On this New Year’s day…’Wait! What happened?’ He’s staring incredulously at the living room window. I remain silent and continue searching for slices of leftover pizza buried deep in the back of the refrigerator. ‘What did you do? Something is different. What’s different?’ I turn around.

‘Oh look, more chocolate!’ I point to the large platter sitting heavily on the counter. I have begun the annual purge of chocolate, candy canes, cookies, Little Debbie’s Christmas tree brownies…whatever keeps spilling out and over after almost two full months of carbohydrate and sugary crunch buildup. I hope to distract him. It’s a no-go.

‘You changed the curtains’. He gasps with the realization. ‘You changed the curtains!’ I glance vaguely in the general direction of the living room. ‘Um…yes, I did. I changed the curtains’. Silence. I continue. ‘I’ve been wanting to lift the heaviness of those purple drapes. Look, there is just a hint of lavender in those. They encourage the wall colors; lavender and light grey. They…are…well, they are encouraging colors. What a grand way to enter a new year!’

He turns down his lip to pout and declares, ‘Well, we’ve lost all our privacy. We’ve lost it!’ ‘No, no we have not’ I counter. ‘With the cream linen shade pulled it’s just as private as before’. He shakes his head mournfully. ‘We’ve lost the darkness. You’ll see’.

I turn back toward the fridge. I sigh. ‘We live where we live. Our entire climate could be described as ‘grey’ or ‘dark’ for a significant amount of time from…November until March, actually’. He shakes his head again. I respond, ‘I can only light so many candles in one winter time’. I sigh again. This is my big counter argument for changing the curtains? I’m losing my footing in this discussion. He turns away from the window and stares sorrowfully at the heap of chocolate detritus lying hither and yon on the kitchen counter. ‘But, but you didn’t tell me. You didn’t ask me. I told you what I was doing with the curtains upstairs in my study’.

I pull my head back out of the fridge. I’ve managed to locate two slices of mushroom pizza and I’ve latched on to a bottle of expired milk and a container of old eggnog. I head for the sink; rinsing the plastic and placing them in recycling where they plunk with a tired groan. ‘Exactly. You didn’t ask me either. You just declared your study a dark zone and poof…up went the navy black-out curtains; it’s a cave. I have to take a flashlight with me if I’m trying to locate you to give you your mail!’ He answers, ‘I need darkness to think’. I point to the living room window. ‘Look, it’s getting dark again. Time to think! We’ve had our 15 minutes of sunshine, popped a Vitamin D capsule and it’s time to settle back down into blankets, hot tea…and…apparently chocolate’. I look out at the gathering New Year gloom. ‘You’re going to be fine. You’ll have enough darkness for the next three months and we’ve got beautiful new curtains’. Silence. ‘With a hint of lavender. Encouraging’. I add this last hopeful word. He looks at the counter. ‘Oh look, chocolate!’

I think we’ll be fine and I put my head back into the refrigerator shelving.

I posed the question to my little ones, ‘What are some of the differences between Puerto Rico and Rochester, NY?’

I was informed that ‘pit bulls ride around in cars’.

So there is that…

I was ten years old and our school librarian, Miss Hall had just completed reading us the book entitled, ‘Cranberry Thanksgiving’. I was enraptured. I checked out the book for myself. It was a simple book with a blue cover. It was a child’s book. It captivated me completely.

There was a character in the story, the indomitable Grandmother, with a secret cranberry recipe kept hidden away from recipe thieves. I decided to try this recipe and it was a success. It was not just the ingredients, nor the fact that my parents loved the taste. It was kitchen ambience, spilled flour on the braided rug and the orange lamplights casting a glow through the window; out into the inky black November backyard. The dark purple colors swirled on the pages of that old book. There was a cranberry bog, for goodness sake, windy highlands and the surprising twist at the end of the story.

The story and recipe embraced the childhood desire for secrecy and hidden things and something as new as grating an orange peel and the arduous task of chopping cranberries and potential thieves lurking on Seymour Street and the hint of coming holidays.

