In the dark of winter, color disappears. All is grey and brown and white and dim with hints of blue. I go out to see the sun. My camera and I go to the river to search for color, but we find little. There is my children’s clothing: bright of blues, stark black, crazy patterns out of place in the deep-sleep time of winter. Their clothing should be brown: the color of the sleeping earth. Sleep is good. Let us not wake it.

Apologies: I failed to take any photos of the celebration.

Fortunately, I captured a couple crucial photos of the preparation.

1.

Akiva (left, in alligator suit) and Iris (right, in her heaviest winter sundress) chopped nuts for the stuffing without eating too many.

2.

Dan did most of the pie work, Ari did most of the turkey work.

Akiva tried to reduce the stress incurred when a 6’6″+ (with shoes) person works for hours at a counter built to be ergonomically suitable for a 5’5″ person.

Dan & Ari came to visit for Thanksgiving weekend.

Ari has been working in a lab for a long time now without much time to be around animals.

She spends some time reading “Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm.”

She checks a few animal facts on her computer & deems the book accurate.

Iris gives Uncle Dan a drawing lesson.

For my birthday, I kept my children home from school.

We went for a walk in the woods together.

It was quite nice.

Rapunzel stopped by. She was passing through, on her way from one home to another. I sewed her a couple years ago. She was wanting a spa retreat to spruce up her hair and wash off some spots. Iris took her out adventuring in the Waterville woods.

Rapunzel lies on her belly to watch the ice freezing below the little bridge.

A doll is quite nice, but a little brother is even nicer.

Iris finds Rapunzel a tower.

When the mud freezes, it squirts up strange little icicles.

They lift rocks and soil, twigs and leaves, as they twist and twine themselves into horned spires.

Trick-or-treating is fun. You get to walk around the neighborhood in the dark while wearing a disguise, knock on strange doors & peek inside different houses, smelling new smells and seeing small glimpses of people’s life, all the while getting interesting things that come all wrapped up in tiny, crinkly, shiny packages. Candy. But what is one supposed to DO with candy? In theory, it’s edible. I mean, certainly it’s ingestible. So are play-dough, newspaper, tempera paint, bits of wool, and the occasional small pebble. But to that end, I would prefer we not have too much.

And this is where the Candy Faerie comes in. After Halloween, all candy is donated to the Candy Faerie. She thrives on candy! So we build a house of candy to lure her in. Oh, how she loves candy houses! The Candy Faerie, you might want to know, is good friends with the Tooth Faerie. It seems an unlikely partnership, but it is true. The Candy Faerie eats candy and thus, it logically follows, the Tooth Faerie eats teeth. Yum.

“Does the Tooth Faerie ever eat the teeth right out of your mouth?” Iris asked a couple years ago, when we first started gifting the Candy Faerie and discussing useful household faeries in general.

“Yes,” I said. “When you eat the Candy Faerie’s candy, the Tooth Faerie eats your teeth right out of your mouth.”

Iris is more interested in dissecting, smashing, and building with candy than eating it. She likes her teeth.

Time it was
and what a—

—time it was
it was—

—a time of innocence,
a time of confidences.

Long ago
it must be—

I have a photograph.

I have a photograph.

And what a

time it was.

It was
a time of innocence.

A time of confidences—
long ago.

It must be
I have a photograph.
Preserve your memories.
They’re all that’s left you.

 
Old friends
Old friends
Sat on their park bench
Like bookends
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes
Of the old friends

Old friends
Winter companions
The old men
Lost in their overcoats
Waiting for the sunset
The sounds of the city
Sifting through the trees
Settle like dust
On the shoulders
Of the old friends

Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy

Old friends
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fear…

Time it was
and what a
time it was
it was
a time of innocence
a time of confidences.

Long ago
it must be
I have a photograph
preserve your memories
they’re all that’s left you.

          —Simon & Garfunkel / Lyrics by Paul Simon