Ordinary

All I wanted out of this new year were a few ordinary days to begin again.  But opening the drapes this morning, I found out my window the snow the weather people said was coming.  Scorning them, I had disdained all those shoppers I found late yesterday afternoon at the grocery, who were practically looting the milk, egg and cereal shelves.  I was just there because really and truly I had run out of milk, eggs and orange juice, and, happening to be driving right by, thought I'd save myself a trip on the morrow.  Darting through the melee, I managed to snag the last gallon of milk and a carton of jumbo eggs that weren't broken, and the cashier and I made a joke of the panic people get into when the weather threatens to leave them at home too long.

Those of you in northern climes will no doubt roll your eyes at an inch of snow (that's how much we had) causing such hoarding, but here in the land of relatively rare snowfall, one could be holed up inside for a few days until the sand-and-brine trucks get around to one's street.  Even I, who live right off the main road through town, a road already cleared and well-traveled, am not about to risk life and limb dodging the (let's say politely) less experienced drivers who rev an engine jauntily over a patch of ice and don't expect the spin or the slide downhill. I hate driving (or walking, for that matter) on ice anyway, no matter how many of my youthful years were spent spinning on it.

But no one will argue that the sight this morning wasn't beautiful, the landscape shining jewel-like in the brilliant sunlight.  There were already tracks of birds, deer and something else I couldn't recognize across the driveway, and pretty soon I added my own, making up errands to enjoy the air and sun, even the crunch of snow under my feet.  Ordinarily all this white stuff would melt before noon, except that this week the peak temperature will just barely break the freezing point and nights will dip into the teens...not ordinary.  As I mentioned, we might be stuck inside a few days.

Beautiful winter scenes outside put me in the mood to do something warm inside.  Making breakfast, I pulled a package of English muffins from the freezer and discovered too many bags of bread-ends accumulating near the back of the shelf.  Ordinarily, I save them to dry and grind into breadcrumbs, but this morning that seemed too mundane a fate.  Bread pudding...a treat on a cold day, both the aroma as it bakes and the taste thereafter...sounded much more palatable. My copy of Craig Claiborne's classic tome, The New York Times Cookbook, is, after forty-five years, approaching the look and feel of an antique, but its Orange version is still the best recipe for that homey dessert.

As it came to fruition in the oven, I headed to the workroom to made a card for a friend's birthday, and when it was finished I began to play around, pulling stuff together to make a new one, collaged like the first, this time with leftover bits of a page from an arty style magazine, a rag of cotton and a few handmade paper ends.

Somehow, though, shapes of a deeper significance began to appear as I tore and glued, inked and painted and overlay.  The pile of folded rugs seemed now like a temple; the beginning of an ancient invocation occurred to me, and after I'd inscribed it once, twice, ten and more times, I reached under a pile of scraps and out fell a tiny square with the message, This life is a gift.  I suppose the same words had been nesting in my mind unrealized behind every move of my hands.

What I was building with those scraps was a talisman against worry.  My poor grandson has had a fever that has enervated him for several days now.  Those of us who know from experience about fever in children know that with some medicine, some cool cloths, a lot of liquids and rest it's likely to run its course and shake off lethargy soon enough, but we still can't help remembering all the things that could go wrong.  We also can't help feeling sorry for their parents, remembering what it was like when we were first faced with a little one, usually so full of energy, waterfalls of words tumbling minute by minute..."Dad, Mama, Nana!  See this?  I can do...", now way too quiet and droopy and hurting, his favorite blanket comforting him as he curls into a corner of the couch.   We'd do anything to make him himself again. It's only the flu, we think, but it brings with it a vulnerability we don't want to be reminded of.

So here before me is this collage unfolding from distress but insisting on turning into the bigger picture.  I'm thinking it will probably now be the cover of a book instead of simply a card.  Though I'm still pondering the right frame for it, I think I know what it's about, this piece.   It's the way the making of art turns those deep-hidden emotions we are too old or stolid or iron-willed to admit, into images that overcome vulnerability, even though they are born of them.

We busy our hands with work to reinvent anxiety and uncertainty, creating the outward expression rather than eroding the sense within. 

The bread pudding, by the way, my uncle enjoyed for lunch with a little cream, while the sun flooded the dining room and the snow glittered outside.  Comfort made against the cold, usually by hand.