For the ninth day since the beginning of this school year, classes are canceled in northern Virginia because of snow or extreme cold. This has to be a record-setting number.
As for snow, I’ve had sufficient. My dog and daughter, however, disagree.
Kiko enjoys dashing playfully through this snow, which isn’t as deep as our last one. Just when I noticed that the snow had piled up on his multi-colored soccer ball so that it resembled an Easter egg, he ran to attack it, hoping I’d fight him for it.
Briefly, we were almost completely without snow. For several days, our lawn had been visible (our messy, muddy, stick-strewn lawn). Heavy fluffy flakes began falling in earnest this morning, and now the neighborhood is blanketed in white again. Should there come a time when the snow melts for real, there is one aspect of it that I’ll miss. That’s the vision of moonlight on the snow.
My all-time favorite view is the one from our upstairs windows onto the snow-covered front lawn on a moonlit night. February’s full moon, according to my Farmer’s Almanac desk calendar, is known as the Snow Moon. Here in Virginia it’s certainly lived up to the name. During our recent snowy spell, many nights were clear, the sky black, the stars intense, and the moon big and bright. So bright that it lit up the snow with a gasp-inducing glittery incandescence. Against the glowing white snow, the shadows of our maple trees were dramatically dark blue. This magical view always takes me back, back to the first January we spent in our house, when our daughter was a year old. That winter I often gazed out at that view, brand-new to me, rocking, nursing, cuddling my baby girl. It felt good to be in a place I could call home.
The memory of that time is perhaps particularly vivid because, for so many years, I had postponed settling down. By my own choice, I was a latecomer to marriage, motherhood, and a fixed address. When I arrived as an eighteen-year-old at UGA, I discovered how much I enjoyed campus student life. Thanks to a taste of the working world following college, I soon realized that graduate school offered the chance to return to a life free from many cares of traditional adulthood. I managed to be a grad student for eight years. That sounds like an incredibly long time, I realize, but there were many in my field of art history who lingered far longer. I relished that busy peripatetic life, happily unsure of where I’d be the next year. I moved at least ten times during grad school, including two house-sitting stints and a year-long residence in London for dissertation research. Traveling as a student was cheap and easy. I had acquaintances scattered across continents and no strings to tie me down. I made wonderful friends, met a great many unforgettable characters, and had exciting adventures.
But even I couldn’t sustain such a rootless lifestyle forever. By the time I met H, I was feeling the need for a change. Yet because he was seven years younger, I assumed our timelines would always be hopelessly out of sync. Wouldn’t he need another decade or so to figure things out?
Fortunately he required only half that long. Five years later we began our married life together in a tiny Butler Tract apartment in Princeton. It took us only two more moves before we landed in our old Virginia farmhouse. It seemed to wrap its arms around us and say, You’re home. You’re a family. Stay a while.
We have, and we will. On every snowy, moonlit night, before I go to sleep, I look out the window and give thanks that I’m here in this house with my husband, daughter and dog. My only regret is that my parents aren’t nearby. All else considered, I’m right where I want to be. Right where I hope to be tomorrow and for years to come. After so many years of running, it’s good to rest and be home.
My favorite moonlit view is unphotographable. But this recent early morning scene of Kiko on the lookout gives some sense of the blue shadows on the snow.
H and D in front of our house, soon after our offer was accepted in December 1999. That was back when the maple stump was still a full tree.
Our daughter in the spring of 2000. Back when she enjoyed playing with a basket of crumpled paper. And when her eyes were still blue. They’ve since changed to green.
Today we have a snow day with real snow, and lots of it. The schools here in northern Virginia used up all their snow days back in January. Yet there’s been very little actual snow. Certainly we’ve had our fill of frigid temperatures and diverse forms of icy accumulation. But as for the pretty fluffy white stuff, not so much.
Until this morning, when we woke up to over a foot of the real thing. It’s more snow than we’ve seen here in four years, when we were treated to back-to-back blizzards, pre- and post-Christmas, that paralyzed the area. Last night’s snow was enough to shut down all runways at Reagan National and Dulles Airports, enough for the government to call a State of Emergency, enough even for my husband’s office to close. This gave him the chance, at long last, to fire up his essentially unused snow blower, the one he bought in 2010, just after those last big storms.
