Our neighbors now keep chickens. As I walked by this morning their rooster was in full voice and it struck me as so odd that instead of reinforcing the realities of our rural life here, the sound of the cock's crow instead took me back to the farm in New Jersey where I grew up. Memory is a strange thing. I have been thinking a lot about memory lately, having recently reconnected with people and places from the past and having just come home from a reunion of our tiny nuclear family: me, my mother, daughter, her husband and mine.
My mother's memory is getting more and more selective. She shared with us last weekend that as a toddler I was allowed to keep a brood of bantam chickens. I have no memory of this, although I do remember other babyhood occurrences. Nor do I remember the charming picture she conjured up of my Pop-Pop coming in from the coop and offering me a double handful of tiny, perfect eggs. I can picture this, of course, but I don't remember it and, if it happened, I wish I could. My mother may, of course, have me confused in this pretty picture with a younger sibling of hers and that may explain the otherwise perplexing undertone of jealousy in her voice as she told the story.
Connecting on Facebook and in other ways with former fellow "victims" of the educational system and of other past lives, makes me realize just how subjective memory is - something about hearing the rooster I guess, but I suddenly imagined memories as eggs; not the kind produced by Martha Stewart's perfect Auricana chickens, but the kind I used to find among the chocolate confections and jelly beans in my Easter basket.
This egg was always placed in the center of the green, green Easter grass - a kind of ovoid jewel - inedible sugar sparkling with glitter and smelling, oddly, of dust. Inside were scenes, sometimes enchanting - who could possibly be living in that tiny shimmering paper house among the paper daffodils; disturbing: giant paper bunnies towering over paper cherry trees; mysterious: an ornate, white paper cross glowing amid a flock of adoring paper lambs. More than anything else on Easter morning, I looked forward to that egg. It provided a glimpse of the ordinary made extraordinary and, in a way, perfect.
I think memory is like that: we lift the egg to our eye and make of the contents what we will.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Garden
Last night we had a small dinner party to celebrate Dick's birthday. We're all hungry for spring, so I brought out the tablecloth with the embroidered roses and my aunt's Adams china with the stylized flowers and birds. This morning as I put the china away, I turned it over to see if the name of the pattern was stamped on the back and it was: "Country Meadow". I long ago realized, that although she was a career woman whose job and inclination took her all around the world and who lived in cities all her life, my Aunt Jean was a country girl at heart and collected things that reminded her of the country and her homeplace which actually was on a farm in New Jersey.
I have a lot of her things and they all reflect the tug of the country life: paintings of farmhouses and country cottages, books (especially the Stillmeadow series by Gladys Taber), transferware cups and saucers depicting country scenes and, of course, her china. Even when she traveled, the places she enjoyed the most were the ones that evoked memories of the gently rolling hills of Somerset county New Jersey where the rest of my family lived.
My grandparents moved to the farm on Valley Road in Millington after my aunt was grown up and in the Army nursing corps during World War II, so she never really lived there, but she visited nearly every weekend after the war. As a little girl I looked forward to her visits. She always had time to cook something special, carve a pumpkin, teach me to use watercolors, hunt for violets and wild strawberries or read to me. I now recognize that those weekends "home" were a way for her to enfold herself back into the family and so the farm became the focus of that connection and no matter where she lived or traveled, she thought of it as home.
I come from a long line of farmers. My grandfather, bless his soul, was a traveling salesman, but wore himself out on the farm after he got home from work each day. Driven by a need to feed a family of five, he grew vegetables, kept a cow and sold milk, tomatoes and corn from a roadside stand. His father was a dairyman, his uncles were farmers in Hunterdon and Union counties. My grandmother's people were farmers too - her relations had a big apple farm in upstate New York - so it's no wonder that I grew up with dirt under my fingernails and the scent of newly turned earth in my nose.
I have lived in cities all my life as well but always felt the tug of country life and that's undoubtedly how we ended up here in rural Maine. In a way, my whole family has led me back here.
