As a toddler, our daughter’s favorite playthings were the various trappings of Christmas. She had little use for actual toys if holiday decorations were at hand. This led to occasional minor heartbreaks when fragile tidbits fell to pieces in her insistent little fingers, but generally she knew how to handle with care.
The first year that I unpacked the gingerbread village in Virginia, D was at my side, bubbling with excitement. She greeted each structure with much admiration, and I was duly flattered. She helped me arrange the buildings, some in the center of the dining room table, others atop the hutch. D could spend hours sitting on the table, setting up various inhabitants among the houses and churches, talking to herself, happily lost in her imagination. The village might host our clothespin nativity figures one day. The felt Christmas mice, or a crowd of Polly Pocket dolls might have the run of the place the next day. The possibilities were nearly endless, just like a child’s busy, growing mind.
D proved to have a knack for creating attractive baked goods. At age three, she was a surprisingly skilled sugar cookie baker. She turned out to be a natural with a pastry bag; her royal icing decorations were top-knotch. Before long, she was asking to help me make a gingerbread house. I realized that she would, indeed, be a capable assistant.
Our first mother-daughter collaboration was a modest cottage. I gave my daughter fairly free reign in terms of decoration, so it was a colorful dream of candy and icing. The next year, we decided to go big. We made an elaborate, turreted gingerbread castle. It was an appropriately exuberant candy palace for a girl who chose to wear a different princess costume every day.
Because I couldn’t face the daunting task of properly sealing, packing and storing the gingerbread village, it became a permanent display in our playroom. Our old house, as I’ve said before, is lacking in closets, and our basement used to flood with every hard rain. The absence of the perfect spot to store the village was a good excuse to simply keep it out all year long. D was glad to have it as a constant companion. Every new holiday brought another chance to redecorate. Our Christmas village had become a town for all seasons.
D, nearly three, arranges the clothespin Mary and baby Jesus on the roof of the thatched cottage.
Back in 1989, home from grad school one winter break, I had enough free time to try my hand at making a gingerbread house. I had spent the previous year living in England researching my dissertation, and visions of picture-perfect country villages were rattling around in my head. I loved the quaint homes lining narrow lanes, the dwellings in use since medieval times and only gaining in charm over the centuries. I was especially fond of the thatched cottages with their half-timbered facades and slanting walls. When I saw Martha Stewart’s masterful gingerbread replica of her Turkey Hill farmhouse, I was further inspired. I liked its relative architectural correctness and its conspicuous absence of frou-frou candy cuteness typically associated with gingerbread buildings.
So I set out to make a thatched cottage. I used Martha Stewart’s recipe and diligently followed her gingerbread-baking tips. I remember thinking my mother was overly uptight when she expressed some dismay at my timing; I began rolling out the dough a day or so before our annual Christmas party. Now I know exactly how she felt. Recently I was struggling to prepare for out-of-town guests when I noted with incredulity that my daughter had plunged into an ambitious beading project that required table surfaces in several rooms. Mama, please accept my belated apology!
That first house took about a week to bake and assemble. If I had thought I could finish it by the party, I was certainly mistaken. It wasn’t even done by Christmas, as that year’s holiday photos attest; it can be glimpsed in the background, roofless, Progresso soup cans supporting its walls. But by New Year’s Eve it was complete, from its Gothic windows, snow-topped chimney and roof of Shredded Wheat, which bears a remarkable resemblance to thatch.
Gingerbread is generally considered a fragile, impermanent medium. But this is not necessarily the case. Like the thirteenth and fourteenth-century cottages I so admired in England, my first gingerbread house has had a long life. It is still with us. The strength of royal icing, a mixture of powdered sugar and egg whites, should not be underestimated, and a clear acrylic spray does wonders to protect gingerbread surfaces.
