The First Week of the Year

  I always feel philosophical around the time of year when the numbers turn.  The darkness of winter, the short days and long nights, are made for reading, reflecting, remembering, making decisions and plans.  It seems momentous, this whole new year, three million and some seconds, waiting to be lived, and as future years dwindle, it feels ever more important to use them carefully and well.

  

This is where we started 2019 on January 1st, walking our favorite stretch of beach in the early-morning fog.  The fog was not all-encompassing; there were clear places and murky places and we moved easily between.  It felt like a metaphor for the year ahead: the foggy places the unknowns and tough decisions, the clear places the easy paths and choices, we humans moving through life, negotiating both.  

Decisions we are contemplating are big and small.  For example:  

• New doctors. Just before Christmas we learned that our primary care doctor had suddenly left the practice where we are patients.  We haven’t been satisfied with the clinic itself so it seems a good time to do some research and make a change, probably having to drive all the way to Charleston to get into a different system of clinics and necessitating changes in the several specialists we see.  
• A car.  We have 173,000+ miles on our car, a small Toyota SUV (without a single repair besides routine maintenance!).  This year will undoubtedly present the necessity of purchasing another.  
• A home-away-from-home, one with wheels.  We have been contemplating this for months already.  It's time to get serious and make a purchase!
• Travel.  Depending on the above two decisions: where we want to visit in the next 12 months.  So many choices!  
• A word. One to focus my thoughts and guide my life during the year ahead.  Some from past years include: Light, Simplicity, Adventure, Move, Gratitude.  I have some in mind but haven’t chosen The One yet.
• A Big Project. My book finished, I’m at loose ends.  I need a new purpose.  One can only knit so many hats (12, for charity, so far)! 

Well, those are a few things I’m thinking about these rainy, foggy January days.  What about you?  

Cheers to the New Year!

Rainer Maria Rilke 

“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been."

Best wishes for health, peace, and happiness in 2019

The Winter Beach

Thursday’s wild wind whipped the pounding waves into an airy froth. 

Pieces danced and tumbled along the beach, to be caught by the rocks of the jetty.  

On the jetty, the froth continued to quiver and shake, like a living, breathing thing.  

The beach — always a surprise, always a delight.

Season's Greetings

from The Blogger and The Writer 

in warm and sunny Florida!

The Christmas Lights

One of my favorite things about Christmas is the light displays.  I could go for a ride every single night in a different neighborhood to ooo and ahhh.  The photos I took don't do them justice, but here are a few from around town.  

The first is the Kaminski house on the water, right on the main street, one of the 60 antebellum homes left in our small town.

The walkway from the street, an old brick sidewalk, is lined with colored lights while all the rest of the display contains only small white lights.  

The narrow ends of the house face the street and the harbor with the main entrance and a park-like lawn on the side.

The traditional mansion is one room deep along its length, with a central hallway at the entrance.  It was built in the mid-1700s for John Trapier, who began his career as a merchant in Georgetown, supplied the army during the Revolutionary War, and became one of the wealthiest men in the colony. He moved to Charleston and gave the house to his aging and unmarried daughter to enhance her marriage possiblilites.  It apparently worked as she landed a good husband shortly thereafter!  

It isn't only the mansions of our town that are lit up for Christmas.  Here's a little favorite right in our neighborhood.

I don't believe I've ever seen the inflatable Peanuts gang portraying the nativity before!

The next is a house we always make sure to visit and I showed you their offering last year of hundreds of inflated snowmen crowded onto every single balcony and porch.  This year they went for a simpler but no less fun statement:

one giant tipsy snowman (I believe he's been sampling the peppermint schnapps 😁) swaying on the lawn, being watched over by two very interested reindeer from the porches!  

The Writer has done his shopping (he settled for a tropical Santa Christmas tie, thank goodness!), the cards are written, packages wrapped and mailed.  In a couple days we leave for Christmas #3 with my daughter from Germany (she's coming to the US, we're not going to Germany -- this year) and Christmas #4 with my mom.  

Oh, and Hey Santa, I've been real good, are you listening?

A Little Bit of Christmas

  Sometimes I long for the Christmases I had when I was a child, when everyone my heart loved lived only a few minutes apart. 

  Christmas Eve was a Norwegian Christmas with about 20 of my mom's family at one house -- great aunts and uncles, grandparents, aunt and uncle, cousins.  After a feast of traditional foods and mountains of dishes, Santa's sleigh bells were heard outside.  Chaos ensued with wrapping paper flying, new dolls crying, blinding flash bulbs on the old cameras popping.  

  Church was at 11 p.m.  The sanctuary, filled with spruce trees and pine garlands, brightened with ropes of red and gold, candles and choirs, joyous organ and trumpet music, and the holy comfort of tradition, was never more gorgeous or warm than on Christmas Eve.

Me (left) and my baby sister 

 Then, half asleep we trudged out into the snow and cold that shocked us awake for the drive back to the party.  Out of the kitchen came the ladies in their Christmas aprons with "a little midnight supper" -- leftover turkey, pickled herring, Christmas cookies, coffee -- to fortify us for the ride home and a few hours of sleep. 

  Then, the next day, Christmas Day, we did it all over again with Dad's side of the family.

Me, cousin, and sister, Christmas Eve

Now we all live so far apart, from Wisconsin and Minnesota to South Carolina, California to Florida.  The effort to bestow presents -- and presence -- on children and grandchildren takes us most of  a month!  This week we had Christmas #2 with my daughter and son-in-law and one of my grandsons from Minnesota when they visited my mom in Florida.  

  It was pouring rain when we crossed the Ravenel Bridge in Charleston, the tops of the bridge sails hidden in the fog.  Nine rainy hours later, we arrived in central Florida.

  Mason was the only one brave enough to play in the ocean.  The rest of us were sitting on the beach in sweaters, jackets, and long pants. 

 

  He loved a visit to the Kennedy Space Center

and wore his new space helmet on the 

plane trip home to Minnesota.

My best Christmas present so far (and we have two more Christmases to go)!

And the Answer Is ...

I thought our outdoorsmen -- Red, Troutbirder, David maybe? -- might have gotten this one!

  The landing above from my last post was built specially for canoes, which, if you've carried one, you know are awkward and heavy to transport.  You can just place your canoe on the rails and slide it along beside you up or down the ramp to the water.  Wow, I could really appreciate that technology!

 

x x x x x x x x x x x x x 

  In the late '60s I went on a canoe trip with a group of girls into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of Minnesota and Canada.  We carried all our food and gear for 10 days in, and we carried all our trash back out.  These were the days before ultralight equipment and as we portaged from lake to lake, we carried pots and pans, food, hatchets, shovels for latrines, and all our personal belongings in bulky canvas bags called Duluth Packs.  We also carried the heavy canoes over rocky, rough portages of up to several miles.  Fortunately we didn't have to carry water -- that came straight from the pristine lakes.  

The old Duluth packs were heavy before you even put anything inside and items like pots and pans dug into your back with every step you took.  Those of us who carried these wore one of the big packs on our backs and our personal pack on the front.  

The old Grumman 17 foot canoes we used were warhorses weighing about 75 lbs.  The yokes were made for men and didn't fit my narrow shoulders so I was relegated to carrying food and pots 'n pans packs.  

A canoe is carried on the shoulders and neck using a yoke.

I think that clever canoe slide at Buck Hill Landing would have made these portages a whole lot easier!