Between Solstice And Celebration

I didn’t plan to stay away from this blog for so long, but life sort of ganged up on me there…

We’ve been preparing for the grandkids’ visit. Once again, I am amazed at the number of things that need cleaning, stowing away, and rearranging. And in the midst of all the preparations, we’ve had repairmen and contractors and electricians here to do some much-needed work.

For the past few years, my wife and I have been torn about whether to stay here in the mountains or to return to Texas. We’ve back-and-forthed ourselves to the point of exhaustion, covering all the pros and cons, exploring as many options and scenarios as we could conceive, and spent many, many hours in intense conversation about how and where we’ll spend the last stretch of our earthly sojourn. We finally arrived at the conclusion that it’s safer and more practical to remain here in our Appalachian redoubt.

Since we already bit the bullet and replaced our heat pump/furnace, we decided that we may as well bite a few more bullets. These included having the house rewired, replacing some ancient light fixtures and outlets, etc. And the big Christmas gift for Mrs. Orr is something she’s been wanting ever since we bought this little farm: a front porch. The workers have been laboring in the frigid wind for several days and are due to finish up today. We’re very excited about it…the porch will be like another room, one in which we’ll spend a lot of time in milder weather. No more shabby, uncovered concrete slab out front. Now we’ll have good, solid boards beneath our feet and a nice metal roof (that matches the roof on the house) above our heads. It’s going to be a wonderful thing. I will say that I do not envy the workers today as they install the roof. The icy wind is quite gusty, and I keep thinking of what wonderful sails those big sheets of metal with their sharp edges will make if the wind catches them just right.

We had the lights replaced in the kitchen and breakfast nook. They were a horrid Seventies track-lighting system and a constant source of annoyance in the lack of both looks and lumens. Now we have a series of these nifty newfangled can lights that pour down a merciless, clean glow, a glow that awakened us to the fact that we are really, really crappy housekeepers. It’s a humbling thing to see stains and spots and dust that up until now have remained a happy secret. I’m starting to get used to the new lights, but for a few days, I felt like Margo and Todd when Clark Griswold finally got the Christmas lights a-goin’.

Jinx has had a wonderful time making friends with the parade of contractors and repairmen. None of them have been annoyed by his antics, even when he’s grabbed a bag of roofing screws and hightailed it across the pasture with them, or seized a glove and played a spirited — and edtended — game of keep-away. He’s brought a steady steam of cow bones and plastic flowers from the cemetery to the workers, and they have gazed at him with fondness, and at me with an unspoken question in their eyes: “How has this dog avoided getting shot by your neighbors?”

***

It’s been a rough week on birds here. One evening, Jinx alerted me to a bird scampering across the front yard, dragging an obviously injured wing. I ordered him to stay and I ran after the bird and managed to scoop it up. It was a female cardinal, crying out in pain and in fright. She clamped down on the webbing between my thumb and index finger, and I made a remarkable discovery about the bite-pressure of your average Cardinalis cardinalis. Let’s just say that I will never again wonder how these delicate birds can crack open those hard black sunflower seeds. And let’s just say that at least once in recorded history, a man and a bird lifted their voices together.

I trotted over to what we call The Bird Tree, which is a fir that went down several years ago. We let it lay where it was, and soon brambles and blackberries and raspberries and honeysuckle grew up around it. It has provided a marvelous refuge for the winged creatures here at the farm, and Jinx likes to hide in its dense, thorny cover on cold, sunny days and watch the winged activity. I found a large blackberry cane a few feet off the ground and released the cardinal onto it. She cried out a few more times but seemed grateful to be out of my clutches. I left her, but returned later after stewing about predators and her slim chances. I had constructed a temporary bird cage out of a Have-A-Hart trap with an improvised perch and a dish of water and one of sunflower seeds and suet. Alas, when she saw me coming, she flew deeper into the thorns and was beyond my good-intentioned reach.  I checked on her a few more times before going to bed, and she was sitting calmly in the brambles. The next morning, she was gone. Did she know that she was being prayed for?

