Snow Angels
Adventure with friends and birds.
Watching birds isn’t exactly sexy, nor does it make money, nor do I accomplish anything while doing so. I don’t know if I’ve ever thought of birdwatching as a valid activity. It burns no calories.
But now it seems the best use of my time, although I can’t say why. I worry I’m turning into an old woman who watches birds, but maybe old women who watch birds know something the rest of us don’t.
A couple of people reached out to me this week and encouraged me to write about Important Topics. I don’t want to write about things I don’t know how to fix. This leaves out all current events.
I return to birds.
Who in their right mind would work on taxes when they could sit in a comfortable chair and look at a birdfeeder? What is better on a winter afternoon than to hear the hiss of the stove, drink tea, and look out a window? It could only be improved upon by reading a book.
I don’t need a book. Birdwatching is the extent of my ambition. This is so out of character I’m developing a deep satisfaction from it. It feels perverse.
Beyond the porch feeder is a maple tree. It looks dead but isn’t. Red buds come every spring.
It’s funny how old people and old trees resemble each other. Instead of age spots, the surface is covered in large burls. Because it was struck by lightning on top, it could be called bald. It’s filled with hollows, so it’s lost weight. It’s over 100 years old and looks it.
But it bustles with life. Redheaded woodpeckers peck, and squirrels jump out from their dreys, full of bad intent toward my birdfeeder. A great variety of birds nest in its nooks and crannies.
It’s instructive, this tree. Even as it rots, it provides shelter and food for many. I’ve been told countless times I should take it down. I wouldn’t dream of it.
Remarkably, an Eastern Bluebird visits the feeder. A rare sighting.
The guys that dug the house out of last week’s snow did a great job, but didn’t know where the slate path cuts across the yard. They dug a different one.
There’s nothing underneath their path except a little grass. Because it’s been trod upon so much, it’s muddy. As I walk, I notice several footprints, and it looks slick. I wonder if I should find something to put down over it.
As soon as I wonder, I slip and fall. Question answered.
I love how the mind speeds up in an emergency. It took under two seconds to fall, but did I ever think a few thoughts.
Falling in the snow doesn’t sound like much of an emergency, but it is. I’m still recovering from fracturing my left shoulder when I fell up a hill about six weeks ago. I put my arm out to break the fall, and boom. Fractured.
As I feel my foot slipping in the slick mud, my brain saves me from sticking out the injured arm again. I move it under me like a chicken wing and let myself go down sideways in the snow.
The snow is soft. I’m not hurt. I do feel banged up, but don’t realize it until after the adrenaline wears off. I’m so happy I didn’t re-injure the arm.
I still need to do something about the mud.
I go to the very middle of the driveway and start scooping up pea gravel, then drop it down into the muddy path.
Much better.
I lift a bag of pet-safe ice melt and do all the steps to the basements. Then I go into all three basements to check the temperature. It’s a disaster if pipes freeze, and the Victorians neglected to insulate.
This doesn’t sound like doing much either, except everything is icy. One basement still has no path cleared to the door. It takes me about an hour to get everything done.
I come inside, make a cup of tea, take off the second pair of muddy boots I’ve gone through in a day, and snuggle into slippers.
Then I sit. I’m cognizant of being able to sit and birdwatch as Los Angeles burns. Slipping in the wet snow would sound like heaven to anyone in Los Angeles right now.
Several years ago, a family of seven raccoons lived in the maple tree. I evicted them (without harm) and they were relocated.
Raccoons are full of the worst mischief. They can open exterior walls with their claws. One got into an interior wall on the third floor. She thought the space perfect for giving birth to a litter of kits.
Kits: baby raccoons. That’s your word of the day.
I still have PTSD from the raccoons. It’s not hyperbole. Thousands of dollars and sleepless nights went into their relocation program. I’m still haunted by their very human hands, how they can undo latches on crawl spaces and the roof.
They drove the upstairs tenants nuts.
This house is like the old maple tree. It supports a lot of diverse life.
Yesterday was the first anniversary of my mother’s death. I had fun.
