear between my thumb and finger and he rolls over, rewarding me with full belly access.

This has been quite a week of life events, one after another busting in, elbowing each other for the spotlight, competing for center stage in this life. As I set my feet and prepare for this one thing, I am knocked off balance by the other thing that I never saw coming. I reset my feet and take a deep breath to recenter, when I’m sucker punched by the third thing. Some things are not yet my story to tell, even as they sit heavily on my chest. Even as they carve new grooves around the edges of my slightly downturned mouth. Even as they slide hot into the swirl of my belly.

I have been working on letting the feelings come. As children, when something hurts us, we cry. Somewhere along the way we absorb somehow that it’s better to be more in control of that and we damp them down, parceling them away with the silent promise that they can be felt later. Not now, people are watching. At some point, this becomes so well mastered that I can no longer cry at all, even when I want to, no matter how hard I will the tears to come. I no longer have to work to steel myself. Pushing the feels away has become muscle memory mortared into my very being by the you got this culture I tend to embrace with my whole heart.

Eventually, predictably, some small thing fractures me and weeks and months of hot tears and sobs are freed. It is not quite a relief. My throat tightens reflexively, trying to suppress it like vomit — knees on the bathroom floor, hands on the porcelain, fighting the hot acid that wants to come, unnaturally up.

I want to cry. I admire people who tear up easily and publicly. Be careful what you wish for, they warn. This week, not only can I cry, I can cry in front of others. I cry in front of my supervisor, in front of my coworkers, in front of my friends. I cry in front of the children and in front of their parents. I ugly cry with a weird shake-squeaky voice and distorted face. I watch it happening as if from over there and I think, yes, good, you got this, keep ‘em coming. Turns out it’s not strength I need to stop the tears from coming, but rather courage to let them come.

The sighing dog and ticking wood stove and aloneness in my own house are guides to serenity, a metronome for breaking through these well-built walls. Let them come down. Let solitude be less about taking the feels off the shelf and more about a place to center and harvest strength — the strength required to ugly cry whether they’re watching or not.

purge

Amidst the swirling chaos, the anxiety producing waves, the fear and darkness of the unknown, there are tiny snippets of calm. They start with the moment when I realize I’ve been holding my breath. I fill my lungs with slow delicious air, and then surrender to the emptying out as time slows for the exhale. For one choice moment, all that is in my head is the texture of the snow under my boot, now the movement of a branch off to my left, and then as I lift my head, the blue world behind the yellow of a curled beech leaf. Small and uncomplicated things stretching into the corners of my brain like sunlight pushing across the carpet — a moment or two of profound relief before reflexively bracing for the speed and intensity of the unease as it rushes back in.

The letting go is like in those dreams when I realize I’ve been under water too long. Too far from the surface and not enough oxygen left in my lungs. Fear, panic, struggle. And then a brief pause when everything slows down. I let go, relax, give up. I take a small breath in just to see what happens and find miraculously that I can breathe. I can breathe underwater, so I fill my lungs even though I am deep beneath the surface and I think to myself why haven’t I been doing this all along?

At the end of the calendar year I begin a list of things to let go of, a process of identifying that which no longer serves me, an internal inventory, a purging, a decluttering. I have spent weeks doing the same to the living space in this house. Fresh paint on the walls and previously cluttered surfaces newly clean and sparse. Cupboards thinned out, shelves combed of their excess, washed clean and left clear but for one teapot, a few books, a rosemary plant. I look around, greedily taking in the emptiness and sparseness — the aesthetic of scarcity feeds my eye and balms my troubled soul. I want my head and my rooms scrubbed clean, unfettered, stark. A stray piece of mail left on the otherwise chaste kitchen counter is banished. My jaw tightens as the pre-dawn stillness is broken by the sound of waking bodies moving about.

Curled up near the wood stove, Lewie lifts his head briefly as a distant snowplow rumbles through the dark. I crave solitude, bare arms, and dry desert wind.

speaking up

I have been quiet on this. My brain churns relentlessly behind my mute white ambivalence. What could I possibly have to contribute? Over here in my privileged reality, wrestling with my white guilt, wondering what my role could be in this hate-filled divided world. I have benefited my entire life from the oppression my white ancestors participated in: building a country on the backs of kidnapped and enslaved black people, on land that was stolen from brown skinned people who were here first. I am white. No one pulls me over, handcuffs me, kneels on my neck. I do not struggle for breath. I do not have to teach my children how to avoid being killed in the streets.

