Little Miracles
Christmas gnomes, Ukulele ensemble, house plant love
The jagged peaks of the Cascades are snow covered and clear today as I write, just before midday. The snow is patchy, white interlaced with the dark of the rock faces in an intricate pattern. The lower mountains, black silhouettes, the near hills dotted with trees and in front of them, the valley floor. The red of the winter stripped blueberry bushes shows up in a narrow band. I never tire of this view outlined by the towering cedar trees in front of the house. The sky is leaden but not unremittingly grey, there is a strip of lighter sky just above the peaks. I try to describe it for you, but perhaps what is harder to convey is how the view makes me catch my breath. Today the peaks look close. Sometimes they are far, far away. Their presence in my life is already familiar and beloved. However long we are in this place, these mountains have graced us with their overview. For that’s how it feels, they are looking at us. Their timelessness reassures me that whatever is happening in my experience is so very temporary. Yet they too are subject to time, slowly being ground down until one day, millions of years from now, they become dust. Mountain time. When we are caught in our little dramas, I like to think of mountain time. They are a daily miracle, ever changing. My phone camera cannot convey their majesty but I like to try and bring them closer to you with words.
Christmas Day, celebrates the story of a miracle. Whatever your view of the story, the anticipation of the celebration brings a cascade of little miracles. Miracles of connection. Though we are a little out of step with the celebrations this year after bereavements affecting the family and having to cancel many fun things, we are still being touched by these miracles. A little taste for you.
I’m delighted to discover Giant Santa Gnomes are a feature of yard light displays here and popular as tree ornaments too. An adaptation that hasn’t reached UK shores as far as I know. The wonderful Christmas tree in La Conner reflects its twin across the channel in a favourite local restaurant window. The Skagit Valley Chorale, Heralding Christmas concert at McIntyre Hall, Performing Arts and Conference Centre in Mount Vernon, mentioned in the last publication, contained a beautiful programme of traditional and modern European and North American songs put together by choral director, Dr Yvette Burdock. The selection showed off the skills of this talented community choir singing in a fantastic space built 21 years ago which houses many arts organisations.
My Writer’s Circle gathered for a holiday social after reviewing each other’s work. Amid the humous and carrot sticks, brie on French bread, muffins and cookies we shared our writing aspirations for the year ahead and got to know each other a little better. Is there a collective noun for writers? A question I guess Google or ChatGPT could easily answer. It’s the wondering I enjoy, rather than the finding answers.
A dinner in La Conner with an out of town, new acquaintance had us finding shared ground with our love of fantasy films, Norse mythology, Ireland and the dream of doing a trans Atlantic crossing one day.
Live music, this time watching singer song writers Loudain Wainwright III (78 years old) and Livingstone Taylor (74 years old) perform to a full house at the wonderful Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon. This is a fabulous restored 1926 vaudeville and silent movie house. Only 10% of such theatres built in the 1920s remain open in the USA. A jewel in the Pacific Northwest arts scene.
Livingstone Taylor is the brother of singer songwriter James Taylor. The two were very different in style and presentation, but they shared a love of being on the stage. I wouldn’t have guessed they were in their seventies. The stamina was impressive. They played one after the other, overlapping for just one song. The curtain went up at 7pm and we tumbled out on to the winter streets of Mount Vernon just after 10pm. Many thanks to Cesca who took up Paul’s ticket and drove me to the performance.
I’ve met many people, 70+ in this community who are impressively active and engaged with a great zest for life. Pedro, a resident with family in Spain compared the residents of Spain with these vigorous Americans and found the Spanish wanting. Interesting point of view I thought! Snapshots - always fascinating!
Watching the film Love Actually on the other side of the Atlantic had me welling up at how fantastically lovely London looked and noticing new things. Did you notice the Dido song, Here with me, used in the scene where Mark (Andrew Lincoln) makes an excuse to hastily leave his flat after Juliet (Keira Knightley) calls and finds the wedding video?
Our little Christmas tree has brought great cheer for my beloved as he’s migrated between chair and sofa to sleep while his back rehabs.
I was thrilled to find three little Royal Worcester side plates in Vintage La Conner. I grew up in Worcester, Worcestershire UK and did work experience at the Royal Worcester Porcelain Museum when I was sixteen. I contemplated a career as a museum curator but much as I loved the artefacts, the museum was too quiet for me!
Actual Christmas presents feel far less important than these little miracles of connection but we did have one wonderful hit, with a gift for my Mum of the book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat. A great tome of a book, she is already getting stuck in (it arrived in record quick time). I have read the first chapter and it has me feeling ever closer to my Mum to know we will be discovering the delightful findings of this book together. I have traditionally found fun, beautiful, quirky or super useful small items for Mum’s kitchen over the years and so the culinary threads we weave together continue. More threads are being woven all the time.