During the 90s I made other houses and several churches, all in a subdued palette and reflecting various medieval periods. A gingerbread village evolved. Each January I flew back to New Jersey, leaving my mother to deal with the increasingly time-consuming task of storing the houses. She was a faithful (if somewhat understandably resentful) curator of the collection. She kept the village on display atop the hall bookcases until after Valentine’s Day, when she sealed the houses in plastic bags and carefully taped boxes.
By the time H and I bought our home in Virginia, Mama was eager to retire as gingerbread caretaker. House by house, the village began the trek from Atlanta in the back of my parents’ station wagon. I saw, with some alarm, that it would be up to me to deal with the complicated preservation demands of theoretically edible structures prone to decay. As in every craft project, the fun is in the design and fabrication, not in routine maintenance. I wasn’t sure I wanted this new role, but abandoning the houses to the trash bin was not an option.
The first four buildings of the gingerbread village, displayed
in my parents’ dining room in 1993.
A beautiful frost covered the ground during my early-morning walk today with Kiko. My little dog was especially frisky, evidently invigorated by the chill in the air and the intriguing sensation of the frost. He tends to paw daintily and delicately at the icy grass, then exhaust himself by running through it in wild and exuberant circles. I was struck by the muted yet luminous colors that had descended upon our ordinary neighborhood. Lawns were glazed blue-green, and bright red nandina foliage had paled to a shimmery rose, like the sky above (although that eluded my camera). The world looked like one of those sparkling holiday centerpieces of red and green grapes dipped in egg whites and sugar. I’ve never made that sort of frosted fruit, but I’m thinking I will have to give it a try this Christmas season.
I prefer to avoid overhead lights whenever possible. They scream institution: school, office, hospital, the DMV, and perhaps worst of all, the department-store fitting room. They drone on of chores and unpleasantness. Best to use them, I believe, under only three circumstances:
1. To quickly (and briefly) illuminate a dark room upon entry (to avoid falling over the dog or some misplaced, unexpected obstacle).
2. When cleaning, as in vacuuming, scrubbing floors and dusting.
3. In case of emergencies.
Nothing makes a room or its inhabitants look sadder and more forlorn than a ceiling light casting its cold and dismal glow. The light is either too harsh or too dim. The angle is all wrong. I suspect there are untold numbers of people unwittingly suffering a diminished quality of life because they persist in flicking on the overhead switch, and leaving it on.
Were they to employ a decent-looking table lamp instead of the ceiling light, a space that once appeared mournful and dejected might become cozy and pleasant. They might find themselves inexplicably cheerier.
I’ve acquired lots of lamps over the years, mostly at flea markets, yard sales and antique stores. Others were gifts from my mother, from whom I acquired my distaste for ceiling fixtures. Our house probably has too many lamps. In December, some of these are relegated to the basement. Christmas demands a softer, warmer, more festive glow than most lamps can offer. The outside of our house gets its special holiday treatment, and the inside is not neglected.
During the Christmas season, the optimal sources of interior illumination, I believe, are strands of small clear white lights. To some degree, they mimic the effect of candlelight. Yet compared to candles, they involve considerably less mess and threat of fire. I discovered the charm of such lights one year as we were preparing for our annual holiday party. Now we decorate for the party and keep the lights up through Epiphany, January 6.
White lights peek out from the ivy at the feet of the large nativity figures occupying the tops of the TV armoire and the adjacent bookshelves. They’re entwined in garlands on the stair banister, atop the secretary in the living room, the sideboard in the dining room, and sometimes on top of the piano.
They adorn our big Christmas tree in the living room, typically a blue spruce. In the first years of our marriage, before a child came along to distract me, I spent the better part of two days wrapping nearly every branch with lights, for a total of about 1,300. Now, I lack the time to be so obsessive (at least in that regard).
White lights decorate our several small artificial trees, like the alpine trees above in the dining room. ( I found that one of these trees alone appears bedraggled and pitiful, but a grouping of three is just right. We hang our homemade pinecone and cork creatures, pasta and seashell angels on these trees. See posts from December 2011.)