In my daydream I am five or maybe six years old. It is late spring and I am sitting on the little step in front of the tool shed, or the “little house” as we called it. In my lap is a pot of earth and sprouting from the earth is the crinkled leaf that will be a marigold. I planted the seeds in Sunday school weeks ago and it has finally sprouted. When they bloom, the marigolds will be a bright, metallic yellow like the foil-wrapped chocolate coins I found in my Christmas stocking. The sun is very warm on my face and legs - and on my feet, bare for the first time this year. Behind me the little house is filled with tools, machinery, nails, and paint. It is cool and dark in there from having been shut up all winter and an intoxicating smell of machine oil wafts out the door and mingles with the lush scent of the lilacs blooming in the shade against the old house.
Straight ahead of me I can see my grandfather’s head bobbing along beyond the honeysuckle hedge as he maneuvers the old tractor up and down the field making rows for planting. I can’t see her, but I know that behind the tractor my Aunt Joyce is walking along, grumpily feeding seed corn into the furrows he is making. On this side of the hedge bordering the yard, the ample form of my grandmother bends over the flower border. She is weeding or transplanting or simply peering at the earth to see what is coming up there. Next to her stands her tiny sister, my Great Aunt Mame, holding an enamel bucket of scraps from breakfast to take out to the to compost heap.
Next to the house, in the shade of the lilacs, my mother is on her knees, her gloved hands patting bright red geraniums into the earth. Behind the geraniums is a thick growth of snowberry bush. My father is toiling along the strip of grass next to her cutting a crisp, pale path through dark, new grass with the old push mower. Behind me in the little house, my Uncle Al is tinkering with the gas-powered mower with which he will cut the big back yard.
My Aunt Jean walks up to me from the old barn and in her hands are the first red, ripe wild strawberries from the tangle out back. In the little basket swinging from her arm is a bunch of violets and lily of the valley that she has picked from the sunny corner near an old foundation where they are growing wild.
From my spot on the steps I can see the ancient catalpa tree in the front yard is just beginning to bloom - some of its orchid-like blossoms already scattering across the grass. And on a sudden breeze the scent of the sun-warmed strawberry bush out by the mailbox rushes over me. I breathe, and breathe, and breathe it all in.
We are all so different, my aunts and uncle, parents, grandparents and I. My grandfather is a hardware salesman, my Aunt Joyce is still in high school. My mother is a laboratory technician at the VA hospital nearby; my father, newly discharged from the Marines, works in the office there. My Uncle Al is a car mechanic, my Aunt Jean, home for the weekend, is a nurse. My Aunt Mame is a dental assistant and my grandmother is…well, my grandmother: cook, laundress, head gardener, seamstress, decision maker, and leader of the pack.
But at this virtual moment, which is really the distillation of so many moments from my childhood, we are all gardeners.
I have a lot of her things and they all reflect the tug of the country life: paintings of farmhouses and country cottages, books (especially the Stillmeadow series by Gladys Taber), transferware cups and saucers depicting country scenes and, of course, her china. Even when she traveled, the places she enjoyed the most were the ones that evoked memories of the gently rolling hills of Somerset county New Jersey where the rest of my family lived.
My grandparents moved to the farm on Valley Road in Millington after my aunt was grown up and in the Army nursing corps during World War II, so she never really lived there, but she visited nearly every weekend after the war. As a little girl I looked forward to her visits. She always had time to cook something special, carve a pumpkin, teach me to use watercolors, hunt for violets and wild strawberries or read to me. I now recognize that those weekends "home" were a way for her to enfold herself back into the family and so the farm became the focus of that connection and no matter where she lived or traveled, she thought of it as home.
I come from a long line of farmers. My grandfather, bless his soul, was a traveling salesman, but wore himself out on the farm after he got home from work each day. Driven by a need to feed a family of five, he grew vegetables, kept a cow and sold milk, tomatoes and corn from a roadside stand. His father was a dairyman, his uncles were farmers in Hunterdon and Union counties. My grandmother's people were farmers too - her relations had a big apple farm in upstate New York - so it's no wonder that I grew up with dirt under my fingernails and the scent of newly turned earth in my nose.
