Not Snowing Here, Thank You Very Much

I have nothing to write about tonight. Not a damn thing. Today's been fine but it's been very quiet and I realize as I write this that I have not spoken to one human, even on the phone.
Which is fine.
I've heard from Jessie and all is well with them. They are camping tonight, I think, with friends.
Hank texted me that he slept very, very well and is feeling good today.
Mr. Moon sent me a picture.

Uh...no. 

I'm sure he's having a wonderful time but I am quite glad to be right where I am. It was a beautiful day today, never got much above seventy but again with that sky as blue as the eyes of Sweet Hippie Jesus. 

The first time I ever encountered snow in any real quantity was when I went to college in Denver. I've written about that before, I'm sure, but honestly snow now just reminds me of one of the worst depressions of my life. It must have lasted at least two years. Maybe more. The depression, not the snow. I was a lost little lamb in Denver. I felt as if I'd been dropped onto an alien planet and there was no way I could be cool enough or savvy (I hate that word) enough or anything enough to fit in there. I didn't miss my parents but I did miss my little brothers and also my friends who were all misfits like me who came from families that were broken or sad or dysfunctional in one of the myriad of ways that dysfunctional families can be. I'd had a boyfriend who'd made it quite clear that he wasn't interested in a long-distance relationship when I left Winter Haven. He'd been my first and I've been thinking of him a lot lately which I almost never do. He turned out to be fairly insane and I'd broken up with him a few times over the time we were together but he'd represented a sort of crazy conundrum of safety and wildness to me and in Denver I found myself yearning for him even as I discovered that he was sleeping with a good friend of mine and had eventually found a new girlfriend. These facts pierced my heart and of course in those days there was no e-mail or texting or easy long-distance calling or Facebook. Letters. We wrote letters. 

Or, as in this case, one person wrote letters and the other person never answered them. 

I'll never forget one snowy afternoon I was walking to a place called The Open Clinic where I volunteered, answering phones and talking to people who had problems ranging from feeling suicidal to wondering what sort of drug they may have just ingested might be, to being on the very sharp ragged edge of a bad trip, when I saw through the gray, snowy sky a man walking with a stand-up bass on his back and a sort of suitcase-like thing in his hand and my heart almost burst out of my chest, thinking it was my boy, come to claim me after all. He was a bass player, he carried his bass like that sometimes. 

But it wasn't him. 

All these years later I can feel the disappointment and sorrow in my heart that it hadn't been him. That realizing no, he was never going to show up. That no, he did not want to claim me as his own. 

I spent that first winter trying so hard to embrace this different life I found myself in. I did make some friends. I bought a coat heavy enough for the weather and a pair of hiking boots too. But I never could make myself feel at home there. The snow was lovely when it first fell and the earth seemed to quiet and soften but then it just turned into ice and I was so cold and I never did fit in and I never did figure out how to either walk on ice or drive on it.

So for me, snow is loneliness and sorrow, it is Joni Mitchell singing "River" while I quietly weep and embroider snowflakes on a denim work shirt for a boy who doesn't love me. 

It's something that falls on mountains in a form called powder which delights people who grew up skiing on mountains while I grew up skiing on water behind a boat in a place where snow was nothing more than a rumor or a picture in a book. 

I have not seen that boy in over forty years. Oddly, I am still friends with his brother and his mother, although I rarely see them. When I ask about him they hem and haw. No one seems to see him. He was indeed, crazy I guess and still is. 

As glad as I am that I escaped that particular nightmare, I still think of him with some very deep emotion. When I do think of him, that is. He was an important part of my life and I can't deny that or disregard it. And if it had been him, walking through the snow on that gray afternoon in Denver, my life would have taken a much different turn. 

Well, I'm pretty fucking glad that that did not happen. I suffered and I survived. I ended up in a place my children like enough to have stuck around so that I can see them whenever I want. And I am long-married to a man who is definitely not crazy and whom I love with all of my heart. 

Yesterday when Jessie got here with her boys I went outside to greet them and held my arms out to Levon and said, "Happy birthday!" and he actually ran to me and let me pick him up and kiss, kiss, kiss him on the neck. 

And that made up a million times over for a boyfriend who was not a boyfriend walking through the snow with a bass on his back. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Thanksgivings I Have Known