***
My young adult children buried their father this week. Quite literally - he was interred in a wicker coffin in a field on the farm where they grew up and he lived and died. Their sad loss has at the same time been the occasion of gatherings and connections in our wider family and such an outpouring of love for them and between them. I’ve been struck by the love they’ve received from the village where they grew up.
Special mentions to Paul and Claire, Annabel and Lucy, my Mum and my brother Nick, Dicken and Coizie. I am full of love and gratitude for how you have offered your time, love and support to me and my children.
Grief moves in its own way, unique to everyone. I want to thank readers for staying with this publication through these last weeks and those who have reached out. As the wheel of life turns, sometimes there is laughter, black humour, angst, dismay, frustration, exhilaration, anger, joy, sadness, lightness and darkness. Embracing it all, as part of the human experience, even when it is painful. Especially when it is painful. It’s all temporary. It all passes.
And … the miracles continue.
Miracles really are everywhere. In the midst of this strange time, I received a call out of the blue, inviting me to a ukulele ensemble meeting. Just a 15 minute walk away, in a new friend’s house, four of us talked for an hour and now, we are a ukulele ensemble! I bought myself a ukulele about 8 years ago and taught myself a few chords. I like to sing and wanted to be able to strum a few songs to sing along to. On arriving here in Skagit County, I discovered there was a weekly ukulele club just down the hill. Having never played my Uke in front of anyone other than Paul and my daughter Maddie, I thought, ‘why not? It’s a good way to meet new friends.’ It’s been a joy. Richard our teacher, has just celebrated his 96th birthday. He took us through chords and taught us songs form the great American song book and others. Above all I have met and become friends with a fantastic group of women: Lisa, Deidre and Joan. The welcome has been wonderful.
From weekly classes I got the opprotunity to attend a couple of ukulele slams held in the Senior Centre in nearby Anacores. On Fridays, in a large dining hall, a group of leaders, take us through 23 songs. The words and chords are projected onto a large screen. I know few of the songs but it doesn’t matter, they are easy to pick up and I get this window on Americana with songs like Sway, xx, xx, xx, xx. Our classes are ending, so imagine my surprise and delight, when the call came with the invitation to join the ukulele ensemble. I wasn’t going to mention it so thanks to Claire for pointing out how miraculous it was that the chance to join a ukulele ensemble just showed up! With a new to me teacher at our helm, four of us plan to meet and learn instrumental and pop songs. Watch this space!
Despite a lack of festive preparation we are being swept up in the generosity of friends and neighbours and their Christmas spirit. Open house with neighbours this afternoon gathering round a log fire - talk of tall trees, Norwegian heritage, the Seattle Times, neighbours past, family ties and traffic!
Gifts of nut bread made from a recipe handed down the female line and a voucher for a favourite cafe are hand delivered by friends old and new. Last minute invitations arriving for an early supper here, a Christmas Eve meal watching the sunset over the harbour there. It’s a delight to receive these invitations, especially as we have no plans ourselves or perhaps it is because we have no plans that invitations are showing up! Happiness has a way of sneaking up on you, even or maybe especially when your heart has been heavy. Thanks to Chris Nuan for reminding me, as Sydney Banks said, ‘Christmas isn’t a season, it’s a feeling.’ A feeling of generosity, connection and gratitude. Whatever springs from that state of mind is bound to bring warmth and love.
Fewer photos for this post, so I thought I’d celebrate the solstice with a mini gallery of my house plants. They delight me. Having been an organic vegetable grower at one time, I nonetheless had little success with houseplants. Living in a whirl of busyness, they tended to die of neglect. In Ferryside all that changed. I slowly built a collection of plants, often gifted to me, for both the back yard and inside the house. Each had a story and when I left I gifted them on to friends and family. I so loved watching them thrive and grow. Here I have begun small and slowly. I don’t know their names, I just choose the ones that wave at me! Whenever I see them, my face lights up. There is one here on my desk, next to me as I write this Substack. So here they are. Enjoy and if anyone wants to name them for me, that would be fun.
Gratitude
Thank you to Linda for sending me a link to this wonderful podcast episode: The Courage to say yes - A conversation with Tara Brach and poet Rosemary Wahtola Trommer which has sparked a wonderful idea… watch this space!
Thank you to Rachel for sending me a poem, the perfect words, just when I needed to read them.
To Michelle for lifts and friendship, thank you.
Thank you for the difficult and dark times. Isn’t that where something new always germinates?
Threads that pull me
Simply reminding myself ‘to never get used to the miracles’ as a very wise woman called Mavis Karn once said.
Until next time …
Loudon Wainwright III? I still have Hard Day on the Planet on my playlists. Still relevant, even though I first came across him more than 30 years ago. I'm envious!