I have lived in cities all my life as well but always felt the tug of country life and that's undoubtedly how we ended up here in rural Maine. In a way, my whole family has led me back here.
In my daydream I am five or maybe six years old. It is late spring and I am sitting on the little step in front of the tool shed, or the “little house” as we called it. In my lap is a pot of earth and sprouting from the earth is the crinkled leaf that will be a marigold. I planted the seeds in Sunday school weeks ago and it has finally sprouted. When they bloom, the marigolds will be a bright, metallic yellow like the foil-wrapped chocolate coins I found in my Christmas stocking. The sun is very warm on my face and legs - and on my feet, bare for the first time this year. Behind me the little house is filled with tools, machinery, nails, and paint. It is cool and dark in there from having been shut up all winter and an intoxicating smell of machine oil wafts out the door and mingles with the lush scent of the lilacs blooming in the shade against the old house.
Straight ahead of me I can see my grandfather’s head bobbing along beyond the honeysuckle hedge as he maneuvers the old tractor up and down the field making rows for planting. I can’t see her, but I know that behind the tractor my Aunt Joyce is walking along, grumpily feeding seed corn into the furrows he is making. On this side of the hedge bordering the yard, the ample form of my grandmother bends over the flower border. She is weeding or transplanting or simply peering at the earth to see what is coming up there. Next to her stands her tiny sister, my Great Aunt Mame, holding an enamel bucket of scraps from breakfast to take out to the to compost heap.
Next to the house, in the shade of the lilacs, my mother is on her knees, her gloved hands patting bright red geraniums into the earth. Behind the geraniums is a thick growth of snowberry bush. My father is toiling along the strip of grass next to her cutting a crisp, pale path through dark, new grass with the old push mower. Behind me in the little house, my Uncle Al is tinkering with the gas-powered mower with which he will cut the big back yard.
My Aunt Jean walks up to me from the old barn and in her hands are the first red, ripe wild strawberries from the tangle out back. In the little basket swinging from her arm is a bunch of violets and lily of the valley that she has picked from the sunny corner near an old foundation where they are growing wild.
From my spot on the steps I can see the ancient catalpa tree in the front yard is just beginning to bloom - some of its orchid-like blossoms already scattering across the grass. And on a sudden breeze the scent of the sun-warmed strawberry bush out by the mailbox rushes over me. I breathe, and breathe, and breathe it all in.
We are all so different, my aunts and uncle, parents, grandparents and I. My grandfather is a hardware salesman, my Aunt Joyce is still in high school. My mother is a laboratory technician at the VA hospital nearby; my father, newly discharged from the Marines, works in the office there. My Uncle Al is a car mechanic, my Aunt Jean, home for the weekend, is a nurse. My Aunt Mame is a dental assistant and my grandmother is…well, my grandmother: cook, laundress, head gardener, seamstress, decision maker, and leader of the pack.
But at this virtual moment, which is really the distillation of so many moments from my childhood, we are all gardeners.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Folding
I rarely fold a towel and don't think of my summer job many years ago as a chamber maid at the Hilton Inn in Tarrytown, New York. I learned a lot things during that brief stint: not to eat the frozen parfaits they gave us at lunch, how to hide from problem guests and who were the nicest ones, which rooms were the easiest to clean, how to fold a hospital corner and that bellhops would always and forever get the best (sometimes the only) tips. But the most lasting takeaway from that job was an unforgettable lesson on how to fold a towel. There was a very strict aesthetic at the Inn, and each wing had a matron who checked each room after we finished. Many times I went tearfully back to fix some minuscule infraction. In the beginning I was called back regularly to correct the droop of the towels on the bar in the bathrooms. Finally, the most militant of the matrons took me in hand and spent a half hour coaching me in towel-folding. I still mentally repeat her instructions every time I fold towels in my own bathroom: fold the towel in half, bring right and left sides into the center, fold the towel in half again and voila! It is a satisfying nicety that I actually enjoy performing.