Around 5 PM each evening, as the winter night settles in, I start plugging in the many strands of lights. (Unfortunately my husband has not developed a one-switch system, as he has with the electric candles in the windows and the exterior spotlights.) Our rooms begin to glow, as if enlivened by tiny stars. I am reminded that we are in a special season, a time when we focus on the miraculous light that God sent to shine in our dark world.
The manger scene atop the bookshelves.
The nativity figures are so large that the magi and their well-dressed camel occupy the armoire on the adjacent wall.
White lights add a warm glow on the dining room sideboard.
One of the things I love best about the Christmas season is the chance to light up the darkness with light. My husband and daughter feel the same way. Like Clark Griswold in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (which we watch every year), H has a vested interest in exterior illumination, although he takes a somewhat more subdued approach. There is no stapling of a thousand strings of lights to the roof, no plastic Santa and reindeer; only some carefully placed spotlights and a candle in each window to highlight the wreath above.
During the day, it’s evident, at least under close scrutiny, that our home has many needs: it needs painting and new siding. We really should do something about the windows at some point. (But I like the old, wavy glass from 1920, as well as those costly to replace “true divided lights.”) None of this matters, though, as dusk falls every evening in December. With the click of a switch in the basement, the house gleams newly white and clean. Instead of highlighting flaws, the light, like the true light of Christmas, makes them disappear. All dreariness, all weariness, is erased. The effect is simple and pretty. One month each year, we get to live with light in the darkness. And we decide, yet again, that no home improvements are necessary for a while.
Whimsical, folksy yard art is rare in the suburbs of Northern Virginia. This sizable, traffic-cone-orange concrete pig that presides over a small residential front yard is therefore all the more unexpected. Kiko and I discovered the porkturkey last fall when we were walking in an unfamiliar neighborhood. I laughed out loud, and my little dog was exceptionally suspicious, even warier than he has been of his earlier nemesis, the decorative scarecrow.
In November, as Thanksgiving approaches, the pig dons turkey feathers and a pilgrim hat. Its beak is partially unfastened, as though to allow for easy snacking. I have seen the pig without the turkey disguise but not in other apparel. This year I plan to check on it as various holidays near. May we expect a Santa pig next month? A leprechaun pig for St. Patrick’s Day, a bunny pig near Easter? Has Porky recently shed his Halloween costume? Is he always quite so orange? I will report back as the seasons change. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this cheery, unconventional Thanksgiving pig as much as I do.
While there is no denying the bright glory of mid-October foliage, I find the muted palette of November equally beautiful in its own way. After most of the leaves have fallen, our neighborhood woods wear their subtle winter tones of gray, beige and brown. The few remaining autumn dashes of orange, flame-red and green stand out like colorful stitching on a sensible tan tweed jacket. On this day, the leaves were so deep that the familiar path was hidden. Kiko, however, our sure-footed guide, knew the way by smell.
I like the star-like shape formed by the core of this fallen tree’s roots.
My friend and former boss Gudmund Vigtel died last month at the age of 87. For nearly thirty years, Vig, as he was generally known, was the face and guiding force of Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. He became the museum’s director in 1963, when it was a fledgling institution in a provincial backwater, housed in a nondescript building adjacent to its first home, the Peachtree Street mansion of the High family.
Vig led the High through two pivotal periods of extraordinary growth. In June of 1962, 106 of Atlanta’s most prominent arts patrons, returning from a museum-sponsored trip to Europe, were killed when their plane crashed on take-off at Orly Airport in Paris. Since Atlanta’s founding in 1836 as Terminus, the end point of a railway hub, its citizens have tended to value business over culture. But they are a resilient lot, determined not to be bested. The Orly tragedy, like General Sherman’s burning of the city during the Civil War, inspired a deeply felt resolve to regroup and rebuild, bigger and better. Gudmund Vigtel, then assistant director at the Corcoran Gallery in D.C., was hired to head up the new, expanded arts facility to be known as the Atlanta Memorial Arts Center.