The street was a smooth, untouched, snow-covered ribbon this morning when Kiko and I headed out for our walk. We were grateful to be able to follow the parallel impressions left by a car sometime during the night. In the tire tracks, the snow didn’t flood up and over my boots, or envelop Kiko’s entire body. Where the snow was completely untouched, my little dog was forced to bound through it with a sort of swimming motion. He seems to thrill at that first plunge, but his exhilaration quickly dissipates. Following his exertions, he slept for hours on the playroom sofa. All day long I’ve been tempted to join him. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all could be so lucky?
My daughter, of course, was delighted by the snow, and by yet another snow day. As for Kiko and me, we’re ready for spring.
My daughter, at home in her element.
I try not to use my blog to rant about life’s trivial annoyances. But today I’ll risk sounding like a pouty child. This morning, a series of minor nuisances really ticked me off.
It began around 6:20, when I applied myself, with much concentration, to the vexing mystery of the moment—how to get the little rubber ring to stay put on the lid of my daughter’s new thermos. I persisted, but had no success. The bell of the toaster oven dinged. Because I had devoted too much pointless effort to the thermos, the mini-bagels I had been toasting for D’s breakfast were burned beyond rehabilitation.
It was at this inopportune moment that my husband wandered blithely into the kitchen. He remarked, in all innocence, that he couldn’t understand why D, who is in the process of choosing the classes she will take next year in high school (high school!), needs to continue studying English. She can read. She’s a good writer. What more does she need to know about English?
That comment, following so quickly on the heels of my thermos and bagel difficulties, was the last straw. My poor fragile camel’s back cracked sharply in half. Some say, I responded, through slightly clenched teeth, that there is value in literature. While reading good books is unlikely to lead to a well-paid career . . .no . . . it’s likely to ensure the absence of a well-paid career, it offers some help in coping with life’s disappointments. I stopped there. I did not add this further petulant bitterness: that reading offers the possibility of occasionally eking out some small measure of joy in a world rife with uncooperative thermos rings, annoying toaster ovens and clueless husbands whose idea of enlightening reading is an online windsurfing forum. H wisely kept quiet until he left for work.
And then Kiko and I went out for our walk. Another lovely light snow had fallen. I expected that the walk would lighten my mood. But no. Paved surfaces were far more slippery than I had expected, and Kiko insisted on attempting a break-neck pace, determined to run, if not in the road, then as close to it as possible, where the cars were hurtling by us more aggressively than usual. The salt from the road frequently stung his paws, prompting him to limp flamboyantly, one foot in the air, yet without lessening his speed. I had to repeatedly kneel down to brush the snow from his paw pads. An icy, gusty wind whipped the snow into my eyes, and the blue glare of the sun on the white ground was blinding. My ears were wet and freezing under my scarf, while my hands were too hot in my mittens. I was reminded vividly of why I find skiing so unpleasant. Our morning outing was an ordeal to be suffered through.
On a happier note, it sure is good to be back home. Alone, except for my silent dog, now sleeping peacefully in another room.
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H telephoned later, warning me about the icy roads and clearly trying to appease my irrational meanness. I’m feeling better now. As Gilda Radner’s Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say: Never mind.
It was a beautiful morning to be annoyed.
Our tour along the northern California coast ended on a festive note with dinner at Duarte’s Tavern, a Pescadero landmark and true American classic. Duarte’s dates from 1894, when Frank Duarte, an immigrant from Portugal, bought the tavern and began selling whisky from a barrel. The spot proved popular with local fishermen, whalers and farmers. While Prohibition was a setback, the original bar survived intact, and in the 1930s the Duarte family expanded the business to include food service (sandwiches, ice cream and pies). They also ran a barbershop on the premises. While the barber chairs have disappeared, the plain, unassuming décor has changed very little, which, depending upon your point of view, contributes to the place’s simple charm (as I see it), or its lack thereof. For the past several decades, Duarte’s has been famous for its flavorful soups, fresh fish, and delicious pies. The fourth generation of the family now runs the restaurant.
At the recommendation of our friends, who are Duarte’s regulars, we began with a combination of the two house specialty soups, cream of green chile and cream of artichoke. Served with fresh sourdough bread, it was as tasty as they had said it would be. The locally caught sole was just as described: absolutely fresh and simply prepared. I only wish I’d been able to sample the Crab Cioppino. My one Bay Area food regret is not tasting this regional specialty, a hearty seafood stew. Next time.