My worries are the luxuries of the unburdened.

I worry about our distressed Earth, the cruelty of factory farming, the mad man at the helm and unchecked greed. Also, how to slow climate change, is remote learning working, invasive plants, how bad will hurricane season be, what’s wrong with my dog, are the kids okay, soil erosion, and what happens after we die? I worry these things all while tucked safely inside my white skin.

I am privileged. I can breathe. I do not fit a profile. I get the benefit of the doubt. I am not on the ground with my face in the dirt. No one kneels on my neck.

I fret about how divided we are, hate crimes and racism, pervasive ignorance, generational bias, systemic oppression, whether I’m doing enough (I’m not). Also current and future pandemics, police brutality, voting accessibility, and food deserts. Not to mention what’s happened to all the bats, when will the shunt in my husband’s brain fail, why are those two blueberry bushes turning yellow, are my parents okay, when was the last time I washed my sheets, and what will happen to the polar bears?

All while hermetically sheathed in my white skin. I am privileged. I can breathe. No one has their knee on my neck.

I toss and turn, not sleeping, not dreaming, a sweaty fitful non-rest. I wear a face mask, go to a vigil, say the names of those who have been killed. I listen to descriptions of black and brown skinned people killed in the streets, or in their backyards, or in their own homes. Feeling like an imposter in someone else’s cause, I lay down flowers and share the silence. I participate by choice. Nothing I do or say matters enough to make any kind of a difference. I am complicit. I feel bad about all of it. And then I go home.

And on the way home no one pulls me from my car. I am not put in handcuffs or pushed to the ground. I am not chased or beaten or afraid for my life. I am not held down. No one kneels on my neck.

White. Privileged. Irrelevant. Safe. I read books in a comfortable bed. I think about the things that trouble me with a backdrop of bird song, abundant gardens, and leisure time to run through the woods. I decide to do something or not do something on a daily basis. Because I can. Or I don’t have to. Who am I to speak? What can I possibly contribute to the conversation? Why do my thoughts matter? Are more white voices really part of the solution? Shouldn’t we be doing more listening than talking right now? My angst is the opulent distraction of the safe, the blue eyed and ivory skinned, the un-inflicted.

In the end, it is three words that propel me to break my silence. Three words painted in black ink on white poster boards carried down streets and sidewalks everywhere: Silence is violence.

reckless

It’s the middle of the day and I am standing in Molly’s driveway with my hand resting palm up on the tailgate of her mobile vet office a.k.a pickup truck. Because there’s a pandemic raging around us and we are decidedly inside the 6-foot distancing zone, we are both fully masked. I turn away, pull down my mask, take a couple of swigs of liquid courage and reposition my mask. Molly goes to work with alcohol and gauze, cleaning around the stitches on my finger while I chatter nervously in an attempt to be brave. Molly and her husband have been reading the Harry Potter series to their daughter who is performing a bit of magic using a beaver-gnawed stick as a wand. The first black flies of the season sluggishly flop about near our eyeballs.

Molly asks for the story of how I sliced my finger open ten days ago, but I deflect: Can I tell you after? I need to get in my happy place. I avert my eyes from the doctoring that’s happening on the left side of my body and focus instead on the little brook trickling down from the ledge above. It’s all oak trees and buds, daffodils and goats, a cute kid and big fluffy dogs. Even so, this happy place is little match for the white hot zingers of scab disturbance and skin stretching and pissed off inflamed tissue. Molly is a pro but this hurts. She works swiftly, undeterred by my guttural lamenting. She apologizes and claims that she has “not a wisp of sadism” and says something about how her bovine and equine clients generally aren’t able to tell her when she’s hurting them. Well, except for when they kick me. I know it makes sense to say something now about how kicking her holds some appeal in this moment, but it actually never crosses my mind. Molly is a very good soul doing me a huge favor.

I did try to do this myself. Magnifying glass between my knees, tweezers between thumb and forefinger of my injured hand, nail clippers in the other. I really want to be that tough, so badass that I could Macgyver a self suture removal. But, the sensation of the stitch sliding through my skin completely grosses me out. Plus, when I peer at it under a magnifying glass I get a nauseatingly up close look at all the lumpy scar tissue and scabs. When Tom arrives home from work, I ask him to do it, figuring that while it’s not quite as ninja as doing it myself, it’s decidedly better than having to tell my primary care physician that a single-minded pursuit of cheese led to eight stitches in my finger. Tom is game of course — actually, a little too game, if you ask me. The glee on his face and the sparkle in his eyes gives me pause. We need better tools, I decide. We must know someone with those special curved scissors. And because Molly is fearless and ten times more badass than I could ever hope to be, she offered to just take care of it. Which is how I end up in her driveway with my big dumb hand getting un-sutured on the tailgate of her pickup truck.

