Last week we lived in the afterglow of Christmas and the growing anticipation of the new year. Monday morning felt a bit bleak. It was cold and gray and that, combined with the post Christmas anticlimax and the usual Monday morning blahs, made it seem especially dreary. School is out for the week, but Stacey and Hannah left for work as usual and Miriam was sequestered up in her corner of the house all morning, so I felt a little lonely. I did my usual morning tidying routine and then sat in the quiet house looking at the decorations that were soon to come down and let a surge of sadness wash over me. After a while, I rallied. Feeling sorry for myself seemed silly. I decided to change my attitude immediately and I began the adjustment with music.
There’s nothing that lifts my spirits when I’m in a funk better than Mozart. Specifically, his piano concerti. Even more specifically, numbers 17 to 27. I queued them up and let the beauty of them fill the house. Feeling instantly brighter, I set myself to a happy task. Plant and seed catalogs have been arriving in the mail since November and, although I’ve glanced at them, I decided to sit down and look through them carefully to begin formulating plans for the garden of 2023. That filled some pleasant hours.
At one point in the morning I went to the kitchen to get a drink of water and when I looked out the window, there were dozens of Evening Grosbeaks at the feeders. I counted at least forty. They were lined up on the shelf outside the window, sitting on every perch of the two feeders hanging in the crab apple tree, on the ground under the feeders, and in the branches of the tree above. It was glorious to see them. I stood at the window and watched them jostling and feeding and I felt a blast of happiness. What a gift on such a subdued morning! Mozart, seed catalogs, and Grosbeaks are a powerful antidote to gloom.
I considered why that would be so and concluded that listening to Mozart fills me with amazement for the genius of the human mind, that God created us capable of creating something as perfect as a piano concerto. And seed catalogs are the springboards of hope. When I look at the photographs and read the descriptions of the plants, I can’t help but feel excitement for what lies ahead – spring and summer with their flowers, fruits, and vegetables. And seeing Grosbeaks and the other birds that come to my feeders on cold and wintry days reminds me that God filled the world with beauty and wonder that I should never take for granted. As the day progressed, I felt so much better.
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| My amaryllises are starting to bloom. |
Later that afternoon, we set up a music cue of Strauss and Miriam and I began the undecorating. Miriam took all the ornaments and the lights off the tree. When it was stripped of all its glory, we carried it out to the burn pile on the edge of the orchard. It left a trail of needles through the snow marking its sad and final journey. It will rest there in the orchard awaiting its immolation some dry day in the spring.
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| The tree stripped of its glory. |
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| Its final resting place. |
I brought all the boxes in from the woodshed and we began to replace the Christmas knickknacks with the regular ones. It is a sad process packing away the nativities and the Santas and the garlands. We were still working at it when Stacey and Hannah arrived home and Stacey joined in. Hannah did not. She loves putting up the decorations, but not taking them down. After the decorations were gone, we kept up our momentum and continued housecleaning. We rearranged shelves, dusted, beat rugs, moved furniture and swept usually inaccessible corners. When we were done, the house was back to normal. I love housecleaning. I love greeting the new year in a tidy house. As we cleaned, we made note of other deeper cleaning projects we will tackle in the new year – ransacking and reorganizing the kitchen cupboards, turning out the closets, culling accumulated books that we don’t want anymore. It’s going to be fun.
The Thayns arrived on Thursday evening and the holiday mood returned to the house. It seemed every room was instantly filled with new energy and excitement. Ever since their arrival there have been almost continual games, crafts, and food – a non-stop party befitting the holiday.
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| The inflatable fort. |
Friday was my mother’s 94th birthday. We Face Timed with her and everyone sang happy birthday to her. Then I went to a quieter room and had a nice chat with her while the rest of them decorated gingerbread houses out in the dining room.
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| My mother on her 94th birthday. |
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| Decorating gingerbread houses. |
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| I think more candy was eaten than used on her house. |
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| The finished gingerbread houses. |
We moved from the end of December into the new year with a squish as unseasonably warm weather set in, which was nice after last week’s sub-zero weather. The snow and ice began to melt. Puddles formed in the yard and driveway and the ground turned soft and muddy. It has been like March since Thursday and it looks like it will stay this way all week. The only snow left at this point is where the big drifts formed out in the orchard and they are dwindling fast. I like it.