Vig must have stood out as a cosmopolitan, dashing European figure in the Atlanta of the early 60s. Born in Jerusalem to Lutheran missionaries from Norway, he had lived in Vienna and Oslo before his family fled (on skis, as I’ve always heard) from Nazi-occupied Norway into Sweden. But Vig had Georgia ties as well. Having studied art in Sweden, he received a Rotary Scholarship that first took him to a small college in north Georgia. It was not a good fit. He recounted how he spent lonely afternoons sitting on a big rock, asking himself, Why am I here? Before long, he managed to transfer to the Atlanta College of Art, where the more urban environment suited him better.
I met Vig during the second pivotal period of his tenure at the High. During the 1970s he became increasingly convinced that his museum was still too small. When, in 1977, the blockbuster King Tut show bypassed Atlanta for New Orleans because the High lacked sufficient exhibition space, it was clear that Vig was right. He launched an impassioned campaign for a considerably larger and more striking building. Despite the board’s initial preference for a local architect, he managed to persuade them to choose the as yet unproven Richard Meier of New York. Meier would go on to to design the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and to win the Pritzker Prize for architecture.
I had the good fortune to work for Vig as Secretary to the Director during the High’s first two years in the new Meier facility. (There are, of course no secretaries at the museum now, or perhaps anywhere; they have been promoted to other titles, if not in salary.) Thanks to my dentist, a family friend, avid art collector and museum patron, I learned about the job opening. It was the summer of 1983, and I had just graduated from UGA with a degree in Art History. I was coming to terms with the realization that this was, as I had suspected, hardly a golden key to a lucrative or, perhaps, any career. Luckily, I could type. I applied at the High. I wasn’t hired; there was a better, faster typist. About three weeks later, I got a call from the museum. The other applicant hadn’t worked out, for various reasons. When Vig had referred, for example, to the artist Botticelli in his dictated letters, this secretary had repeatedly transcribed Buddy Chelly. Was I still interested?
The postmodern Meier building, its undulating facade clad in white enamel tile, was due to open that October when I began work in July. The offices had just moved into the new quarters, but the galleries and atrium remained unfinished. Heavy plastic sheeting kept some of the dust out but did nothing to diminish the loudness of the construction noise. The pace of construction was quick and constant, and it only added to the excitement of working at the museum. I loved my front-row seat in the living theatre that was staging the airy new building’s completion. And I soon became fond of my boss and the rest of the museum staff.
Many of us spend our lives knowing and regretting that we have not yet hit upon the perfect career fit. Vig found his, it would certainly seem. He had a broad knowledge and true devotion to art of various genres and styles. But he lacked any trace of pretense or conceit; he bore no resemblance to the stereotypical artsy intellectual. Not a single aspect of the life of the museum was beneath him, and he was apparently tireless. What’s more, Vig had a real gift for the human connection; he was thoughtful, warm, empathetic, funny and charming. He inspired the best in every staff member, and we held him in high regard.
As Vig’s dramatic vision for the new building was nearing completion, it was a heady time to be part of the HMA team. The museum opened on schedule in October, with a dizzying flurry of celebratory events held in the soaring central atrium. Vig treated his staff with the same respect and courtesy as the most generous or sought-after patrons. HMA parties were equal-opportunity events. Security guards danced with curators; art handlers and secretaries rubbed elbows with Atlanta’s civic leaders and the occasional celebrity. Vig was always there at the heart of the party, like a joyful father of the bride, surrounded, in his elegant home, by those he loved best.
Vig’s oddly spelled Norwegian name confounded most homegrown Southerners. Yet its pronounciation was straightforward: Good mund Vig tel, with the accent on each first syllable. I was amazed by the vast volume of unsolicited letters (many of them very strange, to say the least) that the museum received. The majority of these erred comically in the spelling of Vig’s name. They variously addressed him as Gudmund Viglet, Gudmund Vigtoe, Goodmood Vigel, Goodood Wigtel and even, somehow, Tubmund Eigtel. Vig never took himself too seriously, and he found these permutations as amusing as I did. He also laughed and reassured me when I realized, too late, that one of the letters I typed had gone out to Ms. Roberta Goizueta instead of Mr. Roberto Goizueta, then the Chairman of Coca-Cola.