When the sutures are out Molly reminds me I owe her the story of how it happened in the first place. She’s right. I do owe her, but it’s not a great story. It highlights some of my worst traits and is basically the trifecta of bad decision-making, being a dork, and a weakness for cheddar. I am in the kitchen, using a very sharp knife to laterally wiggle apart some frozen slices of cheese. For the record, even as I’m doing it, I am fully aware that it’s a terrible idea. It has BAD IDEA flashing in neon lights all around it. Could I just be patient and wait a little while for the cheese to soften? Or at the very least use a butter knife? Yes I could. But do I? No I do not. I think I can do it. I think I’m THAT good. I can be careful with the really sharp knife. I can control things. I am living in the wackadoodle reality of the covid pandemic but this, THIS, I can control. How is it that I fail to be properly deterred by the reckless risk in this moment? Why do I insist on believing I can control things when I can’t? Why so stubborn and impatient? And why must dairy always be at the center of my undoing?

The next few moments go exactly as you might think: the top few slices break free and the knife slides through the gap, meeting the ring finger on my left hand. I do what anyone does when they cut themselves during food prep: I put down the knife, go to the sink, turn on the water, and shove my hand under it. Then, I take a deep breath and hope with all my might that it’s not that bad. I see an open flap of skin and … the white sheath of tendon.

Shit.

Since this story begins with “I was home alone” I quickly wrap my hand in paper towels, grab my keys, and drive myself to Porter with my left hand above my head singing a manic little ditty on endless loop that goes something like you’re okay, don’t pass out, you’re okay, don’t pass out, just keep driving, don’t pass out, just drive, and drive, cause driving is good and passing out, not so good... As luck would have it, I manage to remain conscious for the entire journey which is supremely useful when you’re behind the wheel. Yes, the ER doc assures me, it’s good you came in, you definitely need stitches. And that’s a real nice filet job you did there.

The emergency room is not a place you want to burden with your dumb cheese obsessed presence during a global health crisis, especially when you’re not currently dying from an illness related to said pandemic. Now you’re just an idiot using up already taxed resources and distracting exhausted medical personnel from much bigger problems. And, in the case of my particularly shitty timing, getting in the way of the staff practicing a mass casualty drill.

On the upside, the medical team has chosen this particular moment in time to do the drill because they are remarkably un-busy. Turns out Addison County is doing a really good job at sheltering in place: on the day I visit, there are no known cases of the covid on site. Would have been nice if they had led with that — seeing folks scurrying around in head to toe hazmat treating dozens of urgent cases (none of them real, I find out later) does wonders for my already soaring anxiety upon arrival. Then again, who am I to judge anyone’s decision-making: I can’t even wait a few minutes for cheddar to come to room temperature. Everyone knows cheddar is better at room temperature. The shame of it all stings worse than the wound.

the pause

Not everyone gets a front row seat to a pandemic in their lifetime. Seems historically they tend to come along about every 100 years or so. The spray varies in intensity, but the shit has undeniably hit the fan. We are all experiencing some version of the same horror show reality. People are dying. Toilet paper hoarding has become a thing. So has DIY mask sewing. People are yelling at each other on social media (I suppose that’s not really anything new). Some of us are genuinely freaking out. Others could stand to freak out a little bit more. There is another back to the land movement afoot —seeds grow in trays on windowsills and people are learning to make their own soap. Folks are walking in the woods more. And also filing for unemployment for the first time in their lives —a hard lump of pride washed down with bitter fear. Parents are trying to figure out how to homeschool their children. People are bingeing on Oreos and Netflix. Families are unable to properly bury their dead.

COVID 19 has wreaked chaos and tragedy on humankind. In its wake is a wrecked world. The status quo has been tossed on its head.

This could be a very good thing, assuming humanity survives it. There’s plenty to suggest that the status quo hasn’t been working well for quite some time. At worst, we are hurtling warp speed toward The End Time. At best, things could be quite a bit better for a lot of people. The health of our planet and the future of humanity are in serious trouble.

