Sunday, November 21, 2010
Pilgrimage Passed
It's exhausting in Early November
When the leisurely pace of
Fall gives way to
The hurried bustle
Of Christmas
Poor Pilgrims have been
Forsaken this year, it seems,
A small shelf at Target
On clearance
More than a week
Before November 26
People pass by
That in between time
Crazy to be prepared for
Christmas
What are you doing for the Holidays?
They want to know
When I, myself, am still
Deliberating Thanksgiving
Chasing my calendar
Every week is exhausting
Weekends filling up with
visits and lists and to-do's
Instinctively, I resist
Rebelling, I resist
Content to watch
The last of the mums turn brown
And the pumpkins fade.
----- Wendy Pierman Mitzel
Monday, November 15, 2010
Thoughts on a woodstove
In my old house, my hundred-year-old house, the one I used to live in, the one before the divorce, there was a woodstove.
It was small and black and falling apart and a royal pain in the ass. For the kitchen in the old house never warmed in winter until that woodstove was fed properly.
That first winter I learned to order cords, properly seasoned, piles of wood dumped in the driveway. I learned to haul bundles piled high on the kids’ plastic snow sleds across the yard to both behind the garage and up near the back porch of the three story victorian.
I learned to start gathering early in the season the stray sticks and branches fallen from the stately oaks.
That first winter it took me many attempts at firing up the perfect morning heat so that when the kids tromped down the back steps for breakfast, it wouldn’t be an entrance into the frozen tundra. Eventually I learned to get up early, build the log pile just so crisscrossing the tinder-sticks with strips of crumpled newspaper. It had to be roaring in that little black box or any effort was futile. And the days it didn’t blaze I cursed that stove. That pain in the ass stove.
Back home, in Michigan, where I’d lived in the suburbs of Detroit, my friends would laugh at me during phone calls when I described my Laura Ingalls Wilder life. Hauling wood, making porridge…. No seriously I did heat up soup on to of the woodstove during a power outage that was cool.
They laughed when I said how the handle just plumb fell off one day and now I had to use a potholder to open it. And they laughed at my description of pouring the ashes over the rail into the back garden.
But then I came to love the woodstove (particularly when I replaced it with a newer model) and what it represented. This new New England life, on Main Street with a Town Green, where my children went off to school on a snowy day and I could sit in front of the fire, with my old Yellow Dog. A cup of tea. But for the occasional crackle and burst, a slice of silence. It seemed everything was going to be okay.
Today, in my new house, in my 25-year-old house, the one I live in now, after the divorce, there is no woodstove.
The little kitchen warms up nicely and stays that way, no 11 foot ceilings to suck up the heat. The radiators along the floor do their jobs and I no longer head out in my slippers and robe each morning to dirty myself with armfuls of kindling.
On many occasions I have found myself missing the quiet of the woodstove days. The are still children descending the stairs for frozen waffles, but there is no Yellow Dog since she died shortly after the move.
The kids still leave for school on snowy days, but I rarely now find the time to sit. Maybe because there is so much to do on my own. But maybe it’s just because there is no fire.
It was small and black and falling apart and a royal pain in the ass. For the kitchen in the old house never warmed in winter until that woodstove was fed properly.
That first winter I learned to order cords, properly seasoned, piles of wood dumped in the driveway. I learned to haul bundles piled high on the kids’ plastic snow sleds across the yard to both behind the garage and up near the back porch of the three story victorian.
I learned to start gathering early in the season the stray sticks and branches fallen from the stately oaks.
That first winter it took me many attempts at firing up the perfect morning heat so that when the kids tromped down the back steps for breakfast, it wouldn’t be an entrance into the frozen tundra. Eventually I learned to get up early, build the log pile just so crisscrossing the tinder-sticks with strips of crumpled newspaper. It had to be roaring in that little black box or any effort was futile. And the days it didn’t blaze I cursed that stove. That pain in the ass stove.
Back home, in Michigan, where I’d lived in the suburbs of Detroit, my friends would laugh at me during phone calls when I described my Laura Ingalls Wilder life. Hauling wood, making porridge…. No seriously I did heat up soup on to of the woodstove during a power outage that was cool.
They laughed when I said how the handle just plumb fell off one day and now I had to use a potholder to open it. And they laughed at my description of pouring the ashes over the rail into the back garden.
But then I came to love the woodstove (particularly when I replaced it with a newer model) and what it represented. This new New England life, on Main Street with a Town Green, where my children went off to school on a snowy day and I could sit in front of the fire, with my old Yellow Dog. A cup of tea. But for the occasional crackle and burst, a slice of silence. It seemed everything was going to be okay.
Today, in my new house, in my 25-year-old house, the one I live in now, after the divorce, there is no woodstove.
The little kitchen warms up nicely and stays that way, no 11 foot ceilings to suck up the heat. The radiators along the floor do their jobs and I no longer head out in my slippers and robe each morning to dirty myself with armfuls of kindling.
On many occasions I have found myself missing the quiet of the woodstove days. The are still children descending the stairs for frozen waffles, but there is no Yellow Dog since she died shortly after the move.
The kids still leave for school on snowy days, but I rarely now find the time to sit. Maybe because there is so much to do on my own. But maybe it’s just because there is no fire.
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