Coping

In Japan at the New Year, they send out cards called nengajō 年賀状 usually related to whatever animal from their zodiac belongs to the new year. This year, 2026, is the year of the horse. Every year I commission a nengajō from Miriam. This is her Year of the Fire Horse card. 

We're almost half way through January, but in my mind I'm already thinking "When will this month ever end?" On my social media accounts I kept getting funny memes stating that January is a month of Mondays. That's how it feels to me. And February is even worse. I look at the weeks ahead, the interminable weeks until spring and it feels like what Phil Conners says in Groundhog Day, "I'll give you a winter prediction: it's gonna be cold, it's gonna be gray, and it's gonna last you the rest of your life." So I do what I need to do to keep from going crazy, and I wait.

I like to follow routines. Being a creature of habit, I take comfort in the sameness of things in my day to day life. I like my schedules. But at times I also grow restless and hungry for a little change, a diversion – especially during these cold and sunless days when even a brand new year starts to feel stale and monotonous. I have to remind myself that, although the patterns feel the same as the cycles of the year loop endlessly on, there has never been a moment exactly like this one in all the long history of the world. I need to approach each day as a unique opportunity. And so, I find ways to cope.

Cope is an interesting word. Originally it meant to quarrel or fight against something. It came to English from the Old French couper, which meant to hit or strike, the same root that gave us "coup" (pronounced "coo" in typical ridiculous French fashion) as in a military coup or a coup d'etat (again, "coo-de-ta" – really French? pourquoi?). By the 18th century in English "cope" had shifted from its more violent origin to its present softer meaning of "to handle or deal with something." That's what I do for these first endless months of the year, I cope to keep from succumbing to cabin fever. I turn to books and music and other distractions. This year I decided to add a fresh distraction by adding a new holiday for our family. With the big holidays past and Valentines Day (not much of a holiday really) still weeks away, I felt it would be nice to insert another festival into the calendar.

Although it comes just six days into the new year, I decided we should embrace the Feast of Epiphany. It's not a holy day that we observe in our church. In other Christian denominations it marks the end of the Twelve Days of Christmastide and commemorates three holy events – the visit of the Magi to the baby Jesus, the baptism of Jesus, and the wedding at Cana. That's a lot going on for one holiday. I found some amazing artistic representations of these three events by Italian Renaissance painters.

Adoration of the Magi by Botticelli. The figure on the far right is a self portrait of Botticelli.

The Baptism of Christ by Perugino. I love how they have Jesus standing on the river and John pouring water on his head.

The Wedding at Cana by Veronese. This looks more like a wild Italian dinner party.

I did some research to determine what sort of traditions we should establish for our observance. The fifth of January is known as Epiphany Eve or Twelfth Night. There is a superstition among some that it's bad luck to keep Christmas decorations up after Twelfth Night, but we didn't have to worry about that. Our tree and decorations came down the day after Christmas, as always. A lot of old traditions for Twelfth Night and Epiphany involve food, which is right up our alley. In Mexico and Spain there is something called the Roscόn de Reyes, the King Cake, a ring shaped sweet orange flavored bread laced with candied fruit and drizzled with sugar glaze and a tiny figurine of the baby Jesus and a bean baked inside. The person who finds the figurine is the king or queen for the day. The person who finds the bean has to pay for next year's Roscόn.

Roscόn de Reyes.

The French version of this confection is called Galette des Rois, a flaky pastry filled with almond cream with a trinket baked inside. Whoever finds the trinket, is crowned king or queen for the day.

Galette des Rois.

In Germany, Epiphany is Dreikönigstag, Three Kings Day. It's the day they take down their Christmas trees. They also have a King Cake, der Königskuchen, with a coin and a bean baked in it. They have a special beer (of course), Bockbier, that they drink.

Königskuchen.

In Italy, Epiphany is when the witch, the Befana, flies over the homes and fills their stockings with sweets or coal. Being Italy, there is a lot of food associated with it – focaccia della befana, a sweet bread laced with candied fruit, pepatelli, almond biscotti laced with black pepper, and purcidduzzi salentini, fried gnocchi. All of them sound delicious.

Top: focaccia della befana.
Middle: pepatelli.
Bottom: purcidduzzi salentini.

There are lots of Epiphany traditions from Greece. It's one of the most important religious holy days in the Greek Orthodox Church. The traditions involve the blessing of waters in remembrance of the baptism of Jesus. The priest throws a crucifix into the sea, river, or lake and men jump in to recover it. The lucky one who finds it gets a blessing from the priest. Being winter, I suppose the others get pneumonia. The day before Epiphany is a day of fasting. Then on Epiphany they eat diples, fried ribbons of pastry covered in honey, or loukoumades, round donuts covered in honey. They also have vasilopita, a sweet bread with a coin baked inside. The discoverer of the coin will have good fortune in the coming year. They also eat koliva, a dish of boiled wheat, sugar, nuts, spices, and honey.

Blessing the waters.