And so…

How about if we decide that this pandemic is the beginning of a compulsory pause and an opportunity for a forced collective restart. What if instead of following the urge to right things as quickly as possible, we stay still for a minute, take a breath, and think. When it’s time to re-enter, what if we intentionally choose not to go back to the way things were, at least not universally. As we engage in the massive shared rebuild, what if we look at keeping only the things worth saving and remake the rest. It could be an opportunity for us to sow new seeds, to change, reprioritize, align ourselves with better values, become better. That metamorphosis can start now, while we are individually and collectively cocooning. Let this moment in our human history mark the end of one thing and the beginning of something markedly better. Let it be true that even when it appears as if nothing is happening, something is happening. This potential, this revolution, cloaked in silence and quiet stillness can begin now.

tremors

This is a time of learning how to stand solid with tremors under our feet. It is a time for talking ourselves and each other through fear, a time for staying patient, a time for battling nerves and staying calm. And on the good days, finding ways to jostle loose the pit in our collective stomach with laughter.

Recently I began a daily journaling exercise I have come to call The COVID Diaries. It is an effort to mark this moment in time, an attempt at a living record, a snapshot of how the days are spent. It serves, I hope, as an exercise in self-care as well as a glimpse into a unique moment in history. I find myself checking in with friends and family a bit more than usual, asking how they’re doing amidst the swirling chaos that has become our everyday reality.

We have an older neighbor we've been checking in on by phone. She does not accept our offers of groceries delivered to her doorstep, but she does express deep gratitude for the offer and seems to enjoy visiting over the phone. I’m so glad you called, she says.

The stress and worry are real. It seems that in times like these, stress piles upon stress, overloading systems that are already not functioning optimally. Not too long after my husband Zach died I had an abnormal breast exam, revealing a “something” that required further examination. I laid still and terrified in a hospital johnny as a tiny needle was inserted into the lump. Then I plowed straight into preparing paperwork and making plans for my soon to be orphaned child before the results of the needle biopsy were even back. It was a benign cyst. Not too long after that I had a couple of abnormal pap smears, prompting more fatalistic thoughts and preparations for my —again, I became convinced — soon to be orphaned child.  The body manifests stress in visible and invisible ways.

It’s good if you can become an expert at unloading. Running my ass off seems to help, but March in Vermont is a month-long transition from skiing-is-ending to running-is-starting, so my trail miles are few. Our annual mind fuck of a March storm dumps 7 inches of snow and sends many of us scurrying to the hills to make fresh tracks so we can forget about the pandemic for awhile.  

I work in a school, so, like the rest of the country, we are transitioning to remote learning. Things have not slowed down much. In fact, they’ve sped up a great deal. I find myself (and gratefully so) helping deliver meals to families via school bus in the morning, followed by many a virtual meeting with my co-workers peppered with conducting email triage for the rest of most of every day. We are working behind the scenes, trying to smooth out the bumps, trying to find our way through this uncharted chop. My 8 hour work day, well-defined by a time clock on each end, is kind of a distant memory at this point. The days are long and the work never ends. But I feel lucky to be involved in the helping part of things. At night I read The Good Neighbor, by Maxwell King. It is the biography of Fred Rogers and gives me great comfort to end the day with words and stories about a good man doing good work in the world.

I'm impressed with our community. The collective response to this pandemic has been to bravely lean into it in a how can I help? kind of way. Teachers and staff work tirelessly to set up systems for remote learning in a place with such varied needs and varied realities. Simultaneously we attempt to reassure parents that they are not expected to become expert homeschoolers overnight. I admit to losing sleep over some of the kiddos who I know are living in super stressed households right now.

I know that we are some of the fortunate ones. So far, we have relatively stable ground under our feet. Many have not survived, many more will die, and statistics point to the reality that someone we know will come down with this virus. It is likely that people we know will die. This is a large lump to swallow, and yet we can hold it at arm’s length for now. As yet, the fractures opening up and splintering out have not swallowed us, but the calm from that feels tenuous. For now I can breathe and notice the seedlings pushing through the soil in my window trays and take solace in being positioned to help. And I pet my dog more than usual during the day.  We are directly experiencing the power of technology to facilitate staying connected with others. Right now, we have the time, space, and resources to leave freshly baked bread on a neighbor’s doorstep, waving through the window from several feet away.

