It seriously sounds like the end of the world outside my window.  The rain is teeming, and the wind is whipping around at gusts of sixty miles per hour.  Once again, God has indicated that S/He doesn't like trash day.  The empty plastic barrel which was in my driveway is probably in Oz by now.  As for the people who put out their trash last night....I don't even want to look.  Luckily it's still dark.

I bless the maker of my vinyl replacement windows as the weather turns a little frightening.  Apparently we lost power overnight sometime and the Christmas lights got confused, because there they are at 6 in the morning, for all the neighbors to enjoy as they chase their recycle bins down the street.  You've got to love New England. Of course, the fact that this is January and it's fifty degrees outside means A) I won't have to shovel and B) We truly have messed up poor Mother Earth to a fare-thee-well.

On days like this (still worried about the birds) I am grateful that I don't have to be at work for another four hours, by which time this fury should have abated.  And I think of all the people who don't have sturdy houses, or who live in parts of the world where this weather happens all the time, and I resolve again not to take so much for granted.

Today I get to scratch something off my "To Do" list which has been haunting me for over two months.  I've sent a lot of thank you notes to the people who expressed their sympathies on the death of my mother just before Thanksgiving, but I could not bring myself to write to the nurses and aides at the nursing home where she spent her last two years.  Today I not only wrote the notes, I delivered them in person at lunchtime with a plant which had a "Thank You" balloon attached.  Yes, I cried, and so did some of them.  Yes, Super Snoop still drives me insane and always will.  But I feel so much better.  There are still half a dozen notes to write, but none of them is as emotionally dangerous as these were.  I'll finish them before bringing dinner to my mother-in-law tonight, and then I shall put the funeral home's white bag into the attic, with cards, and spiritual bouquets and obituaries and get on with the business of healing.

Winter isn't all bad.  The snow covers a multitude of scars and ugliness.  One learns to appreciate temperatures in the double digits. And to brighten the short and dreary days are the upcoming Super Bowl and Academy Awards. 

I know next to nothing about football, and if the Patriots aren't involved I care slightly less.  My friends Jeff and Mary invite my family (whoever is around) to their beautiful home every year for a party to watch the game.  Usually the women are upstairs chatting.  Usually I'm downstairs in the Man Cave, sitting front and center on the couch, beer in hand, and cheering on...the commercials.  It's the only time of the year that the advertising agencies really try, and sometimes the results are worth watching.  When the children were smaller Himself and I used to make our snacks during the playing time and scurry back to the screen for the ads.  They are still my favorite part of the festivities.

Then there is the mad scramble to see as many Best Picture Nominees as possible.  I've seen a few this year.  So far I've seen "Lincoln", "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and yesterday "Silver Linings Playbook".  "Django Unchained" and "Zero Dark Thirty" both strike me as too violent for me to watch.  I am an Orthodox Wuss.  I want to see "Argo" and "Life of Pi".  I'm undecided about "Amour" since it seems to echo the story of my life and I've had enough of senior care for right now, thank you.  "Silver Linings Playbook" was a pleasant surprise.  I didn't know what to expect going in, which made it more fun.  One of my favorite scenes was when the son, at three o'clock in the morning, feels compelled to throw Ernest Hemingway through a window, so disgusted is he with the writing.  Son Number One will jump up and cheer when he sees that part.  He loathes "Papa Hemingway" with a white heat.  At nine o'clock last night I texted him about the scene.  At one-forty-five this morning he texted back.  I was ready to throw HIM through a window.  Still, it makes for a good story.  And in the dead of January we all need a good story to tell.

When I have to deal with finances, I immediately revert to being around seven years old.  Brought up in a long line of "Your father will kill me if he sees this bill!", it was really hard to get a solid role-model of how to cope with this whole savings thing.  Mom (God rest her soul) had a white cashmere sweater with a mink collar, which I remember well.  Also a red velvet winter coat lined in white satin, a gold lame trench coat, and a mink stole which she had yearned for for years and then seldom wore (I mean...where would you?).  Dad never wanted to be "bothered" buying a house, so I grew up in a cold water flat on the third floor of one of Boston's "three-deckers" until we graduated to an apartment with hardwood floors and (gasp!) radiators!  Life was good.  No one told me there was more.

I would periodically empty my savings when I was young and charming, and would blow it on a trip to England or France.  I would pay the minimum on my charge cards until the balance started to scare me a little and then I'd pay more.  For a while.  Then rather later than you might expect, I married the world's most sensible man.  He paid all of his bills every month.  In full.  And he expected me to do the same.  So I did.  He had savings.  Not rich (I married him for his good looks, after all) but not starving either.  Things were swell, as they used to say in the 1930's movies.  Then we had kids.  And then they went to college.

