Coping With the Damp

This is the view out the windows these days.

These are the days we don’t move very fast. Mornings are calm (a much nicer word than lethargic), as each one fixes his own mug of something hot. (Gabe has been working mostly night shifts, and Gregory is the not-slow exception in the mornings. He gets up in the pitch black, packs his lunch, and is usually out the door with something in a go-cup before too many of us are out of bed.) Olivia is a black tea person, Rita makes a single shot of espresso with lots of steamed milk, Addy likes hot chocolate, and I prefer a decaf Americano with maybe a bit of cream. Gabriel is happy with whatever someone offers him. Hot drinks are an essential component of surviving winter. It’s a good thing I make mugs, because they go all about the house with us and still there are more in the mug drawer.

These are the days of making food in the cast iron skillet. Did you know comfort food is often cooked that way? Sausage patties. Egg and cheese on sourdough sandwiches. Apple crisp. Fried potato wedges. Casseroles with bubbling cheddar pooled on top. Sometimes I make an attempt to fancy things up, but then the sauce swallows up the pattern, which is not what I envision when I line up the potatoes, but they are good anyway!

These are days when we light candles and plug in twinkly lights and build fires in the fireplace just for the ambiance. I would rather cut back on my daily food than live always chilled, if it were a matter of affording one or the other. We are not at that place yet, and I am thankful. Also we have a lot of daily food stored up that I grew in the good earth right outside my door, and this is the time to revel in that feeling of accomplishment. It actually is nice to rest right along with the gardens. Sometime I wouldn’t mind trying tropical gardening though, and having bougainvillea climbing up my trellis in January.

These are the days when everybody is in each other’s space all the time. Reading another’s book, because it was laying right here and it looked interesting, but there was a marker in it and how could you? And who ate the last of the chocolates? Also why are there no more Lady Grey teabags? Anybody play a game with me? Shall we start this 1000 piece puzzle? And then we do it in a day because we can.

These are the days I pep talk myself into pulling on boots and whatever else is necessary to get outside, clear the cobwebby spaces in my brain. I stroll down to the creek, look at it roaring along brim-full. I look up through the skeletons of trees, admiring their bones. The sycamores with their straight branches and twigs all reaching upward. The graceful droop of the willows. The squiggly twigs of the walnuts and cherries and apples. The enormous limbs of the ancient oaks in our backyard. Learning to identify naked wintertime trees makes them less sad to me; they are elegant and brave, individual fingerprints against the sky. I watch the red-tailed hawk hunting over the field, shrieking as it rides thermal winds. The clouds have just enough definition for me to see that they are tearing along with occasionally a shred of blue space.

These are the days of damp and chill and lots of stuff going on that we can’t see, but we know it is happening. Meanwhile, we take our vitamins and our constitutionals and we are okay. How about you? Are you doing all right?