Top: diples, loukoumades.
Bottom: vasilopita, koliva.

That was a lot of food to choose from. I gave Miriam the task of deciding what to bake as our first Epiphany cake. She decided on something exotic this time, a pandan angel food cake. We had this pandan powder that Sarah gave us that she wanted to try. So we had our own version of our first King Cake. Rachel did some searching and sent us a bag of little baby Jesus figurines for baking in the cake, and Miriam added one to the batter. The pandan powder turned the cake a muddy bluish green and gave it an odd taste. It turned out to be a bit too exotic for us. We sent half the cake next door to the Shilligs to see if they liked it. They found the baby Jesus in their half so I guess they get the luck this year. Next year I think we'll do one of the traditional cakes.

Baby Jesus King Cake figurines.

Our not-so-successful pandan King Cake.

For some of the other holidays during the year, we have certain movies that we watch. We have a long list of Christmas movies, a fair sized list for Halloween and Valentines Day, and on Groundhog Day we watch Groundhog Day. I looked for Epiphany/Twelfth Night related movies and found two, sort of. Shakespeare wrote his play Twelfth Night, Or What You Will in 1601 or 1602 as a Twelfth Night entertainment, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the holy day. It's a romantic comedy involving shipwreck, twins, disguises, mistaken identities – pure Shakespeare plot craziness wrapped in wonderful words. "If music be the food of love, play on…" There is a great 1996 film adaptation directed by Trevor Nunn starring a slew of great actors – Helena Bonham Carter, Ben Kingsley, Imelda Staunton, Toby Stephens, and others. There's also an updated version, 2006's She's the Man, set in a high school and revolving around a soccer team. I prefer the former over the latter, of course. I added it to our new annual celebration – any excuse for watching Shakespeare works for me. So we watched Twelfth Night on Twelfth Night. I think our Epiphany celebration is a nice addition to our holiday lineup.

We also kept the outdoor Christmas lights lit through Epiphany. That night at 10:00 when they switched off, that was it, they went dark and marked the end of the holiday season.

The last night of Christmas lights.

So now we have a new holiday to help me cope. I have other ways of coping as well. Each year, starting in May, I stop watching my favorite show Gardeners World and save the episodes to watch during the first weeks of the new year. It makes me happy to see all those late spring, summer, and autumn gardens while looking out the window at a snow blighted world. I take notes while I watch, jotting down the names of plants they mention that interest me, noting tips for plant care.

Last year I decided to take up painting watercolors as a distraction during the winter doldrums. Miriam got me a nice set of paints and brushes and Rachel got me some practice books. That lasted until spring when all my attentions turned to the outdoors again. Now I've taken it up again. I'm not very good at it. I'm still using those practice books, one for birds and one for flowers. They have sketched outlines and instructions on what colors to use. When I get more proficient, I'll try some compositions of my own design. It does help to keep me from screaming at the walls for a while every day.

Painting with watercolors.

Of course books and music are my mainstays for coping and there is an endless supply of them in an astounding variety to keep me busy. After drawing up my Winter Reading List, I immediately ignored it and began re-reading Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. Years ago I read them all – all 41 of them – and loved them. They are very entertaining, a sort of fantasy/science fiction blend that is satirical, philosophical, and often hilarious. I have the first six of them in my library (thank you Josiah), so I started at the beginning, with The Colour of Magic. I finished that and am now almost done with The Light Fantastic. Equal Rites is next and then Mort. At this point I plan to read them all, a major sidetrack from my list. Or I might only make it through the six I own. If I want to go further than that, I'll have to get them from the library. We'll see.

The Discworld books.

Music has a magic of its own when it comes to coping. It feeds and energizes my brain. Every morning I choose a genre, a composer, a band, or a person, and set up a queue, and see what happens. There's a lot to be said for spending a few hours listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing Cole Porter songs – that gorgeous voice, those catchy tunes and witty lyrics. Or rocking to some early Beatles. Or The Eagles. Or listening to some ragtime. Or klezmer music. Or exploring the music of an unfamiliar composer. Sometimes the music I've chosen hits a wrong note with me and I switch to something else right away. Sometimes my choice takes hold and I spend a few days lost in it. One day last week I randomly chose Russian composers. It was a cold and miserable day, which felt Russian to me. I was very familiar with some of them – Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, but some not so much – Borodin, Mussorgsky, Shostakovich, and Scriabin. I ended up spending two days exploring their music. Some I liked, some not so much. One day it was all Bach. On another, it was Aaron Copland. And on another, the Carpenters followed by The Mamas and the Papas. Variety is the spice of life.*

Two days spent with the Russians: Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Shostakovich, Scriabin.

[*That saying, that I often quote, comes from a very long poem of 5,000 lines in blank verse (meaning it doesn't rhyme) called The Task: A Poem in Six Books by William Cowper (1731-1800) published in 1785. "Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavour" is on line 606 of Book II: The Timepiece. I've never read the poem. I tried. I couldn't do it. But I'll keep using the saying.]

