Tag: new year

Another January Thing

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Some time in the middle of January I feel the urge to put away the holiday decorations. Twelfth night has come and gone, the ladies, lords, maids, musicians, birds, and pear tree have all been bestowed. I no longer wonder, as I did when I was a child, if the six geese were actually laying the five gold rings. And if so, what was up with that one slacker goose? I unpin, unhook, and gather Christmas things from all corners of the house, and spend a couple of days sorting them into tubs and boxes. Frassy helps.

Most of my candles are dripless, but surprises do happen. This one started out white with red stripes, but the result – well, in orange or black it would have been great for Halloween. Kind of creepy looking. The main, melty stub left wax behind when I pulled it out, plus there were all the drips at the bottom. My go-to candlestick recovery program worked perfectly: heat the oven to 200 degrees, put some paper towels on a sheet pan, lay the candlesticks down on the paper towels, put it in the oven until the wax melts onto the paper towels, take out, and when the candlesticks are cool enough to handle but still warm, rub them all over with a rag. 

As much as I love putting the Christmas decorations up, it’s equally cheerful for me when I take them down. As my regular, everyday teacups and dishtowels go back into place, I appreciate them all over again: hello, souvenirs from all the years that have fed into this new one; January’s second fresh start. But I think I’ll leave the lights up a little longer. I string them on the inside of the windows, and they connect me to the snowy yard even when I stay inside.

I did plan to fold up the Christmas quilt from the bed, but when I went upstairs Frassy was already there, exercising her inerrant cat sense of where I wanted to work next. She struck this pose as I came in, possibly because she knows I find it adorable, lessening the chance that I’d shoo her away.

She settled in for a nap, and I realized it meant I could pot up my bulbs without her, um, help. I like to save the amaryllis and paperwhites for after Christmas, to fill in the gap between the end of the holidays and the start of gardening. Seed catalogs have already begun to arrive, but I’m stacking them up on their own shelf. I want to be able to find them again, but I’m not done with January yet.

Resolution

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I like to start every new year with a resolution or two, chosen from my list – unwritten, but still a list – of things I really want to do, but keep not getting around to. Not things I should do but avoid, like exercise, or giving up snacks. There are so many happy, satisfying things that need doing and can be turned to instead. For instance, I’ve gotten behind on my favorite, persistently arriving magazine, because I haven’t been traveling. Magazines are perfect for places where your attention is frequently interrupted – airports and airplanes, for example – because they consist of discrete parts. You can finish a whole article while waiting for your flight to be called, and not lose the thread as will happen with a book. You can dip in and out of the letters, poems, and cartoons in between the good views out your window seat. I’m quite content not to be traveling these days, but I miss reading my New Yorkers. So that’s one possibility.

Then there’s my indoor gardening. I brought my curry leaf plant in for the winter so it wouldn’t die, and it didn’t die. It has such an abundance of wonderful, fragrant curry leaves that I really want to cut some and dry them, for future use. Would they make a nice tea? I don’t especially like to cook, but I do like to play with my plants.

My spider plants could also use some attention. Their adorable enthusiasm for life leads them to throw out new, spindly limbs in all directions, each one flourishing a baby spider plant at the end. I’ve gathered these into plant supports over Mamaplant’s head so they don’t sprawl all over their neighbors, but every so often I cut them off, pot them up, and resettle them on other windowsills, sometimes in other people’s houses. It satisfies my urge to grow and propagate things, despite the snow you see on the other side of that window. So, more possibilities.

Then there’s all this yarn I’ve collected in what Kaffe Fassett calls a colorway. Whatever else I’m doing I like my hands to be busy, so knitting or crocheting is another pleasure. Frassy has a new habit – pawing a hank or ball of yarn out of its nest and carrying it around the house in her mouth, kitten-like. She doesn’t unwind or chase them, and I really don’t know if they are substituting for kittens or dead mice. But it gives me the added motivation of using the yarn while I can still find it. Also good to finish any scarves or sweaters before I run out of winter. 

While I was saving yarn from Frassy, I came across not one but two little notebooks full of notes, bits, and pieces for poems. Between these and the many poems always in my head, it would be quite satisfying to convert some of these scraps into poems. Another possibility. I will choose one or two of these possibilities for my resolution this year, but can’t tell you which. New Year’s resolutions are like wishes on a star: I was taught that if you told anyone about them, they wouldn’t come true. It’s like why you say “break a leg” to a ballerina before she goes onstage, as though some malevolent force is listening in, ready to thwart your hopes. Wish her well and she’s doomed; wish her ill, and it’s certain not to happen. So, break a leg, one and all. Let’s see if we can nudge malevolent forces in the desired direction for 2026.

On New Year’s Day

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b angel clockHappy New Year, the day that looks both forward and back. This is my antique clock, that rang in the New Year last night as it did through my childhood, when it sat on our living room mantelpiece and it was my job to wind it. I was the one among my siblings who’d wind it slowly enough not to break the mainspring. The little angels visit the clock when I decorate for Christmas, and they will fly back up to heaven, or somewhere, after January 6th when the decorations come down.

Once again our early December snow vanished, disappointingly, in days of rain before Christmas. So I was surprised, yesterday, to notice what looked like bits if snow surviving on the lawn behind the deck. But wait – not snow. Pillow fluff. It was bits of the pillow fluff the little red squirrel tore out of a deck cushion last August. Did she toss it out of her nest as a bad choice after all? Did its synthetic fluffiness make it too easy for the wind to blow it out of position? I started wondering about nesting materials for squirrels, but tripped over the word – squirrels – and wondered about that instead. Could it be a Native American word, maybe Ojibwa or Ottowa? But no, it’s from the Old World: Middle English from Old French from Latin from Greek, in which it was skia (shade) plus oura (tail), a nice description of the way it holds its tail. How about chipmunk then – was that a native Michiganian word? Indeed, in Ojibwa the word “chipmunks” is “ajdamoog,” turning into chipmunks the same way Ojibwa turned into Chippewa. “Chipmunk” sounds like it should mean cheeky little devil, but it means “one who descends trees headlong,” and is in fact the name of – the red squirrel!

Doug and I toasted in the New Year watching the ball drop in Times Square via television – old school, I guess, not to have streamed it. The temperature dropped overnight, and we woke this morning to a thin snowfall. A little more snow would have covered the yard like a clean sheet of paper, ready for a fresh start. The snow this morning brightened things up but let the past show through, reminding me that’s it’s always there, the base under all new beginnings.

b new year snow