Neat folding, I have to admit, has always been somewhat of an obsession for me, going back as far as my infanthood. Family legend (and my own dim memory) has reproduced the story often enough, of how my aunt, at the time a hospital infant ward nurse, tried to teach me how to fold a receiving blanket around my baby doll. She placed the blanket on the floor for me, point north in a diamond formation; placed the doll in the center of the diamond, brought the bottom point up over the doll's feet, folded the east and west points across the doll's body and the top point over the doll's head: a perfect papoose. But not perfect for me. Time and again, apparently, I yanked the blanket off in a fury, doll flying to the other end of the room, because the point of the blanket didn't end up in the exact center of the doll's forehead. Fortunately I got over this fetish by the time I had a real baby of my own.
I am always straightening things. This doesn't mean that my house is tidy - far from it - but certain things IN it are tidy. The forks in the silverware drawer, the handles of my pitcher collection all at the same angle, the arrangement of the photos on my desk, the soft stack of scarves in the coat closet and, of course, the pile of towels in the bathroom.
We often leave off the niceties in this rushing world. I was reminded of this again recently when a dear childhood friend reminisced about my own grandmother having sent this friend a corsage for some long-forgotten occasion when she was a little girl. I found it so poignant that my friend remembered the gift clearly, but not the occasion. Gram was a stickler for such gestures but it was because she enjoyed performing them. I remember lunch parties under the apple tree in her back yard, the card table set out with an embroidered cloth, her good china, and little plates of thin sandwiches with the crusts cut off, pressed glass goblets and a frosty pitcher of lemonade. Perfect.
My mother was a perfect housekeeper even though she had a full time job outside our home. I know that she took pleasure in orderliness and I have tried, fairly unsuccessfully, to emulate her in my own housekeeping. I'm getting better at it. I like, for instance, to iron. I know, I know, but I do like it! I like the smell of the steamy, clean clothes, the glide of the iron over the surface of the garment as it presses out the wrinkles and the quiet rhythm of the work. I wouldn't want to do it for a living, but it's not a terrible way to spend an hour on a gray afternoon.
One of my friends once asked me when I was between jobs what I enjoyed most about being free all day. I astonished myself by saying that, aside from being able to spend more time with my daughter, I loved being able to finish a load of laundry from beginning to end: wash, hang out on the line to dry, fold and put away, without feeling like it was just one more task I had to rush through. And I think she astonished herself by saying, "I know what you mean!"
I think we all, on some level, long for the time to be able to do things the right way - a little stab at bringing order to our world.
Neat folding, I have to admit, has always been somewhat of an obsession for me, going back as far as my infanthood. Family legend (and my own dim memory) has reproduced the story often enough, of how my aunt, at the time a hospital infant ward nurse, tried to teach me how to fold a receiving blanket around my baby doll. She placed the blanket on the floor for me, point north in a diamond formation; placed the doll in the center of the diamond, brought the bottom point up over the doll's feet, folded the east and west points across the doll's body and the top point over the doll's head: a perfect papoose. But not perfect for me. Time and again, apparently, I yanked the blanket off in a fury, doll flying to the other end of the room, because the point of the blanket didn't end up in the exact center of the doll's forehead. Fortunately I got over this fetish by the time I had a real baby of my own.
I am always straightening things. This doesn't mean that my house is tidy - far from it - but certain things IN it are tidy. The forks in the silverware drawer, the handles of my pitcher collection all at the same angle, the arrangement of the photos on my desk, the soft stack of scarves in the coat closet and, of course, the pile of towels in the bathroom.
We often leave off the niceties in this rushing world. I was reminded of this again recently when a dear childhood friend reminisced about my own grandmother having sent this friend a corsage for some long-forgotten occasion when she was a little girl. I found it so poignant that my friend remembered the gift clearly, but not the occasion. Gram was a stickler for such gestures but it was because she enjoyed performing them. I remember lunch parties under the apple tree in her back yard, the card table set out with an embroidered cloth, her good china, and little plates of thin sandwiches with the crusts cut off, pressed glass goblets and a frosty pitcher of lemonade. Perfect.