I place two pans of this bread in the oven and the house begins to smell of cranberry, orange sugar and walnut air. I am thankful for this November memory, for our librarian with her quirky hats and her contagious joy of reading. May we all cheer such a life of literacy, swirling cinnamon colors and a heated oven. I am thankful for a kitchen in which to work, and almost five decades of cranberry bread. Thank you Miss Hall for tolerating all of us at the squirrely age of ten years and ‘Grandmother’ for sharing your recipe…

‘Don’t speak!’ I find myself saying this daily…with great aplomb and dramatic gesture. It works every time. Chatter stops and they all watch me for directions. It helps that I am tall.

I thought about ‘Don’t speak!’ the other day and I wondered vaguely where I had picked up this piece of Broadway theatrical speech. It came to me. In ‘Bullets Over Broadway’ a Woody Allen film starring Dianne Wiest…her character walks around saying constantly, ‘Don’t speak!’ when there is someone or something she doesn’t wish to deal with.

Thanks Woody. Thanks Dianne. I may try this outside the classroom…especially as the holiday season begins in earnest.

Ode to a classmate: the grey of November, the winds and clouds and heavy skies have scuttled out and around and are gone. Within them, they have taken you. Unexpected…and now we move through these days and in and out and through un-expectation and sorrow. Forever you, perpetual motion and rambunctious…defiantly laughing and laughing…making us laugh and laugh…and now, losing you.

My Father throws back his head in uproarious delight at the dinner table where your antics are embellished…the image of your permanent placement at the front of the class in efforts to quell your energy, your hand signals…the side comments and that scratched black lab table…your fingers nervously drumming and drumming, unstoppable.

In time we went separate ways, varying paths…new people, other lives…different ways and different days.

A vicious pandemic…no laughing matter, now. So the winds of November have come and gone…swept over the empty lands in Nebraska, taking you with them…and we are the lesser for it.

Godspeed Peter…and in loving and in laughing memory…

I am thankful for the promise of wild roses. Driving along dreary deserted western New York roads yesterday, Eli looked at a slightly crumpled road sign and asked, ‘Have you ever driven down that road?’ A thousand winding roads upstate never taken; but there is one hidden back road I did travel one summer day with my Mother. A last minute lark; a deviation from the plan of groceries and heading home and we landed upon a rutted and dusty lane. It curved behind plowed fields and streams and we watched sleepy farms and we lost our way suddenly and completely.

The road on both sides was lined with towering, overflowing and unkempt bushes of wild roses. I was close to five years old with bare feet and braids. Dust flowed through the open windows of the car and a bushel of un-shucked corn rested heavily on the front seat. We did not wear seat belts. We were surrounded by pink gems everywhere; hanging in sweet summer air.

We made it back home before dark but I will never find that road again; lying amongst miles of back paths and ruined hunter cabins; bumpy and lost amid rural wilderness. But I know certainly that somewhere out there lies a million rose bushes, waiting for me…requiring only a turn of the wheels and no plans…

The winds are charitable this afternoon. They blow in only the truest colors; the bluest skies. They are walking winds; those which gainfully push one up a steep hill while cooling one off on the other side, and all the day the sun shines and shines.

Deep gusting winds scatter the weaker leaves all around the streets. Larger trees still burgeon with amber, pink gold, chocolate beige, candy apple reds and softer yellows, along with muted purple leaves. They’re not ready to let go yet. Our baby maple in the back yard however, has shed all covering quickly and stands naked by the shed. Soon it will be time to wrap the trunk in green felt. The tree has been with us for a year and a half now and still requires protection.

He thinks it will be the final mowing efforts of the season. He hopes so. Mid October is fairly late on this side of the lake. More mid-central in the state lie fallow fields which have already had their first lace dusting of snow. Late yesterday evening I think I hear the low distant droning sound of a mower; a quiet neighbor in this silent neighborhood is doing yard duty long after twilight. I can’t place the sound. Then I think I’ve imagined it. But on my walk today, I see the lush checkerboard pattern of green mowed grass by the house at the top of the hill. This yard is a work of art. The grass, silken sage and soft.

