Sylvia's Journal

I woke up to a warm bed but a very cold Manchester by the Sea abruptly pulled out of a dream just when I was about to unfold a message from my mom. I would recognize the thin blue writing paper with her handwriting anywhere. This was from a time that we had two kinds of writing paper: the ‘luchtpost’ paper for letters that went by plane, and the regular heavier paper for local mail. The unfolded paper would have told me what I was about to create. I feel a little cheated by my alarm.

Monday morning is not usually a day that an alarm wakes me up because I work from home; a precious day for design work, reading, writing or simply catching up, undisturbed by meetings except for the occasional telephone meeting. It is mostly a day where I set the agenda.

Not today. Later in the day I am participating in a video conference with Washington. You’d think that by now we could have a conference like that with people participating from wherever they are; but somehow not this conference on this icy post-storm day. I have to drive to Cambridge. In exchange I will take Wednesday as my work-at-home day which happens to also be Christmas Eve; it will be a half working day as there are surprises to make and rhymes to compose for our Christerklaas evening.

I am glad on this otherwise utterly wintry morning that we have rounded the corner and are on our way to Spring after this longest night of the year. But that image was far away as we braved ice, rain and sleet as we went about our Sunday. From now on things can only get better. The maggots are gone and the sun is back on its journey to the equator. Hallelujah!

I drove to Quaker Meeting, early yesterday morning, by car with Axel; not, as usual, alone on my bike; that had been a good decision I discovered later as we left Meeting with Axel driving over the slippery roads in the blinding snow.

We were only 12 in Meeting, a few hardy souls. That included Merrill which practically guarantees a story or two. Merrill is a professional storyteller who knows thousands of stories, parables, historic, some funny, some serious, most full of lessons. He told us two stories, one from Chaim Potok and one we already knew, the Christmas story. Potok’s story is about the son who has wasted his father’s inheritance and asks forgiveness form a faraway place from where he cannot come back. The father asks him to come as far as he can with the promise of meeting him there. Both stories are about imperfection and finding the place where the divine meets the real world. It was a nice counterweight to the frantic consumerism that colors my Christmas experience here.

We drove to Newburyport to see Chuck in a radio enactment of This Wonderful Life which was done so well that our entire row was sniffling at the end when everything turns out all right and we regained faith in humanity again.

We declined the post-performance drinks and drove back in the same snowstorm that had brought us to Newburyport at a pace of about 25 miles an hour. Back home, before our next social engagement, a brief stop to shovel, with help from Tessa and Steve and with no help from puppy Chicha, the wet snow away before it would freeze into unmovable icebergs and unclogging the gutters that were pouring rain straight from the roof into the cellar – such is the wonderful life of home-ownership. But at least we had warmth and electricity, unlike thousands of households in our state and the one directly to the north.

Our last engagement of the day was a caroling party in Annisquam, requiring another drive through ice and sleet, accompanied by a 60 knot wind. Were we crazy? With one other couple (neighbors, who walked) we were the only guests who showed up and thus had the party to ourselves. We never sung but instead draped ourselves around the fire and admired the wallpaper that consisted of old and yellowed book jackets from a long time ago. Good company, warm cider and a winter meal was the reward for our act of courage or stupidity.

On our way back we were just about the only normal sized car between the many mammoth trucks with their large snowplough attachments – limiting our speed to about 20 miles an hour as the winter squall continued. It was the right speed for getting us safely home.