It's funny. I don't specifically remember any of my childhood Thanksgivings. My mother doesn't really like to cook , but she did it, and she put on a very adequate spread every year.
She always made the turkey with a regular type dressing (Pepperidge Farm was involved) and other traditional dishes including broccoli with Cheez Whiz melted over it, pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce. I don't fault her for the Cheez Whiz- she was a cook of her time and Cheez Whiz was really quite the treat at our house. If a gun was put to my head, I'd have to admit that I still love that unnaturally yellow goop, as well as it's more solidified cousin, Velveeta.
I don't consider either Cheez Whiz or Velveeta to be cheeses, but just some other random foods, and therefore it's okay to like them. I don't actually eat them, but I know they're out there, just in case I get an overwhelming craving for their golden, chemical goodness.
I do remember distinctly a Thanksgiving when I was attending University of Denver. It wasn't feasible for me to fly all the way back to Florida when Christmas was coming up so soon, so I stayed in the dorm while all the other kids packed up to go home or to Aspen to ski. A great many of the students at DU were skiiers, which is why they chose the school to begin with but I only knew about water skiing and the one time I did try snow skiing I almost fell off the mountain.
Anyway, it was me and the Girl from Hawaii in the room next door, all alone in that great big dorm. Somehow she had an invitation to a Thanksgiving dinner and may have even asked me to come with her. However, I was in intense Martyr Training, I guess, and had decided to take the opportunity to fast for four days and so spent that Thanksgiving NOT eating, probably lying on my bed and reading and listening to the Bonnie Raitt album, Love Has No Pride and the Joni Mitchell album, Blue, and as you can imagine, it was not a very happy holiday.
I also remember the Thanksgiving I did go home and made the whole wheat rolls for the feast. I remember this because they were such hard lumps of bread and my poor little Granny, sprung from the nursing home for the dinner, upon trying to eat one, asked, "What is this?" and upon being told that it was a roll, she asked, "Must I eat it?"
Ah me.
The first Thanksgiving I cooked all by myself was in a little apartment on Miccosukee Road that my first husband and I lived in with our five-month old son, Hank. My mother-in-law and her boyfriend came for dinner and she was a saint and did all the clean-up and I still use the recipe she sent me beforehand for cornbread stuffing. Hank grew up to live in that apartment himself, many years later, but I don't think he ever cooked a turkey there.
Since then, I've probably hosted Thanksgiving every year but for a few. This totals out to at last twenty-five of them and you'd think I'd be completely at ease doing it by now, but you'd be wrong. I've developed an eye-twitch in the last few days and I know it's because I can't figure out how I'm going to get everything in the refrigerator that needs to be there and also, because I always worry that I won't have all the dishes done on time and together and mainly that there won't be enough food which is absolutely ridiculous. But still, I must worry and for example, yesterday after I bought the turkey I decided that it just wasn't big enough and have prevailed upon my husband to smoke another outside just in case. So there will be two turkeys, a pot of black-eyed peas, oysters, and hopefully a big pot of venison pozole, just for the protein needs.
There won't be any Cheez Whiz (dammit) but there will be many casseroles wherein perfectly healthy and nutritious vegetables will be rendered into junk food with the addition of "french-fried" onion rings, Campbell's soups, and regular, real cheese. I'd change all that up if I could, but the kids would revolt. I will cook a pot of greens and make a salad from the garden (that chicken shit is working, folks!) and so that'll be healthy enough.
There will be pies, a rice thing, sweet potatoes (and yes, they will have tiny marshmallows on top), two kinds of cranberries, one a relish and one the traditional whole-berry sauce and I make that just because it's so damn beautiful. Good God! It's like rubies you can eat. And gravy (Juancho?) and angel biscuits and oh, I don't know what all else. Every year I put my foot down and say, "No mashed potatoes!" and I mean it, and then I end up making them anyway. But not this year and I really mean it.
But really, it's not about the food anyway. I don't remember what all I cooked the first Thanksgiving that I stuffed a turkey (beyond the turkey, anyway), but I remember my baby at the table and my dear mother-in-law and her long-time boyfriend and my then-husband.
And when we sit down this year, I'll remember all the people who have sat at my various tables for Thanksgiving and I'll have a moment of silence for the ones who aren't here any more. It seems to me that there are too many of those.
That first mother-in-law died years ago. The incredibly precious folks who were my now-husband's parents who died way too young and I miss them with all my heart. My sister-in-law died two years ago and she won't be here, but I'll light a candle for her. My dear friend Sue, who always came to eat with us, left a huge hole in my heart with her passing.
My friend Lynn, who lives in the nursing home came and ate with us two years ago but she isn't leaving the facility these days. Back when she was healthy, we had a tradition where she would come over early, while I was still cooking, just to have a drink with me and then we'd do a little dance to maybe some Jimmy Buffett and she'd taste whatever I had going on, food-wise before leaving to go to her mother's house. Although she's technically still with us, she won't be here for a sip of rum and a hip-shaking dance in the hallway and I miss that more than I can say.
But there will be lots of other good folks here and we'll carry on the traditions as best we can. We'll throw tablecloths on various tables and pull up all the mismatched chairs and eat off the mismatched plates and it'll all be good. The kids are going to spend the night and this big old house will be filled up again which I believe makes the house as happy as it makes me. There will be lots of light and laughter and we'll probably play some stupid games and drink too much and the husband and I will go to bed early and the kids'll stay up until all hours doing God knows what, maybe watching Pants Off, Dance Off, which they swear is a real show, but I don't believe it.
Perhaps there will be music and perhaps there will be dancing. There will certainly be eating of leftovers, which is when I can really enjoy the eating part because by the time I get dinner made, all I want is a big old drink and a nap.
Thanksgiving is a good day, even a joyful day for me, despite all the work, the worry, the eye-twitches and the ones who can't be with us.
And let's face it- any Thanksgiving not spent in a dorm in Denver, Colorado, all alone with Joni Mitchell has to be a good one. I'll probably listen to Blue, at least once while I'm cooking, just to remind myself of that and also because it's such a great album.
And I'll think of the ones who can't be with us and I'll sing Oh I could drink a case of you softly as I chop greens or roll out the biscuits and I'll remember snow falling outside a lonely window and I'll look around me to see all my babies and my beloved and lots of friends and I'll be happy.
I hope you are too.