Snow Day

Snow day, sick day.  Although the radio announcer pronounced that our church is open (I’m wondering just how many people called the office!) there is four inches of snow on my long, curving, sloping, unpaved driveway, and several inches of snow and ice on our back country road.  My little engine that could, i.e. my 10 year old economy model car, slip slides on this for sure. And for two days I’ve wrestled with the “I’m coming down with something but it can’t quite make up its mind to stay or go” feeling.  So I’m home right now, watching fat lazy snowflakes whirl by the windows and cranking the heater up as high as I can to ward off the chills.

Christmas was lovely, about as lovely as it can be.  I made a big family breakfast of pancakes and managed a few chocolate ones for my father in law, who in his eighties has the sweet tooth of a young child.  That was my Christmas present to him; getting up early, cranking up the griddle, and making him hot stacks.  I went to 10 a.m. church services and was shocked at several things. First, the church was only 2/3 full…did everyone got to Midnight Mass? Or do people no longer care about Christmas?  And second – why weren’t any other churches in town open? What happened? Do they have services later to let families sleep in or what? Does everyone celebrate Christmas on the Eve now and I missed the memo? It was bizarre, to say the least.  But I sat with Andrea, and got hugs from Linda and Eni, and was able to say with heartfelt thanks to our pastor, “Merry Christmas!”

By the time I got home, it was snowing.  I ate grapefruit for lunch ( hoping the vitamin C would kick out the “I’m coming down with something” feeling) and green salad and felt better for a few hours, then felt tired and cranky again later, like children do when they struggle with a bug.  We lit a fire and opened small presents. Pierre got the most, as befitting a cat of his greatness.  He didn’t even wait for me to take his new rattle mouse, aka “Mini P” because it’s colored like him, gray with a white tummy, off the store card. He grabbed it when we took it out of his Christmas stocking and went running off with it. I had to fight him for it so I could remove it from the card.

We sat in front of the fire, read books, listened to Christmas music, drank copious amounts of tea, and watched the snow.  My brother called and I was so glad to hear from him – the family just got a new puppy, and amidst the clank and clatter of pots as my sister in law cooked Christmas dinner, I could hear the squeals and excited barks of the puppy in the background as his children played with her.  They’re all grownups, my nieces and nephews, but a puppy at Christmastime brings out the child in everyone.

John made his usual gourmet fare for Christmas dinner, and afterwards we watched Ben Hur and King of Kings…which was a nice counterpoint to the movie A Christmas Story.  Am I the only one who starts crying during the prologue to Ben Hur, when the baby Jesus starts wailing in the stable in Bethlehem, and you just see the shepherds peeking around the stable door, and a frisky calf leaps over Mary and Joseph to nuzzles its mama? You don’t even see the Christ child, just hear this newborn infant wailing, and suddenly it just hits me – I don’t know how else to feel the incarnation as readily as I do when I hear that infant wailing.  It suddenly brings it home that the son of God became a man and was born into abject poverty, was hungry and thirsty and cranky and probably cold, and was born into a filthy stable to poor peasants.  It is a thought  that has been around with me since childhood, so common as to be taken for granted. I need these reminders like the little scene in Ben Hur or standing for a few minutes in front of the nativity at church and just feeling it – not thinking it – the entire moment of Christmas.

So now it is the day after Christmas. I am not going to any sales today. I can’t even get my stupid cranky car out of my farm driveway until the snow stops and we can clear a bit.  Thankfully, the forecast calls for temperatures this week to go back into the 40’s, which will melt enough on the hilly sections of the drive so that the cranky mobile will trundle and burble its way up the lane, with yours truly hunched in multiple layers of clothing.  In the meantime, I wish you all a lovely snow day if you are on the east coast of the United States.  My former stomping grounds, New York City, is under a blizzard warning and my brother, who lives on the North Shore of Long Island, said hopefully they were expecting 6-9″ of snow there.  Knowing him, he’ll grab the sleds and wake up the adult kids for sleigh riding and snowball fights before making everyone shovel the walks!

Enjoy your snow day or Sunday, whatever you are doing, and may God bless you this Christmas season.