Vig’s impact on the arts of Atlanta was profound. Like so many others whose lives he touched, I will think of him often, and with affection. In my mind I see him now, and it’s 1985. He’s coming back from checking a new painting in the galleries, crossing the wide atrium. He’s walking his characteristically jaunty walk, grey curls bouncing a bit, suit slightly rumpled. As he approaches, I hear him speak my name in the Norwegian accent he never lost, and I see the customary twinkle in his eye. Gudmund Vigtel will be greatly missed, but lovingly and gladly remembered.
On this T-shirt, made c. 1985 by the HMA staff to celebrate Vig’s birthday, he is surrounded by some of the more egregiously erroneous misspellings of his name, collected from letters. Vig’s uncharacteristically gruff expression was intended for comic purposes. I wish I hadn’t worn the shirt for painting; the splotch on Vig’s jacket is a later, accidental addition.
My maternal grandmother Nora was born in 1894. In 1920, when the 19th Amendment, the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, was passed, she was twenty-six. She had been married to my grandfather for five years, and they were the parents of a two-year old son, my mother’s oldest brother. Having lived through a time when women could not vote, my grandmother took that newly granted right very seriously. She never missed an election, either national or local, and she was quite vocal in encouraging other women to get out and vote. Not voting was a sure sign of laziness, ignorance, or just “being plain sorry,” according to Nora.
I wish I had thought to ask her, before her death at age 94, about the presidential election of 1920. I would like to have discussed the details, such as where she voted and how. Were there long lines, and did the women turn out enthusiastically? Like most rural Kentuckians and Southerners of her generation, my grandmother was an ardent, lifelong Democrat. I assume she cast her first vote for James M. Cox, the Democratic candidate, newspaperman and Governor of Ohio. Cox, by nearly all hindsight accounts the better man, lost to Warren G. Harding, now remembered primarily for the rampant corruption of his administration. Twelve years would pass before my grandmother chose the winning ticket, when she, no doubt, voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932. Interestingly, a young FDR had been James Cox’s Vice Presidential running mate.
Today on election day, I’m especially grateful to the generations of determined women who fought for nearly a hundred years for the precious right to vote. Because of their efforts, my grandmother voted in 1920, I will vote today, and my daughter will vote before long. In years past, I may have supported candidates that probably would not have won my grandmother’s vote. But this year, I feel confident that she would strongly agree with my choice.
On this election day and always, may God bless the United States of America!
This fall, my daughter and I spent several amusing afternoons in production of these big-headed, bug-eyed trick-or-treaters to add to our Halloween decorations. Using a Dremel, we drilled indentations for the wooden bead eyes, which we anchored with Sobo glue. Our goal was to create a variety of strange and crazy-looking little figures, so we rather indiscriminately raided the craft closet in search of odd miscellaneous items.
For hair, we used yarn, felt, an old shade pull, and some of the stuffing that Kiko was at the time pulling out from the toy he was attacking. Hats are acorn caps, wooden craft cups, and in one case, a plastic spider ring. For bodies we used small spools or corks. Toothpicks or wooden beads form the arms. One figure received oversized white plastic hands on springs that came with a set of Halloween pencil-toppers. We made two dogs, one with ears of pecan shells, the other with wooden bead ears. Maple leaves from a craft punch adorn several of the creatures. We covered miniature Nerds boxes with orange paper to make trick-or-treat bags. Because we didn’t intend our creations to be perfect or traditionally cute, no one (and I won’t name names) flew into a rage when a slight crafting hitch or two arose.
A blog about motherhood, marriage and life: the joys and frustrations, beauty and absurdity, blessings and pain. It's about looking back, looking ahead, and walking the dog.