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| The beaver pond thawing. |
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| Our New Year's thaw. |
Saturday was a warmish, rainy, and rather dreary day outside, but inside it was bright and busy. All day there were preparations underway for the evening’s celebration – baking, boiling, chopping – the kitchen was in constant use and load after load of dishes were washed and dried to keep up with demand. Midday, Stacey, Tabor, Hazel, and Mabel left to attend a basketball game at St. Bonaventure University up in New York State. By the time they returned, it was almost time for the party to begin.
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| At the basketball game. |
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| Our New Year's spread. |
On New Year’s Eve, to begin our celebration, we sang one of my favorite hymns, Ring Out, Wild Bells. The words are taken from the first, second, and eighth stanzas of the poem In Memoriam by Alfred, Lord Tennyson - (1809-1892). Lacking a pianist of sufficient ability, we sang it a capella and I’ll admit, in all humility, we sounded pretty good.
In Memoriam
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
Our New Year’s Eve celebration continued with games and food. Lots of food. All of it delicious. We ate. Then we played games. Then we ate while we played games. The party broke up, for most of us, before midnight. I like to enter the new year deep in slumber. 2023 arrived in a quiet house here.
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| New Year's Eve. |
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| Playing games. |
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| More games. |
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| The only one wide awake at midnight. |
We had good meetings at church today. We sang Ring Out, Wild Bells as the closing hymn. I think most of the members did not know it. Our family sang it nice and loud to compensate for that. Now we are home. Our traditional New Year’s dinner is being prepared. The pork roast has been cooking since before church and it smells great. I just opened a bucket of sauerkraut that’s been fermenting in the kitchen since early October. I’ve been meaning to bag and freeze it for weeks now, but never got around to it. It looks great and smells as good as sauerkraut ever does. It will be delicious with that pork roast. The potatoes for the mashed potatoes are on the boil. The dough for the dinner rolls is proofing. While we wait for all of that, we are snacking on leftovers from last night.
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| At church today. |
After dinner we will spend the rest of day sitting around, talking, playing games, and enjoying being together. The Thayns aren’t leaving until tomorrow, so there’s no hurry. This is a nice way to start a new year.
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| A sunrise last week. |
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| A sunset last week. |
Sitting here and reflecting on the year that has passed, it seems impossible that it is gone already. We saw three hundred and sixty-five sunrises and sunsets, some of them beautiful, some of them drab. I will not reflect on the changes that took place out in the wide world, or among my far-flung extended clan, but just in my own little family. There were monumental changes in 2022 – birth, death, marriage, moving, birthdays, anniversaries, new employment, new church callings, all sorts of adventures. Some things were expected and some things seemed unexpected, but all of it really just the way life is – constantly in flux. A new grandson, Russell, was born in July. Josiah got married and started a new branch of our family in August. My father passed away in October. My mother turned 94 on Friday. The Fosters bought a new house. Daniel and Raven became nomads for a while. We planned, planted, and harvested another garden. We all grew another year older and hopefully, a little wiser.
The year ahead will hold more of the same. We know at least one more grandchild will come to our family in June. There will be some important birthdays among our grandchildren – June turns eight and will be baptized, Ellie turns twelve and will be able to start going to the temple. A new garden is already in the planning stages. We cannot see where many of us will be or what condition the world will be in by the end of this new year. I’m sure, as the Lord told us, there will be wars and rumors of wars, nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places, iniquity shall abound, and the love of men shall wax cold. That sounds grim, but I have hope. I can only work with what is within my scope, seek to repent and improve myself, try to do what I can to help my family and friends as together we strive to endure life in these fascinating, precarious, exciting, and sometimes terrifying end times, taking things one day at time until the Lord comes in His glory. And like John the Revealator, more and more I find myself saying “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
I hope you have a happy and prosperous new year!