No one missed out on Duarte’s most famous pie, however. Our friends had spoken highly of the olallieberry pie. You East Coasters might well ask What?– just as I did. Surely that’s a made-up word. It sounds like something Dr. Seuss’s Cat in the Hat would serve up on that cold, rainy day. Perhaps in an early draft of Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat, the happy couple dined on slices of olallieberry pie? (for which the runcible spoon would be well-suited.)
But no. Olallieberry is a real word referring to a real berry, although one of fairly recent origin. Essentially, it’s a locally grown blackberry-raspberry hybrid, a cross that was developed by way of the loganberry and youngberry, (I had no idea my knowledge of berries was so rudimentary). Olallie, interestingly, is a Pacific Northwest Native American word for berry. At our table that day, all seven in our party ordered the olallieberry pie. No one was disappointed.
When we return to California in a few years, we’ll make sure to seek out our good friends again. I’ll even give them more than a couple of day’s notice of our impending arrival. And when we drive along the coast (next time we’ll venture farther south, to Monterey and Carmel), we’ll stop by Duarte’s. I feel sure it will still be there. Maybe the fifth generation of the family will be running the place by then. On second thought, no. We won’t wait that long.
My final California posts have been much delayed. That most tiresome and expected of reasons has kept me away from the blog for almost two weeks: our old PC moved on to its greater reward. It had been ailing for a while, and its misery was contagious. Closing or opening a document had become a lengthy, frustrating process. Our home office often resounded with groans, moans and furious mutterings as one of us sat staring beseechingly at an endlessly spinning “loading” symbol. (Loading, loading, always loading, never loading.) Once the PC had given up the ghost, of course, there followed the dreaded prospect of replacing it. Fortunately, that falls under my husband’s purview, and he’s still dealing with the complex transition from old to new. What would I do if I were single?
Now, a second-to-last look at our time in northern California.
Because we toured the coast with local friends, we had the chance to visit some unique places we wouldn’t have discovered on our own. One such spot, a favorite of our friends, is Harley Farms, a farm-to-table goat dairy in the rural seaside community of Pescadero. This goat farm has a funky, unpretentious elegance and a chic sense of style. It’s a friendly, family-run operation in an inviting setting of thoughtfully restored old farm buildings. Two hundred furry, feisty Alpine goats munch and lounge happily in grassy pastures bordered by gardens and sheltered by rolling hills. Llamas stand guard, exercising particular vigilance over the kids. (Is anything cuter than a baby goat? Maybe only a Shiba Inu puppy.) The goats’ milk is processed on site into an array of award-winning cheeses. These include crumbly feta, creamy chevre topped beautifully with edible flowers, as well as the softer consistency fromage blanc and ricotta cheeses.
In the cozy restored barn that houses the shop, cheeses may be sampled and purchased. Prior to our visit, while I had no objection to goat cheese, I wasn’t an outspoken fan. Harley Farms changed that. After nibbling on a wide range of samples, we left with three tasty varieties. My favorite may be the Monet chevre, seasoned with herbes de Provence. The lavender and honey chevre runs a close second. Also available in the shop are soaps, lotions and other bath and body products, all made with the milk of Harley goats. Additionally, the farm produces nine lovely colors of durable, environmentally friendly FarmPaint. The barn’s hayloft, with its unique fir table that seats twenty-two, serves as a truly atmospheric event space. Looking for a wedding venue like no other? Harley Farms will handle all the details.
A goat farm had not been on our list of northern California must-sees. But thanks to our friends, it is now.
Some of the Harley nanny goats. One appears to be kneeling in prayer.
A guard llama eyes us warily.
An immense eucalyptus tree shades the milk processors.
To continue our tour of the northern California coast, we met up with good friends who had settled in Palo Alto to raise their family. Although we’d kept in touch through Christmas cards, it had been perhaps seventeen years since I’d seen my former housemate Laura, and probably twenty since I’d seen her husband. Laura and I became fast friends when we lived on the same small gray corridor of the New Graduate College in Princeton. Together with our buddy and hallmate Ben, we could face anything the weird world of ivy-league graduate study could throw at us. We considered ourselves a formidable trio. And, when we weren’t working hard, we sure had fun.