My mother was a perfect housekeeper even though she had a full time job outside our home. I know that she took pleasure in orderliness and I have tried, fairly unsuccessfully, to emulate her in my own housekeeping. I'm getting better at it. I like, for instance, to iron. I know, I know, but I do like it! I like the smell of the steamy, clean clothes, the glide of the iron over the surface of the garment as it presses out the wrinkles and the quiet rhythm of the work. I wouldn't want to do it for a living, but it's not a terrible way to spend an hour on a gray afternoon.
One of my friends once asked me when I was between jobs what I enjoyed most about being free all day. I astonished myself by saying that, aside from being able to spend more time with my daughter, I loved being able to finish a load of laundry from beginning to end: wash, hang out on the line to dry, fold and put away, without feeling like it was just one more task I had to rush through. And I think she astonished herself by saying, "I know what you mean!"
I think we all, on some level, long for the time to be able to do things the right way - a little stab at bringing order to our world.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Frost Heave
The Maine landscape is entering its unlovely phase. On our drive out to lunch yesterday there was no escaping the dismal: dreary trailers, plow-rucked yards and, in the fields, abandoned vehicles muffled in drifts. Dirty snow lay along the verges, salt frosted passing cards, potholes and frost heaves roller-coastered our drive. Maine's slip was certainly showing and its stockings both had runs.
But here and there a glimpse of the beautiful: a view of the Camden Hills, still looking mistily fresh- snow-powdered and stately across the water; the reflection of a blue-painted porch ceiling against the white walls of a house; a spray of bright red rose hips rising from the drifts along the road.
We're color-deprived at this time of year. We emerge from our holes, pale and blinking, and a sea of white and gray - snow, sky, ocean - nearly blinds us.
On the Reach at low tide the sea ice cracks and subsides over boulders. Seaweed, crisp with rime, supports the busy gulls who never seem to feel the cold. Clammers bend over the flats and in the wind the leaden water crinkles like foil.
Really, it's no time to be here. We're isolated by inertia and the acres of ice in the dooryard and driveway. Snow piled in alpine heaps at crossroads make it difficult to see oncoming traffic; black ice along darker stretches lies in wait.
Some find refuge in seed catalogs and it is lovely to dive in on yet another relentlessly gray day and swim in visions of scarlet runner beans, Empress of India nasturtiums, ruby chard, sunflowers, broom corn, larkspur, sweetpeas and strawberries. At such times, it's wise to guard against ordering too much, staving off the inevitable dismay, late March, when too many boxes of seeds and plants arrive.
By this time of the winter there's a sag to the seat of the part of the couch that faces the windows overlooking the water. Every morning (and most of some afternoons) I sit there, strangely comforted by the sameness of the view, waiting for the first soft morning, surely not far off, when I can plump up the cushions and step out into Spring.
But here and there a glimpse of the beautiful: a view of the Camden Hills, still looking mistily fresh- snow-powdered and stately across the water; the reflection of a blue-painted porch ceiling against the white walls of a house; a spray of bright red rose hips rising from the drifts along the road.
We're color-deprived at this time of year. We emerge from our holes, pale and blinking, and a sea of white and gray - snow, sky, ocean - nearly blinds us.
On the Reach at low tide the sea ice cracks and subsides over boulders. Seaweed, crisp with rime, supports the busy gulls who never seem to feel the cold. Clammers bend over the flats and in the wind the leaden water crinkles like foil.
Really, it's no time to be here. We're isolated by inertia and the acres of ice in the dooryard and driveway. Snow piled in alpine heaps at crossroads make it difficult to see oncoming traffic; black ice along darker stretches lies in wait.
Some find refuge in seed catalogs and it is lovely to dive in on yet another relentlessly gray day and swim in visions of scarlet runner beans, Empress of India nasturtiums, ruby chard, sunflowers, broom corn, larkspur, sweetpeas and strawberries. At such times, it's wise to guard against ordering too much, staving off the inevitable dismay, late March, when too many boxes of seeds and plants arrive.