In the evening, we greet our neighbors at the top of our adjoining driveways and check in. We are a wide, safely distanced circle, working loose the tension of today and uncertainty of tomorrow. And in the last waking hours of the day, I read The Good Neighbor and Fred Rogers helps. He says, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

passage

The darkening days of late fall are far behind us. By December my body has adjusted — finally, grudgingly — to the short days and long cold nights. I’ve landed at acceptance, yes, but the transition is all beer, bread, and blankets. The first couple of months of this new year bring snug sweaters and decidedly tighter jeans. Now, in the noticeably different February light, I seek balance again.

The afternoons are perceptibly longer, the air somehow both bluer and yellower. The sun dips below the horizon just a little bit later, leaving a glow that is just a little bit more ochre. And the snow is spectacular: storm after storm has us fully wrapped in white fluffy goodness. We endure the freezing rain, hard pellets on our cheeks, icing everything before being smothered by more than a foot of new snow. The hillsides and open meadows are pristine, gently windblown into ribbons and ripples just begging to be quietly admired, perhaps painted, then skied through.

We are watching the full February moon rise over Breadloaf mountain before the sun has even set. Hours later, the world is as bright as midday, moon shadows drifting across untouched powder and temperatures slipping into the single digits, then zero, and ultimately settling at 14 below.

The morning sun does little to warm us so we move quickly, frigid air stinging my nostrils. The going is tough in deep snow for a dog with short legs, but Lewie hops and bounds about, happily inspecting low hanging branches and the base of a tree where a red squirrel climbed to safety. He buries his nose in the fresh prints of a passing coyote, following the scent away from our regularly traveled path. The coyote has dropped toward the river below. After a few minutes Lewie lifts his head, suddenly aware of the distance between us and bounces back up the hill to where I have continued on my skis, ducking under heavy, snow-laden hemlocks.

It is painfully, heart-achingly beautiful, the way the natural world can be sometimes. Branches are completely encased in smooth translucent ice. I break off a tip and suck on it, tasting the bitter bud as the ice melts on my tongue. Everything is silent and still in a world of pure winter white.

White flakes drift lazily at first, then shift to a sideways path as the wind picks up. Low heavy clouds have descended, blocking Breadloaf mountain completely from sight. A single raven calls us all the way home.

confidence

I am teaching my 7 year old grandson to ski. And, as is often the case with teaching, I am learning a few things myself. Things like patience and how to help him break tasks down into small simple steps and how to impress upon him the importance of not skiing straight into immovable objects. He is incredibly coachable — eager, interested, athletic, and full of desire to “do.” Two summers ago I helped him figure out how to ride a bike and marveled at his ability to take in information and then apply it. He’s also got grit. He falls and fails and stubbornly keeps trying.

Sitting next to me on the chairlift he struggles a bit with the safety bar, almost able to pull it down without help. Almost. He has thousands of questions and machine guns them at me without mercy, barely waiting for the answers. He gives voice to every thought in his head, every observation he makes. With Owen there is no quiet time to reflect. Silence is a void to be filled. He wants to go fast, aiming his skis straight down the hill. I insist on turns — lots of them. When he falls he works quickly to right himself, his little muscles straining to obey. His pace is urgent, like there is not a second to be wasted; we must get back up and go again and we must do it now. Let’s go, Nonie! He points his skis straight down the hill. More turns! I am hollering from behind as we make our way down the trail.

Rain does not deter him. He wants to go anyway. As I begin unloading the gear he fiddles with his poles and watches the skiers making their way down the hill, eager to get started. He suggests we could put our things on right here at the car and ski straight to the lift, annoyed by the time sucking intermediate step of carrying things to the lodge and changing from snow boots to ski boots. It’s not hard to match his enthusiasm. I too am excited by all the possibilities when it comes to outdoor winter fun.

The rain has let up and as the clouds lift, the view from the chairlift is spectacular. Turning around we can see open fields of Breadloaf campus, the valley stretched out beyond it, and the Adirondacks in the distance. I attempt to point it out to him, but he is far more interested in the ski patroller in the chair behind us. He says hi and asks him if he is an “ambulance person,” noticing the first aid sign on his jacket. Later he barrages the lift op with questions about how the mechanics work. It’s a slow day — only a handful of folks interested in skiing in the rain — so he indulges Owen’s questions, patiently explaining about the gears and inner workings of the lift. Owen fires question after question, this time listening fully to the answers until he suddenly remembers we have skiing to do. Off we go.

Hesitancy grows into confidence and he is carving turns now, mostly able to control his course and speed. The occasional lapse in focus results in a wipe out. He hollers that he’s okay, heaves himself up, and is off again.