When Laura completed her master’s degree and landed a job at Bell Labs, she stayed in Princeton and we rented a funny little blue house on Humbert Street near the cemetary. More accurately, Laura rented it, and I provided her with pocket change. I was still a poor student, and she graciously let me share the house, accepting as payment no more than the fractional amount my stipend would allow. When our landlord sold that house, we moved across the borough to the lower level of a really lovely Victorian home on Murray Place. I was with Laura at a Grad School cookout when we met two new engineering students, one of whom would later become my husband. Our Murray Place house was conveniently near the E-Quad, where H spent his days in the lab. He often parked on our street, which made it easy for me to plan to run into him by accident. Laura was from New Jersey, with lots of family nearby. On many Thanksgivings, Super Bowl Sundays and various holidays when I couldn’t get back to Atlanta, they welcomed me as one of their own.
With such a foundation of shared history, a couple of decades is nothing. We picked up easily, and the years fell away. We met the children we had watched grow up in photographs. Laura’s son is sixteen, her daughter fourteen, with D right in the middle at fifteen. The kids had little trouble breaking the ice; it was almost as if they were old friends, as well. The same was true when D had the chance, several years ago, to meet Ben’s kids.
One of our coastal convoy’s first stops was Half Moon Bay, about thirty minutes south of San Francisco. This quaint town has gained worldwide renown for its proximity to the phenomenal surfing spot known as Mavericks. Until the 1990s, the enormous waves that develop under certain weather conditions were a closely kept local secret. Since then, though, the word has been out, and elite surfers cross the globe to catch the waves, prove themselves (and risk their lives) at Half Moon Bay.
Today, as I write, the conditions for those near-legendary waves are ideal. Twenty-four of the world’s top surfers, from as far away as Australia, South Africa and Brazil, are gathered at Half Moon Bay for the Mavericks Invitational surfing competition. Waves as high as forty-five feet are forecasted. Crowds have flocked to witness the action at waterfront hotels and restaurants. No one is allowed to observe from the beach, however, due to the unpredictable nature of the waves. Several years ago, a dozen spectators at Mavericks were injured by a rogue wave, an ever-present danger along this section of the coast.
In this Dec. 30 view of Half Moon Bay, looking toward the harbor,
the waters are deceptively calm.
The coast is rocky,
and the bluffs are steep. Sudden strong waves reared up periodically, seemingly out of nowhere, even on the day of our visit, when no surfers were out.
A view along Main Street.
The town’s historic Methodist Episcopal Church.
Another Main Street view. Flanked by mountains and the sea, lush with picturesque foliage, Half Moon Bay is one of those charming California towns that I had suspected existed only on movie lots.
The 19th-century Italianate tower of the Ferry Building sits sentinel on the beautifully reconfigured Embarcadero, (former site of the 1960s-era Embarcadero Freeway that collapsed during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.)
A row of Victorian homes, delicately decorated and painted.
Portico of the James C. Flood mansion in Nob Hill. Built in 1886,
it’s one of few buildings to survive the 1906 earthquake and fire.
A peaceful view along the waterfront, somewhere between
Fisherman’s Wharf & Ghirardelli Square.
The Marina, with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.
Nearby is Crissy Field, a must-see spot for my husband. It’s where windsurfers gather when weather permits.
On my list of sights was the monumental Palace of Fine Arts,
designed by Bernard Maybeck for the Panama-Pacific Exhibition in 1915. It was rebuilt of permanent materials in the 1960s.
A close-up view of the Palace of Fine Arts.
A towering Victorian mansion on Alamo Square.
Perhaps the most familiar row of Victorians in San Francisco, the
six “Painted Ladies” on Steiner Street across from Alamo Square.
The less familiar, but just as beautifully painted sisters in the lower block of Steiner Street.
Hibiscus adorns the entry of an Alamo Square home.
I loved the city’s tropical plantings.
With Muni passes, we sampled the city’s many forms of public transportation. Vintage streetcars, like this one on Market Street, are better enjoyed from the outside, as they spend most of their time stopped. Best to catch a bus if you’re in a hurry.
Cable cars offer a lively ride. We learned to avoid the long tourist lines and hop on in the middle of the intersection. Our daughter was thrilled when she was assigned an outside perch as we sailed down one of the city’s steep, signature hills.