By this time of the winter there's a sag to the seat of the part of the couch that faces the windows overlooking the water. Every morning (and most of some afternoons) I sit there, strangely comforted by the sameness of the view, waiting for the first soft morning, surely not far off, when I can plump up the cushions and step out into Spring.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
The Nest
On bright summer days as we cross the cobweb bridge that leads from our island to the mainland, it isn't unusual to see an osprey sitting high up in the rigging, eyes raking the water below. Every summer the osprey return to the nest perched at the very top of the bridge's east tower. For most of the month of May they refit the nest, carrying inch-thick branches to the top of the tower and working them in, repairing, refining, insulating, shaping, until it's finally ready for a brood of chicks. Unless you know it's there it's easy to miss the nest, but I always look for it as I go across. Sometimes tiny heads pop up from the frill of sticks around the edge; if I am lucky, I will catch a glimpse of a returning parent bearing an unlucky fish.
Unfazed by construction work, which on our marginal bridge is almost ongoing, or by tourists with cameras, or the schooners in full sail that dream by under the span during the summer and fall; undaunted by thunderstorms and n'oreasters, blistering sun or disorienting fog, the ospreys endure and thrive.
By November, the nest is abandoned for the winter. In this respect it always puts me in mind of the many summer cottages on the island and along our lacy coast: suddenly bereft of life, shuttered, dark and cold. We have some wild storms in late fall and early winter and, as unwary visitors from softer climes discover, even into late spring. After each storm I look for the nest sure that it has been blown away or fallen, shattered, on the roadbed below, but it is always there. Even after an ice storm tinsels the cables and handrails; even after a windstorm rakes, unforgiving, the groves of balsam that fur the road on either side; even after gouts of snow blast the piers and pucker the icy water; even after the intense and brittle cold, the nest is still there.
Sometimes a two- or three-foot long stick - a hint of the size and durability of the nest that appears so small and fragile from below - will appear in the road, but as far as I can tell the nest's superstructure remains in place waiting for spring repairs when the osprey return in May.
As I watched our new president take the oath of office last week, I was reminded of the nest. I won't strain the analogy...you get the point.
Unfazed by construction work, which on our marginal bridge is almost ongoing, or by tourists with cameras, or the schooners in full sail that dream by under the span during the summer and fall; undaunted by thunderstorms and n'oreasters, blistering sun or disorienting fog, the ospreys endure and thrive.
By November, the nest is abandoned for the winter. In this respect it always puts me in mind of the many summer cottages on the island and along our lacy coast: suddenly bereft of life, shuttered, dark and cold. We have some wild storms in late fall and early winter and, as unwary visitors from softer climes discover, even into late spring. After each storm I look for the nest sure that it has been blown away or fallen, shattered, on the roadbed below, but it is always there. Even after an ice storm tinsels the cables and handrails; even after a windstorm rakes, unforgiving, the groves of balsam that fur the road on either side; even after gouts of snow blast the piers and pucker the icy water; even after the intense and brittle cold, the nest is still there.
Sometimes a two- or three-foot long stick - a hint of the size and durability of the nest that appears so small and fragile from below - will appear in the road, but as far as I can tell the nest's superstructure remains in place waiting for spring repairs when the osprey return in May.
As I watched our new president take the oath of office last week, I was reminded of the nest. I won't strain the analogy...you get the point.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
January
3 am - up,
Disturbed by dreams and things that are not dreams,
Rambling window to window in the cold house,
Startled by a sudden, reflected glow along the stygian road.
In a froth of snow, the plow, lights flashing,
bucks the storm.
Back to bed - calmed,
As when a child awake, afraid and lonely in the wide night,
The whistling train at the crossing charmed me back to sleep.
Disturbed by dreams and things that are not dreams,
Rambling window to window in the cold house,
Startled by a sudden, reflected glow along the stygian road.
In a froth of snow, the plow, lights flashing,
bucks the storm.
