Winter Wonderland's Crotchety Neighbor

Posted September 07, 2007

1 |

I found this helpful Thank You! Your vote will be tallied soon!

It's cold finally. On school mornings, we have to pry the kids from their warm cocoons of sleep and carry them downstairs, arrange them on the kitchen couch where they huddle drowsily under blankets until their poached eggs are ready. Later, everyone dashes from the house to the car, screaming through the cold, yelping about icy car seat buckles, puffing out frozen clouds of breath. I make lentil soup in the Crockpot. Michael takes the children ice skating after school and they tumble back into the house with flaming pink cheeks. We drink tea and eat squares of chocolate and tuck the kids back under their comforter as early as we can get away with.

Oh! I just read that paragraph and see that I painted quite the Norman Rockwell portrait of our cozy New England winter lives. And sometimes it really does feel like that. The New York Times ran a recipe recently for "No-Knead Bread" and nothing has done more for my winter self esteem than these perfect tangy, crusty loaves that taste like the best bakery bread you ever tore into. I'm not even a good baker, but you just stir together a quick, shaggy batter, let it bubble on your counter for a day, and then more or less dump it into a pot and bake it. And it really is the little things, because watching my kids eat a slice of wheaty, just-baked bread gives me a total Fannie-Farmer high. Despite such winter woes as the skin on my knuckles, which has turned into a kind of human particleboard that would give you a splinter if you accidentally brushed against it. Or the way my nostrils have hangnails. Or the missing gloves, socks, boots, patience. Or Birdy's filthy down jacket that we can never wash because she's always wearing it now, with the mysterious oily stains and the greasy, grubby cuffs like she's been sleeping in it for weeks inside a dumpster. At school, I study everyone surreptitiously to make sure this is common -- kids arriving in dirty coats -- and no. No it's not.

There's also Birdy's cough, which is an old story by now. Last winter she hardly coughed at all. But this year -- my God, she's been coughing on and off since October, hack hack hacking in the night until phlegm splats to the tile floor of the bathroom where we steam her in the dark. She cries and cries about the mucusy gagging, the smell of it on her hands and hair, the loud of the shower in the quiet of the night. Hours later, she falls back to sleep again, often draped over Michael's shoulder -- like a sack of flour, only not dry. We give her sage tea and no milk; we take her to the doctor who confirms that the problem is not in her lungs; but honestly -- I feel like we're not really doing anything about it. And maybe there's not really anything to do. It's like trying to figure out how to change the situation of a baby who nurses all night long at five-minute intervals: in the dark you're too deranged to think clearly; in the morning, you're too tired to, and the cheering sunlight kind of saps your motivation. "Maybe it will be better tonight!" you think, like a person rubbed daily with an amnesia wipe.

Wait! I meant to be writing more about how relieved I am that it's cold! Because I am. I mean, just a week ago I went out for a neighborhood jog, and it was damp and breezy; there were worms -- spring worms -- drowning themselves in puddles where the snow should have been, as bloated as pink tires; the crocuses were pushing up out of the ground; the forsythia was budding. It was creepy. It felt apocalyptic.

But I see that I've done it again, like with the cozy mornings and the bread. You read "jog" and stick there, wallowing in your own lameness because, my God, while you're home snacking on Fritos and self-loathing, I'm out jogging! What you don't see is that I lug my decrepit self around for just over a mile, tired and impatient, longing for it to be over before it even starts. I am dying the whole time, wheeling and dealing with myself to make it just to that mailbox, that brick house, the top of the hill. You don't see that in the year since I started I have gained ten pounds. GAINED TEN POUNDS! This poor body. I think it's just been one thing and another for it: the pregnancies, the births, the endless nursing and weaning. You can tell that it takes the trauma of exercise to be just another crisis best managed by the storing of extra fat. Plus, in all those years of baby-making, while I was too distracted to notice, I became middle-aged: a lined and padded version of my pre-baby person, like I got sent to hair and make-up, and it took them eight years but they did it -- they made me look like myself, but older.

But even as I write this, snow is drifting past my window in huge flakes, like moths. And the kids are in the next room lounging in pajamas, waiting for me to come and shepherd them into clothes and coats -- because it's a winter weekend, and they want to go outside and get as cold as they can. Then they want to come back in and notice how warm it is.

Member Comments On...

Winter Wonderland's Crotchety Neighbor

Family

Account Warning

Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Winter Wonderland's Crotchety Neighbor

Member Comments On...