The current extreme cold isn’t news to anyone in more than half of the country. Still, it is remarkable. The need to talk about the weather seems to be an almost inescapable element of our humanity. It’s in our nature, and it’s hard to avoid. As we’ve been told, we can blame the deep freeze on the polar vortex, which has gone kinky. Oh dear!
Here in Northern Virginia, for the first time I can remember, school was canceled due to the cold, much to our daughter’s great joy. Our porch thermometer read -1 at 7 AM. D, who enjoys the sleep of the dead on school mornings, was inspired to get up and go out, briefly, just to experience the temperature.
The morning view from our upstairs rooms was almost completely obscured by frost, thanks to our leaky storm windows. If we ever get new windows, we won’t know, immediately upon waking, how to dress for the day. Justification, perhaps, for keeping the old windows.
Kiko and I walked, as usual, around 8 AM. I bundled up sensibly, in layers, as any regular dog walker does. I overdid the bundling, in fact, so I got a little warm. The ice crystals that collected in my scarf were the only indication that this cold was more serious than usual. Kiko kept up a brisk pace, thankfully. He seemed to enjoy the frosty air but had the sense not to linger over the day’s smorgasbord of smells.
When we returned about 45 minutes later, Kiko rushed onto the porch, forgoing his usual attempt to ambush squirrels at the back yard bird feeder. Once inside, he didn’t pause to check his food bowl, but hurried to a sizable patch of sun in the playroom. For several hours, he followed the sun to spots it rarely takes him. He kept himself tightly curled, like a little fox. My furry friend had evidently felt the chill.
A day off school often seems like a break from ordinary time, so I decided to do something different and make French onion soup for lunch. Standing by the stove, caramelizing onions, working the New York Times crossword while listening to John Prine and Robert Earl Keen turned out to be an ideal way to keep warm in our drafty house. Maybe this afternoon, I can convince D to watch the last half of Downton Abbey with me.
To all of you sharing this icy spell, I wish you safety, warmth, comfort, and a welcome break from the usual!
My husband has continued the tradition in his own way. He no longer feels the need to wrap up a pair of socks in a refrigerator box simply to fill out the gift-scape under the tree. His approach emphasizes visual impact and imaginative packaging. In 2011, he enclosed three gifts for our daughter in large cylindrical tubes intended for setting concrete. Last Christmas and this year, he followed up with gifts of strikingly unusual shape.
On the morning of Christmas Eve 2012, a modest triangular package appeared under the tree. The tag read, “To D, from Mama and Daddy.” Our daughter was thrilled to see that Daddy had been busy again down in the basement, working on a new packaging scheme. She suspected that the pyramid would be only the first of a series of mysterious packages. She was right, of course.
On Christmas morning, the silver pyramid had become one of the arms of a five-pointed star, the center of which was a pentagon-shaped box. Each point contained a small gift, while the pentagon encased a more substantial present. Really, though, the items inside the boxes were almost incidental. The real gifts here were the surprise factor, followed by the intricate process of unwrapping, a sustained big reveal.
Above, our daughter sits among the unwrapped elements, the hinged plywood boxes my husband carefully constructed to form the star. His engineering training and math skills equipped him for the endeavor.
This year, a slender, four-foot tall pyramid turned up by the tree a few days before Christmas. The package prompted my daughter to respond in kind with a last-minute present we had for H. The gift was in a long, narrow box. She disguised the shape by adding a gable-like projection at the top. No doubt about it, she’s her father’s daughter. Although she claims it was unintended, she was nevertheless proud that her creation turned out to be just slightly taller than H’s pyramid.
On Christmas Eve, I awakened to the startling sound of drilling coming from under the bed. I assumed H was busy working his holiday magic. Once downstairs, I found an oversized blue Christmas orb suspended from the ceiling. On Christmas morning, the final element of the mobile appeared: a silver-wrapped ring, about the size of a pool life-saver.
The uniquely shaped items, as always, were saved for last. The pyramid was another neatly hinged plywood box, large enough for D to sit inside. The silver ring turned out to be a section of pool noodle, taped together, with a tiny gift wedged inside. The blue Christmas ball was purely decorative. H was pleased with D’s clever and meticulous wrapping of his gift. He’s delighted to know that in his daughter’s hands, the family tradition of extreme gift-wrapping has a sure future.