A couple of days later, we heard a loud bang on the glass of the front door. My wife investigated and informed me that a bird was on the front step. She kept Jinx occupied while I went to look. A beautiful little house finch had bashed his tiny head in and was silent and still on the cold concrete. I thought of the dead hummingbird we’d seen at Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey more than a year ago at the base of the statue of a saint. I took the little body to the garden and laid him to rest. It bothered me because have “invisible” decals on some of our door and windows that are supposedly visible to birds and are designed to prevent this sort of thing. I am grateful at least that hundreds of birds don’t collide with our little farmhouse the way the migrating birds meet their deaths on the unforgiving walls and windows of skyscrapers in large cities.

I tried last night to see the much-publicized “Christmas Star” of the convergence of Jupiter and Saturn. Supposedly, the phenomenon was to be visible in the southwestern sky just after sunset. Jinx and I went to see it, but we saw only the moon. I read later that the time window is short in our area, and that the convergence sinks below the horizon pretty quickly. We plan to try again tonight.

***

We have a ceramic pig we bought several years ago, about the size of a small dog. His usual place is outside the side door, where most visitors come when they arrive at our home. We paint him different colors as the seasons and our moods change. Sometimes he’s a bright, healthy pink. Sometimes he’s a Texas javelina. Sometimes he’s a vivid green. The pig’s name is Pumblechook, after a Dickens character in Great Expectations.

This year, we decided to Yule him up, so we painted him cherry red, tied a green ribbon and bow around his neck, and hot-glued a little top hat on his head. After he dried, I brought Pumblechook in the house to show the dogs. I placed him in one of their beds. Sentient canines meet porcine o’ the porcelain and minds get lost and composures get lost. Dixee especially did not care for the intruder. Watching her glare and growl at Pumblechook was worth the effort it took to gussy him up.

***

Like many, the older I grow, the more my mind turns to the past. This is especially true at Christmastime. Memories and significant events swell within me and catch me during the days and especially in the evenings. The long evenings I love so much. Yesterday was the winter solstice, which means that the nights will get incrementally shorter and the days will get imperceptibly longer from now on, and how did this happen? Wasn’t it just last week that I was cutting the grass and watering the garden, and I didn’t even have a chance to enjoy the winter air, the cold that is bred into my blood and bone from my ancient fathers, the silence of the frigid nights, the cruel slice of setting sun across the eyes when I am walking up the gravel road with Jinx trotting ahead of me, the pebbles throwing long shadows in the frozen mud in the center of the road, the lack of poison ivy and insects and sweat and noise. It will all start leaving me, even as the sounds and pulse of life begin to return to the earth, the mountains alive with the rumors that spring will again slingshot back this way, that Idun, carrying her apples and her magic, will stroll through the valleys and passes, all smiles, all warm breath and fair, glowing skin.

I want the winter to stay. It is painful to my body, and the fact that I enjoy it while most others merely endure it reminds me that I am an odd duck, that I do not share the opinions that would help me move more easily among men. It hurts, the wintertime, and yet I love it so. It is the only time when I feel clean and sharp and vital, and the pain is part of it, the aching arthritic bones and joints reminding me that I am alive, that I am here, that I walk across the green and gray skin of the earth decked with its stick-shadows because I have the breath of life within me, and that breath leaves my body in puffs and clouds.

Christmas will soon be here, and I will watch children play and climb and explore, and I will wonder at their energy, their limitless curiosity, and I will see my wife’s blue-eyed gaze in theirs, and I will listen to their piping voices, and I will feel sad at how tall the twins have grown, and I will laugh at their guileless words and their sly observations. Children in our home, a child in a manger, a star in the sky, so many changes, the significance of certain single lives, the soft and loving nuzzle of a beloved animal, the aroma of good food, the warmth of a hot drink, the wrapped packages whose sole purpose is to be ravaged and torn asunder, the whisper of warm air from the basement, the glow and fade of lights on the tree, the dance of candle flames, and the brush of wings as birds seek shelter in the window boxes just on the other side of that glass. Music and the words of well-worn and well-loved Dickens, and laughter and warm feet on cold floors and the sense that I am outside myself, watching myself watch the others, and the awareness that holly and ivy really do have a magical combined power, as does the silver and gold, as does the green and red, as does the sweet and savory, as does fur and flesh, as does wind and ember, hearth and chair, needle and ornament, log and flame, bright star and black night, the entire universe known to me and contracted down to the inhalations and exhalations of the life I have, the life I know, the life I watch, the life I love.

It all comes so quickly, and it all leaves so fast. Behold, I show you a miracle.

~ S.K. Orr