We welcomed in the new year last Sunday night with a celebration at the Shillig’s house. They had a very festive table laid out for us. We brought our traditional New Year’s Eve food to share with them. There was so much food and all of it delicious. As the evening progressed, dancing broke out, a good way for the children (and some of the adults) to burn off some of the sugar they’d just consumed. At 11:00 we left and came back home, hoping to get everyone settled in bed by midnight. It almost worked.
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| Waiting for the celebration to begin. |
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| The children's tables. |
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| The adult table. |
On New Year’s Day everyone slept in. By the time the last of the sleepers finally roused themselves, it was too late for breakfast and even brunch. We had already started preparing our traditional New Year’s meal of pork and sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, and homemade rolls. That was okay because we try to make that the first thing we eat in the new year. We also had lots of leftovers from the night before. The missionaries joined us at noon for our inaugural meal of 2024.
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| The adult table for our New Year's dinner. |
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| Hannah at the children's table. |
After our meal, it was time for the Thayns and Josiah and Vanessa to get ready to go. Josiah and Vanessa’s flight home was on Tuesday morning out of Pittsburgh, so they had a deadline for being back down there. All the packing cast a pall of sadness over the day, plus everyone was still a little tired from being up late the night before. They drove away at 3:00 and the house collapsed into a stunned silence for a while.
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| Good-bye to Josiah and Vanessa. |
We spent the rest of the afternoon tidying the house, finding all the things that were left behind. Our tidying that day was not the New Year’s Deep Clean that we usually undertake. I’m planning to start that this week as we gut closets, empty dresser drawers, scrub kitchen and bathroom walls, take down books and dust them. It is something I love to do, at least at first. What else is there to do when you are cooped up inside?
Josiah and Vanessa’s flight home on Tuesday went off without any trouble. It was so nice having them here for the holidays, even though it wasn’t for as long as we’d planned. Now the holidays are over. We’ve turned off the outdoor lights. All the festiveness is gone. January tends to drag a little as the Post Holiday Blahs set in.
This year is the year of dragon in the Japanese Zodiac. Every year Miriam designs a New Year’s card, nengajō in Japanese, for me. I always intend to print it and send it out like the Japanese do, but never get around to it. Instead I share it online. This is her Year of the Dragon nengajō.
Tuesday morning we went down to the county courthouse to watch the swearing in of newly elected officials. Our friend and neighbor up the road, Kevin Siska, was sworn in as our new county sheriff. It was interesting to see all the officials – sheriff, deputies, clerks, county commissioners, and judges take their oaths of office, swearing and affirming that they “will support, obey and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of this Commonwealth.” Potter County is a rural county, most of it forest and farmland, with only about 16,000 people living in 1,082 square miles. That comes out to about seventeen people per square mile. Looking around the courtroom that morning, I realized that I knew many of the people there. I like living in place like this.
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| The swearing in at the courthouse. |
On Friday, Chase and his family, next door, left for home. We didn’t have a chance to say good-bye to them because we were avoiding contact because we had sickness at our house and we didn’t want to infect them. They left early that morning. Now all the guests are gone.
We had a bit of snow midweek and more last night with more on the way. We haven’t had much snow so far this winter. Our Christmas was not white. But it’s January now and the snow will come and then stay longer than I’d like. When I was younger and more innocent, or perhaps naive, I loved the snow, especially the big dumps. It brought a thrilling kind of freedom as it disrupted the normal world and wrecked all our routines. School was canceled. Sometimes dad couldn’t go to work. We were snowed in and no one was going anywhere. Being housebound seemed like an adventure. But we children didn’t remain indoors. We couldn’t resist bundling up and trudging out to see what wonders the snow had brought us. The beauty of it was thrilling. It transformed the bleak winter world of brown and gray into a magical kingdom of white. I feel a little sad for losing that love. But it isn’t wholly gone.
I still find the snow beautiful when it’s fresh and I’m snugged away from it. But duty never leaves me snug for long. I feel the inconvenience of it more now. It makes the chores I cannot avoid more cumbersome. Walking to and from the barn becomes a burden. Shoveling it out of the way to make paths and free the cars is exhausting. Now I see more keenly the danger in it – the threat of broken tree limbs that leave us without power, or broken bodily limbs from slipping and falling in it. I am not tempted to play in it anymore – no more snowmen, or snow forts, or games of fox and geese for me. I like to think that that’s because I am wiser now, but maybe I’m just getting old. Edwin Way Teale wrote this:
“Primarily, I suppose, the snow months of winter, the so-called dead season of the year, is the time of the young and strong. As people grow older the snow – the joyous snow of our youth – seems more and more the enemy. A barometer of our health and spirits and strength is our enjoyment of the white winter. But even when the exhilaration of plowing through the snow in high-topped boots, the exultation of striding over drifts on snowshoes, is something of the past, the beauty of the snow remains to be enjoyed.”
If our ability to enjoy the snow is a barometer of our health and spirits, I’m not doing so great. When we moved here twenty-five years ago, after two decades of living in snow-less Southern California, I did enjoy the snow for a while. It brought back memories of my youthful years in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois. When I saw some of the locals here heading south for the winter, I felt sorry for them. Why would they want to miss out on all the fun and excitement of a white winter? Florida? Arizona? Yuck! Then twice in the past few years we had a chance to go to Florida for a few weeks in the winter. I understand now why they went. I’d do the same every year if I could.
As an orchardist, I know that the cold is necessary for my dormant fruit trees to bloom and set fruit properly in the spring. And as a gardener, I know that a covering of snow is a blessing to the sleeping garden. But winter lasts so long and I don’t have to be here to watch it all. Ah, but then there is my flock. I couldn’t abandon them and leave to spend the winter away in the south. Maybe for a week or two? Maybe just two weeks in February when winter is at its worst and I am weary of it?
Looking out at the snow this morning, I must admit that it is beautiful. Emily Dickinson saw the beauty of the snow. Her words paint a pretty picture of loveliness that is sometimes lost on me. She wrote:
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.
It makes an even face
Of mountain and of plain, —
Unbroken forehead from the east
Unto the east again.
It reaches to the fence,
It wraps it, rail by rail,
Till it is lost in fleeces;
It flings a crystal veil
On stump and stack and stem, —
The summer's empty room,
Acres of seams where harvests were,
Recordless, but for them.
It ruffles wrists of posts,
As ankles of a queen, —
Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been.
So the holidays are done, all the excitement fading away. A new year stretches before us. Winter has settled in for its long domination.
On Wednesday I could tell I was coming down with something. During the days when our house was full of guests, there was some sickness among us. Russell, Florence, and Josiah all had bouts of not feeling good – sore throats, runny noses, coughing. Wednesday morning my throat was sore and I felt achy. By that evening it was worse and Hannah had it too. Then Miriam started coughing too. Thursday and Friday Hannah stayed home from work. Saturday we all moped around the house. We’re still not over it. Stacey was the only one who went to church today. She reported to me that there were only fifteen people there because of sickness and snow. I hate being sick and to start the year off this way seems especially sad.
This coming week Stacey and Miriam are traveling. Miriam is going down to the Thayn’s house to watch the children while Tabor and Rachel go to Texas for a business meeting. Stacey is also going to Texas to watch our nephew Jake’s children while he and his wife are away. That will leave just me and Hannah here and that will seem very strange. A strange start to the new year. It’s bound to improve, I hope.