On Sunday, we wake up to fresh powder. The afternoon moisture from the day before has settled into the trees and they are transformed into a magical winter freeze. We load up and as the chairlift carries us up the hill, Owen looks down at the skiers below. Look, Nonie, the skiers are making art! He’s right. Their tracks are beautiful and curvy and criss crossing each other in the open canvas of fresh fluff. The whole way up the mountain, he blasts questions and observations at me. I have learned to pick and choose my responses — most of the time he’ll bulldoze right through your answer with his next question, but the ones he really wants an answer for, he’ll pause and ask again if there’s no response.

By the fourth day he’s pulling the safety bar down and getting on and off the lift without my help. We are exploring all over the mountain. He’s been wanting to try the Cameron, but it’s usually occupied by racing gates and ski club racers who are training with their coaches. Today it’s open — no racers, no gates. Owen notices right away and he asks if we can “hit” that one. We navigate the top with caution. There are some icy patches, but good snow off to the side. He follows me, making careful turns and waiting for other skiers to pass. We get through the steepest pitch and hit a nice rhythm on the well-groomed snow all the way to the bottom. Back on the lift I tell him, Congratulations, buddy, you just skied your first black diamond. His eyes get big. I did? He looks up at the trail with a smile and I hear him say Yesss to himself under his breath.

We hop off the chair and glide down the ramp. I wait while one by one he slides his gloves through the pole straps and arranges them just right. He finishes, looks up at me just uselessly standing there, unmoving, and says Come on Nonie, let’s go! And we’re off again. As we start down the hill I hear him say — possibly to me, but maybe to no one in particular — Skiing is the most fun thing I’ve ever done in my whole life. I know how he feels.

less

A solid block of beeswax melts on the stove. Relenting to the heat, thick wax disappears into yellow amber liquid. I poke at the wax with a toothpick, urging the small blobs to let go and embrace their new state. Rolling wax between my fingers, I consider the space between who I am and who I want to be. On the good days it’s right close, a stream of light through the kitchen window next to where I stand, warm liquid in my chest, a lightness, difficult to put to words, but palpable. But when I’m out of sorts and imbalanced, the better version of me is a charcoal smudge at horizon’s edge, out of reach and not looking back. The troubling state of the world is on my mind, both in its present state and its precarious future. Am I doing enough? Do the small things make a difference? At my core I believe that they do, but some days it’s difficult to trust this.

Sitting around with friends recently, the question came up: What does the world need more of right now? There are a billion answers: hope, empathy, action, understanding, collaboration, acceptance, generosity, courage. But there is another word that keeps coming up for me: less. What this heavy, burdened planet needs more of right now is, well, less. Less consumerism. Less co2 emissions. Less air travel. Less shortsighted decision-making. Less plastic. Less stuff. Also less divisiveness, less hatred, less bickering. Less heaviness, less worry, less distress.

Pines sway in the December woods. They pull me from the indoor warmth of their burning cousins and outside into their scented arms. Come. See. Smell. Listen. Several partially completed projects are suffering from my indoor attention deficit at the moment. They are no match for the call of daylight on snow. And so I take my troubles out into the trees and breathe in the icy air, climb up the ridge through fresh powder to meet up with the ochre light on the mountains and a patch of evergreens encased in frozen white.

Along the way Lewie spooks a flock of turkeys. They gurgle in panic and lurch awkwardly out of the snow and up into branches, rest for a moment, then one by one fly heavily away. No one has been out yet, only our tracks from last night and those of some deer whose paths criss-cross as they take turns pawing through the snow to feed on woody browse and mast. The air is cold on our tight cheeks and our pace is easy, sustainable, pleasant.

This, right here, this is one of my very favorite things, my true north — being out in the woods on a snowy cold day with Tom. We exchange few words, just togetherness in the quiet parallel shared experience of winter woods exploration. Later we startle turkeys again, perhaps some members of the same flock who have dropped down off the ridge to find the sturdier branches of this giant white pine. We grow too near for their comfort and they take off, big meaty things flapping between dense trunks and branches, soon out of sight.

Our walkabout complete, we trade the towering pines and beeches and winter air for blocks of maple tossed in the wood stove. Cheeks and toes tingle as they warm. I pour melted beeswax and coconut oil into small glass jars, struggling to keep the wicks centered and upright until the wax hardens. Snowshoes drip in the mudroom, and Lewie dreams his little or big dreams about the mole burrowing through the snow that he did not notice earlier today.