Back to bed - calmed,
As when a child awake, afraid and lonely in the wide night,
The whistling train at the crossing charmed me back to sleep.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Chips Fall...
What to think of during these silver and gray and white days (and why does "gray" seem so much grayer when it's spelled "grey") when energy is sucked away by the relentless wind, and the snow, so eagerly looked for around Christmas time, turns to ice/sleet/rain and back to snow?
I always have a moment (day or two) of panic after the Christmas decorations are packed away when I get an glimpse, unobscured, down that long, shiny tunnel of ice that leads to Spring. I can see Spring waving greenly at the end, but wonder how many times I will slip and fall before I reach it.
All I want to do is nap, or read by the fire or eat cookies (but not bake them). I think this state is called "hibernation" and everyone else I encounter seems to be experiencing it too.
When I muster the energy to go out to the store, my feet weighed down with socks and boots, I see everyone else trailing around in a similar fashion, staring glumly at the shipped-in-from-afar vegetables(we're too lazy at this point to even try to be localvores)and the palid, "previously-frozen" fish and the somehow compelling cheese aisle. I see a lot of people in the wine section. I notice lots of bags of taco chips in shopping carts - or was that just my shopping cart? I took a brief census of my shopping cart recently: carb, veggie, carb, carb, carb, fish, meat, carb, carb, cheese, cat and dog food and - oh - carb.
The ever-wise and knowing "they" tell us to shop the outside perimeter of the food store if you want to lose weight and eat healthily. In my store, that path will take you from the organic section to the fruits and vegetables to lean protein and soupcon of "healthy" carbohydrates and around to the newspapers just before the checkout where, if you haven't already lost your appetite, you will after reading the headlines. But I am impelled down the dangerous canyons in the middle of the store - to the raisin bread, sugary cereal, cookies, crackers, processed foods and pasta - and then to the ice cream.
After paying for my misdeeds "credit or debit" I am temporarily aroused to physical exertion by the challenge of negotiating the icy and precipitously tilted parking lot, grappling with my cart like a wrangler with a wild mustang, against the wind.
I'll get my bearings long about the second week of January and begin to actually look forward to the months of snow and cold ahead...until then? I usually eat all the chips on the way home.
I always have a moment (day or two) of panic after the Christmas decorations are packed away when I get an glimpse, unobscured, down that long, shiny tunnel of ice that leads to Spring. I can see Spring waving greenly at the end, but wonder how many times I will slip and fall before I reach it.
All I want to do is nap, or read by the fire or eat cookies (but not bake them). I think this state is called "hibernation" and everyone else I encounter seems to be experiencing it too.
When I muster the energy to go out to the store, my feet weighed down with socks and boots, I see everyone else trailing around in a similar fashion, staring glumly at the shipped-in-from-afar vegetables(we're too lazy at this point to even try to be localvores)and the palid, "previously-frozen" fish and the somehow compelling cheese aisle. I see a lot of people in the wine section. I notice lots of bags of taco chips in shopping carts - or was that just my shopping cart? I took a brief census of my shopping cart recently: carb, veggie, carb, carb, carb, fish, meat, carb, carb, cheese, cat and dog food and - oh - carb.
The ever-wise and knowing "they" tell us to shop the outside perimeter of the food store if you want to lose weight and eat healthily. In my store, that path will take you from the organic section to the fruits and vegetables to lean protein and soupcon of "healthy" carbohydrates and around to the newspapers just before the checkout where, if you haven't already lost your appetite, you will after reading the headlines. But I am impelled down the dangerous canyons in the middle of the store - to the raisin bread, sugary cereal, cookies, crackers, processed foods and pasta - and then to the ice cream.
After paying for my misdeeds "credit or debit" I am temporarily aroused to physical exertion by the challenge of negotiating the icy and precipitously tilted parking lot, grappling with my cart like a wrangler with a wild mustang, against the wind.
I'll get my bearings long about the second week of January and begin to actually look forward to the months of snow and cold ahead...until then? I usually eat all the chips on the way home.
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