Snow

 It's barely December, but this morning, after a week of cold-ishness, the thermometer reads 27 degrees..."feels like 19," reports the weather report.

I'm up too early, so I stay in bed for an hour or so reading more of The Last Chinese Chef...fascinating for its history and illumination of the best food of China and its chefs, but mostly for me redolent of the way food…the right food, the right ingredients, the right preparation, for the right people…keeps us together.  One doesn’t eat alone, the Chinese tradition goes…one gathers to share bowls together.

 Then, when it lightens, I close the book and look outside to see what began last night as a few flakes of snow after too long a day of promises.

Sure enough, the mailboxes, cars, benches, bushes have a thin layer of white on them. Ah...not much (not as much as Alexander wishes, or I either, truth to tell…if it’s going to snow, it should SNOW), but enough.  I pull on my warmest clothes...a pair of corduroy slacks, wool socks and the sweater my mother knitted me way back when I was another shape, and too cold in New Hampshire.

This is her birth month...a few days after Christmas she would have been 108. 

   

Like most of her family in those generations, she was an expert needleworker.  Many of us are lucky to have the fruits of her work.  (In her nineties, it annoyed her that she couldn't do the stitches her hands took for granted..."When I think, I used to knit dresses in the movie theatre in the dark!" she complained.)

The boys each had her blankets…as infants they were given throws modeled in soft colors that even when they were adults they’d use.  For me, there were shawls and scarves…

 

…and, for the coldest mornings, this sweater.  Even now on my screen porch, facing southwest, I can stand in it, warm.

Thanks, Mom.