I had my first doctor's appointment of the year midday on Tuesday. It was disappointing. A long drive. A long wait in the waiting room. Nothing new. Keep on doing what I'm doing. See you again in April. A long drive home again. It was warm enough that it rained the whole way there and back, which made the trip, and the rest of the day, seem rather gloomy.

We had a brief thaw during the week. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday it warmed into the 40s. The snow began to melt. Puddles of water and mud appeared. I took advantage of the mild temperature to take down the outdoor Christmas lights, a task that usually waits until spring. Thursday, for the first and only time so far this year, we had a sunny day. I went out at lunchtime and sat in my greenhouse to soak up some sun. Outside it was 44° inside the greenhouse it was 75° and it felt wonderful.

That afternoon, I did the first round of pruning the orchard. There was still quite a bit of snow on the ground, but the sun was shining and it was as warm as it was going to get for a while, so I grabbed my pruners and handsaw and got to work. I pruned everything I could reach without a ladder. It felt great to be working outdoors. There is still a lot more to be done. I alternate between a heavy and a light pruning every other year and this is a heavy pruning year. Some of the trees are very overgrown. I hope we'll get some nice weather later in the month or in February so I can finish the job.

After an afternoon of pruning.

Miriam and Hannah left on Thursday to spend the weekend at the Thayn's house. Hannah is coming home this evening, but Miriam stayed on. This week on Wednesday and Thursday we are going to the Farm Show with the Thayns so we will all be together and Miriam will come home with us after that. So it was just me and Stacey here for the weekend.

On Friday we almost hit 50°, but it was a rainy day, which prevented me from working in the orchard. It made me sad to waste a warm January day stuck indoors. I needed something to do, so I decided to render lard that morning. I brought the leaf fat (the fat from around the kidneys) from our pigs in from the freezer and set up everything at my work station – sharp knife, cutting board, food processor, kettle, and strainer. I brought in the canner and began to sterilize some jars and lids. Everything in place, I went to work. I cut the fat into small pieces and then ground them up in the food processor. I filled the kettle with the ground fat and turned on the heat. The rule with rendering is "low and slow." You don't want it to burn. I tended the kettle, carefully stirring, watching the fat melt and the cracklings form. When the lard was almost ready, I took my jars out of the canner and set them to dry under their own heat. Then I strained the cracklings out of the liquid fat. So far so good. The jars were dry, the fat was hot. I began to pour. The first jar was fine. The second jar exploded. Apparently, it wasn't completely dry and when the hot fat hit the water residue, it reacted violently. Hot fat spattered onto my leg – I was wearing my heavy bib overalls so it didn't touch my skin – it poured out across the counter, down the cabinet front, and into a puddle on the floor. I might have said a bad word. I had to stop everything, strip out of my overalls, grab a bucket and fill it with hot soapy water, grab a pile of rags, and spent the next half hour wiping up lard, which by then had solidified. By the time I was done, the remaining fat on the stove had cooled and so had the remaining jars. I had to heat them all up again. This time I made sure the jars were absolutely dry before I poured. I finished the job with no further problems. In the end, I had four pints of leaf lard. I probably wasted another two pints by my carelessness. But it's nice to have what we have. The whole thing could have been much worse. I might have been seriously burned by the spattering lard. I'm thankful I was not. All I got was a small blister on my right thumb.

My rendering work station.

Boiling leaf fat.

Strained and ready to pour.

The finished lard.

Yesterday was a chilly, rainy, dreary day, but it was also a great day because Stacey and I went to the temple. We left before sunrise and didn't get home again until afternoon chore time. The temple was lovely, as it always is. Afterward we stopped at the newly renovated visitor's center at the Hill Cumorah. It is very different now. They no longer conduct tours, you just look at exhibits and watch a short film. On the long drive to and from Palmyra, we listened to Come Follow Me podcasts for this week's Sunday School lesson. All of that made for a very uplifting day, despite the dismal weather.

At the temple.

At the Hill Cumorah.

We didn't do much of anything for the rest of the day. All that car time takes a toll on us. After dinner, Stacey went to bed early. She does all the driving, so a trip like that is more tiring for her. After she retired, I read for a while and then went to bed early too. That's kind of how it goes when it's just the two of us at home. Maybe we're getting old and boring.

Sunrise this morning looking southeast.

Sunrise this morning looking northwest.

This morning, after a pretty sunrise, the weather shifted. Those morning clouds were a harbinger of weather coming. By the time we left for church, we could tell snow was coming. Attendance at church was light again, just nineteen of us there, but our meetings were good. During the second hour of  church, it began to snow.  It blew through in a squall and then faded into light flurries. In Wellsville, there was a light dusting, but as we drove home, the closer we got to Gold, the more snow there was, of course. So we've settled in for the afternoon. Lunch will be ready soon. Hannah will be home later in the day. Other than chores, I have nothing else to do but eat and take a nap. That seems like a good way to cope with a cold and snowy Sunday afternoon. Good Sabbath.