The college system in this country is only "out-obscened" by the medical system.  The prices of both are completely ridiculous.  So we cut back here, and we cut back there, and we sacrifice quite a bit for our offspring who are, it must be said, brilliant, with brilliant futures (I hope), but for the first time in over two decades of marriage, life is non-picnic-like.  This is hard work, figuring out how much to give and how much to make them work for.  We will get through, I'm sure, and they will go out and save the world, but it's a damn good thing the timing corresponds with my zen period.  I was already trying to get down to a rice bowl, a saffron robe, and a prayer mat.

Now Christmas is officially over.  Yesterday we dropped off Son Number One back at school and the house echoes with the emptiness.  I can always tell which room the boys are in, whether they are making noise or not, and they are both "off my radar" now, which is sad, but fine, too.  I'm glad they are off doing their thing.  It also moves the seasons ahead just a notch, and as I sit looking out the window at what turns out to be (thankfully) only a dusting of snow, I'm ready for that.

Learning my new purpose in life is complicated.  I don't know how to turn off (or down) the Mommy Function.  We have raised two wonderful, resourceful young men and it is very exciting to watch them as they set off in the world to find themselves.  The state of the universe is a concern, of course, what with global warming, the economy, and the seemingly endless rise of hatred, but I have faith that they will both make a dent in that.  Now it's time for me to find how to make my own dent.  The little job at the mall isn't going to do it.  There is a job out there somewhere which will use my writing, my public speaking, my singing, my something that I love doing, and actually pay enough to help with tuition.  I'm sure of it.  A new adventure at 60.  Hooray for me!

January has turned mean.  After days of mild temperatures and confused daffodils poking their leaves above the ground to test the sun, winter has revealed itself in its brittle, nasty splendor.  The howling wind finds its way into every crack of every window frame, whistling like a soprano ghost, and shakes the storm door like a drunk trying to force his way inside.  And it's OK.  January is just being January.  This, too, is part of what living in New England is like.  The good news is that I finally remembered (yesterday) to turn off the water to the outside hose and open the spigot.  The bad news is that those bulbs never did find their way into the ground to surprise me in March.

In a way, the image of naked black lace trees against the gray sky is beautiful in its starkness.  There's a bone-bare essence to the scene that means business.  The frippery of Christmas has been stripped away (except for my porch lights, of course) and the business of moving forward has begun.  While the weather turns colder, the days are also getting longer and I know what comes next.  We are inching towards the spring, towards kinder days and softer colors, towards yellow and purple crocuses and an invitation to remain outdoors, feel the breeze and breathe the air.
Meanwhile I wonder why birds don't freeze solid, and how they manage to clutch telephone wires with their tiny feet as they face that unsympathetic wind.  I worry about the homeless, who, with their refusal to accept help, either because of an ill-advised issue of dignity, or an unwillingness to part with the weapons which make them feel safe, are no better off than the birds.

I have no right to complain as I sit in my sheltered house, with a scarf around my neck and a thick hooded sweater to take off the chill, still it's hard to be optimistic on a day as mean as this one.  But as I said, I know what comes next.

There was a dental appointment this morning which was A) expensive and B) not terribly comfortable, and I'm not sure which aspect of that reduced me to tears, but there we were.  I suspect it really started when the dentist asked how my holidays were and I actually had to respond.  Here was someone else who didn't know that my mother had passed away during Thanksgiving week, and I dug that pain out again to look at it and it more or less exploded on me.  I thought I was further along in the healing process, but I guess I was wrong again.

I started my little job at the mall this week, and almost every day someone would comment on my beautiful scarves, all of which I snitched from Mom's apartment while I was in the process of cleaning it out.  Or they liked the necklace and matching bracelet which she had worn to my wedding.  And, of course, I've been wearing my pink yeti bathrobe which was the last present she had actually picked out for me.  The signs of mourning have been everywhere, but I've been too slow to read them.  I'm trying to give myself an impossible hug, and it's just not working.

The antidote (if there is one, which I absolutely doubt) is to get busy.  The dishwasher is humming, the dryer is clicking away, and I'm about to start vacuuming.  It's important to make a visible difference so I can preserve the illusion of functionality.  The truth is I'm feeling small and sad and winter lonely.  Maybe I'll write a poem today.  Or finish the thank you notes from Mother's funeral, which have been haunting my "to do" list for the past two months because I haven't been able to face them.  And somewhere this afternoon I am hoping for a walk, a nap, and a cup of cocoa in no particular order.