Charity is in the air. An Instacart order gone surprisingly wrong turns out to be a blessing in disguise. We end up with a corrected order delivered at 10:30pm by a frail slip of a woman who takes the time to compliment our collection of ceramic pumpkins. Additionally, we end up with close to one hundred dollars of free groceries since between various delivery policies, the late hour and delayed service, the woman from Instacart tells me simply, ‘It’s our fault. You can keep them’. In turn, we split the grocery order with the neighbors on this following brilliant afternoon. There are things they need we can’t use and groceries I’ll put to use right away. Now, there is a large pot of simmering turkey chili, perfect for this chilled afternoon and plenty of vegetables which won’t go to waste. Charitable winds indeed.

I stroll twice around the loop, riding the winds, breathing deeply. At one edge of the circle, a dog growls and barks fiercely at his yard’s boundary. I smile graciously at him and murmur quietly, ‘I could cook you for dinner, you small thing you…’. This dog has zero sense of time, space, proportions and heights. He’s the size of half a hot dog. He dutifully watches me for a bit and once satisfied I’m not moving closer but rather farther away, he snuffles and waddles triumphantly back to his porch. He’s accomplished his job. I’ve done mine today by remembering charity and manners. I disappear around the bend thinking to myself, ‘You do not understand the depravity lurking in the hearts of mankind you small thing; keep barking, little one’.

The winds have made me charitable today…

I may not see him until the spring, because though the colors are brilliant and the sky cerulean, they will sooner rather than later form slate grey clouds and heavy, dense weighted fog over the fields waiting for the first cover of lace . Be blessed, small half a hot dog creature. The winds blow kindly today.

I am thankful for the sense of smell. A few months ago, I walked into a room somewhere (I do not recall where) and I stopped suddenly because the smell was identical to my grandparent’s home in Aberdeen, South Dakota.

I could scarcely believe how real it was; cigar smoke, old wood, cookies and orange chocolate doughnuts and cold soda pop bottles, the sliding doors in the music room, sagging linoleum on ancient cellar stairs, and a collection of a thousand memories dating from 1914 on…resurfacing more than one hundred years later, somewhere in New York.

I am suddenly 12 years old but I’m not, but I am…the sheer magic of re-vibrating collective cells, wind and the hand of God.

I fell into an odd space the other day. Someone who did not mean any harm pushed me in. She sat down next to me and asked, ‘So how are your parents? Are they both doing well?’

Right after I slid into that odd space, my brain opened up and there was a long tunnel into which I stepped. It was the day of the season’s first snow. Our neighborhood was deep in crystal sugar buttercream and the rows of stunning eggplant red maple trees, which had not yet shed their leaves were startled into suddenly dropping thousands of red gems on top of the white stuff and everything looked like a marvelous cake. Dad loved cake.

‘My Dad died almost two years ago’. I responded without rancor, because I did not feel rancor. It was truth and I wasn’t interested in watching this well meaning soul attempt to dig herself out of an awkward social moment, but of course, that is what she started to do. It seemed to take forever, but the whole conversation lasted ten seconds. ‘Everything is good’ I responded. ‘No worries’. She dug herself back out and faced me eye to eye.

‘I’m sorry. I did not know…’ she faltered. ‘Really, it’s fine’ I tried again. ‘He’s fine. We are fine. Don’t worry’. I was back in the tunnel, walking through thinking to myself, ‘How much is actually back in here?’

We climbed together out of that hole and I excused myself, moving on to other conversations.

I drove home and as the car bent around the corner of the swirling river at the edge of the boat houses, I watched a whirlwind of grey snow surge up over the road, grasping and slapping at another tree. It was an oak which was chock full of bright yellow leaves. They skittered off and around and over the road, landing on water to sink and skipping reluctantly along the road’s edge. The brute force of the new season required it.

You caught me on the day of the season’s first snow, when everything looked like a marvelous cake.

Dad loved cake.

Observation: at every dinner party, there is always that one person who knows everything about everything.

Everything.

And the one who shares it liberally at every turn. With all of us.

Every. Turn.