Once again I am the talk of the neighborhood.  January 16 and my Christmas lights are still up on my front porch.  Admittedly, they were never in competition with Disney to begin with.  It's just three connected strands of LED lights (multicolored) intertwined with fake greenery and tied with a couple of small silver bows.  I like my Christmas lights gaudy in color, but requiring minimum effort on my part.

They go on automatically at sunset, which, I am happy to note, is coming later and later, and they turn off automatically about five hours later.  That means that this year, unlike the last three years, I found the magic "gazinta" (as in: "This gazinta that") and it works.  I don't have to run down to the cellar and throw the circuit breaker every night to shut them off.  Everyone else on the street has put Christmas away until next year.  Uh uh.  Not I.  At first the neighbors thought I kept them up until "Little Christmas" on January 6.  The truth is, I keep them up because they are cheerful.  I hate the dark of winter.  The cold doesn't bother me nearly as much, but the darkness makes me sad and uneasy.  If the nights are going to be so disgustingly long, why NOT keep Christmas lights up to literally lighten the mood?

People have become accustomed to my being the last one on the block to put lights up (not wanting to upstage a certain first born's birthday on December 18) and the last to take them down.  So up they stay until Lent, which arrives on February 13 this year.  And then I'll give in, because by then the Red Sox will be in spring training (for all the good it does them), and the hope of Spring will be gaining strength with the elongation of each daylight hour, and I won't need an extra talisman to which to cling.  I can stop embarrassing my kids until the first crocus pokes its little yellow head up in the front yard.  Because that's another tradition of mine.  I dance.  No.  Really.

I have heard that when you have a child, you have decided to go through the rest of your life with your heart on the outside of your body.  The vulnerability to which we subject ourselves by loving someone so intensely is hardly disputable, but I never realized until Sunday how painful it could be.  Poor Son Number Two was just trying to get back to school in time for second semester of freshman year, when weather and bad airline connections stranded him alone in Philadelphia overnight without his luggage.  Thank goodness the boys had talked me into adding texting to their cell phones.  With Mom on hold with her cell phone, Dad on hold on the house phone, and both of us scrambling on our computers, we were able to book him on a flight the next day but not until 1:45 in the afternoon, more than 25 hours after his planned arrival.  We talked him down off the ledge via long distance, directed him to Travelers' Aid and a hotel room for the night, and gave suggestions on how best to position himself for standby possibilities for the 7:30AM flight instead.  It involved his getting up at 5:00AM, but he managed, and at 11:30AM I got the text that he was in his classroom and his professor's French accent was not bad at all.

We had taken him to the airport in ample time, hugged and cried and done all the things we'd promised we wouldn't do (OK...I did.  Himself was a rock!) and still it didn't turn out well.  Once again I was forced to accept that there are things in the Universe about which I can do nothing.  So I did what I always do in such cases.  I sent a "knee-mail" to God.  At 5:00AM, when my younger son was getting up alone in a strange city, I was talking to the Boss, turning him over with faith that he would be protected.  In less time than it should have taken my baby to get to the airport in Philly, I got a text from him that he had his boarding pass for the 7:30 flight.

I'll learn how to do the long distance college thing eventually.  I hate having my "baby" so far away, and it may involve sending him back to school before he actually has to be there.  He learned that he can cope in a crisis (even without a toothbrush) and I learned that he can cope in a crisis (even without me) and those were two important lessons.  Now where's the sherry?  I'm a wreck!

Winter break is winding down.  Son Number Two goes off on a plane on Sunday morning.  Son Number One remains for one more week before we drive him and his girlfriend back. I am missing them both already, which is supremely stupid, because they are both still here.  This march of time stuff is getting on my nerves.

This week I heard of the death of three people from the Boston media who were legends, each in his own way.  Steve and Harry and I were colleagues when I worked in television, and Rex Trailer was our local Boston cowboy, and the gentle host of "Boomtown", a kids show which is forever engrained in the memories of anyone who grew up in Boston in the 50's and 60's.   Fade to black.  At least on THIS screen.

Meanwhile, I finally start my "Christmas job" today.  Yes, I know it's a little late, but at last I got a call to come in and we'll see how it goes.  It's a little part-time job, but it's more than I make sitting at the computer, writing this blog or solving crossword puzzles.  And it's a reason to get dressed.  Just for that, I'm excited.  I haven't had a real "job" since 1999.  Oh, there has been the odd singing "gig", a funeral here, a Mass there, caroling hither and yon.  I even substitute taught for a while.  But this might be interesting.  Out in public working with people.  Time for something new.  I'll keep you posted.

My mind amuses me sometimes.  Yesterday, for example, driving on the highway at about ten miles over the posted speed limit, I heard a scratching sound coming from the passenger side of the car in the front quarter, accompanied by an occasional "squeak".  By the time I got where I was going I had completely convinced myself that a squirrel was either A) in my glove compartment or B) sitting on my engine and clinging to life.  Neither thought made me cheerful.  I actually considered, for a mili-bleep, opening the glove compartment as I was doing 70.  The impracticality of this move, thankfully, did occur to me.  I mean, hell...what if I was right and it fell out?  Or even just grossed me out?

I controlled myself until I got to my destination, went to the outside of the car (maybe it was a branch stuck underneath?) and was relieved to see that it was only my front fender, working its way free again, as it has so often since being first pounded by a car door flung open into it as I drove by, and a year or so after we repaired that one, creased by a guardrail in a dark parking garage.  With a modified karate kick it was back where it needed to be, and tormented me no more.  Until the next time.

Which brings me to my point:  Why do I manage to manufacture the weirdest scenarios out of the simplest situations?  I have wasted more time in my life worrying about things that never happened than I care to think about.  We all do, to some extent, but I have made it into a creative art form.  Someone (I have no idea who, but whoever it was is brilliant) said: "Worrying is like sitting in a rocking chair.  It's something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere."  I love that.  My other "worry quote source" is the Dalai Lama.  He says that worry is a waste of time.  "Either it's something you can change, and you use your energy to change it, or it's something you can't change, and you use your energy to accept it."  Someday when no one is looking I am going to swap him for the Pope.  Meanwhile, things I never saw coming continue to sucker punch me and lay me low, but I suppose that's life.  Now for a cup of coffee and a bit of quiet time so I can listen to the voices in my head....

We ran away for the weekend to visit college friends of my husband's in Long Island.  I ate too much chocolate, too much  barbecue, too much everything, and my New Year's intentions lie in tatters on the floor (which is where I slept on an air mattress).  When we visit these wonderful friends I see my sons at meal times.  They disappear into what would be a "Man Cave" in another house, but which is the lair of the eldest son here.  The boys watch movies until the middle of the night, sleep in chairs or on the floor, and eat more candy in a weekend than they usually get in three months.  In other words, it was delightful.  I am always the first to retire, but that also makes me the first to get up, book in hand, and I have a good hour or so to cuddle under a down throw in a reclining chair and read, an indulgence for which I don't seem to make much time these days.  Even the four hour ride each way was pleasant.  I slept through the (boring) audio book about Winston Churchill to which Himself and the boys were listening, and when it was my turn to drive I listened to the voices in my head.

This morning I sit here, heated and herbal-scented pink shoulder cape draped across my aching neck muscles, and wearing the bathrobe Mom bought for me about three years ago as my last real "present" from her.  There was a nightgown, too, which I wear gingerly these days.  It was thick flannel, but it's getting thinner with each washing.  When it wears out I will cry.  This robe is heavy, and too big for me (I was with her when we got it...I have no idea why I picked it out) and makes me look rather like a pink yeti, or some distant Sesame Street cousin of Cookie Monster and Elmo.  It feels like a hug, and I'm keeping it.

But now it's time to get out of the robe and into the shower and start the ridiculously long "to do" list of the day.  I have Son Number Two for this week.  Son Number One stays a week longer.  Then it's back to the quiet house, the job search, the cleaning, and the search for meaning in the universe.  Right after the search for one more cup of tea....

I'm feeling very virtuous, having survived one whole day of one of my "intentions" for the New Year.  The plan is to limit alcohol and desserts to the weekends.  Considering the fact that my father-in-law is the best baker I know and has a tendency to always have a home-made pie lurking on a counter may make this more challenging than I need it to be, but we'll see what happens.

My e-mail has been inundated with screaming ads from various sites trying to sell me what I didn't buy at Christmas.  We are in our "purge mode" over here, though.  Himself and I went through the first of about forty boxes of old photographs and discarded a stack which stood six inches high of blurry shots of various events.  Seeing the boys so small, and remembering each occasion as though it were yesterday, is a strange sensation.  I start getting all warm and fuzzy and maternal, lost in that world, when in comes a tall stranger with a booming voice, asking "What time is dinner, Mom?" and it's a bit like getting hit in the face with a cold, wet flounder.

Four boxes of VHS tapes are sitting in the garage, waiting for trash day.  I was amazed at how easily the boys let go of what I thought were childhood treasures.  It turns out that the memories are the treasures, and they take up no space at all.  I'm hoping this revelation sustains me through the Herculean task of reclaiming my bedroom for humans.  Considering this is only Day Two of the year, I am silly enough to remain optimistic!