For perhaps the first time in my life, I understood it probably wasn’t a great idea to be alone in the house where she died. I like solitude, and company usually seems a bad idea. But I let my instincts work and they overrode the brain.
My mother and I both have a friend we’ve known since early childhood. My friend is Tammy. She’s still next door to the Virginia house, having bought the place from her parents.
My mother’s friend is Florence. The day before my mother died, she came over for several hours, and we sat together with my mom.
My mother’s death hit Florence hard, which is understandable. When you’re that age, virtually everyone is younger.
Florence is in much better shape than my mom was. She can still drive, her mind is unimpaired by age, and she’s physically active. But she is 95.
I wanted to visit the cemetery on the anniversary of Bettie’s death, so I arrived in Virginia the day before. I sent out a text inviting a few people—Florence, my cousin and his wife, our friend Pam, and Tammy.
I heard back from my cousin, who very sensibly told me he wasn’t sure it was the best idea to take Florence right now. There’s a little hill to climb up to the gate, and it’s still snowy and icy.
I completely forgot about the hill not being cleared of snow.
I wrote back,
“Okay.”
Tammy’s off school, but Pam’s out of town.
I message Florence and offer to take her later in the week after the snow clears up. She answers that she wants to go now because of more snow in the forecast.
When Tammy and I pick her up, I say,
“Florence. You cannot fall. Because if you fall and hurt yourself, my cousin is going to kill me.”
Florence rolls her eyes.
The day has my mother all over it.
There was nothing she loved more than doing something dangerous she’d been warned against. She loved proving people wrong. She also loved surprising us by her physical ability, well into old age.
The cemetery has a partially paved right-of-way, but of course it had not been cleared. I pulled into the parking lot next to it, and ask Tammy if she could get Florence out of the car while I park. I’d bring the flowers.
I brought two arrangements, one for each of my parent’s graves, and Tammy had some beautiful white roses for my mom’s. By the time I parked the car, collected the flowers, and gingerly walked across the sheet of ice posing as a parking lot, Tammy and Florence were up the hill.
Splendid.
I walk up the hill. Not the easiest thing to do, and I start wondering how we’ll get down.
The cemetery looked beautiful, but you could only see where a couple of graves were because of their tombstones. The ones with flat markers were covered in snow.
My parent’s graves were lovely. They looked like they were sleeping together under a white eiderdown.
I cleared their gravestones with a little emergency shovel I had in the car. We arranged the flowers.
When we were traveling in the car, Florence mentioned Bettie had especially liked a passage read at my father’s funeral in 1981.
“Not the beginning of Romans 8,” she said. “Farther down. It was read by President Carter’s grandson today at his funeral. The part about ‘nothing separates us.’”
If you know me, you know the very last thing on earth you’ll find me doing is reading the Bible. But I found the passage on Google and read it aloud at my mother’s grave.
Romans 8: 38:
And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.
My deep aversion to religion is that I find it exclusionary. This passage is not. Even I can read this.
My mother considered herself a Christian, but she didn’t attend church. I love what she said about prayer:
“My prayers are my actions.”
More of this, please. It’s very Jimmy Carter.
Flowers set, verses read, and wind-blown. We decide to pack it in. I take a few photos of our adventure in the snow.
Time to go down the hill.
I go first. By the time I get down I’m thinking my cousin was right, and Florence will certainly fall, and not only will my cousin kill me, so will Florence’s kids. I visit the cemetery only to land myself in it.
I might have mentioned my alarm. Florence retorted that she’s tempted to lie down and make a snow angel.
As we imagine sending out a photo of Florence making a snow angel in the cemetery, we laugh and laugh.
I have one bright idea: Florence can use the emergency shovel as a cane. Tammy takes one side of her, and I prepare to catch if necessary.
Things go perfectly until I notice forward momentum is speeding Florence up. I gently grab her arm, and everyone stays upright. I go get the car.
When she is finally in with the door shut, I congratulate us all. Adventure complete, and not a single broken bone.
We have a tea party at the house. Then it’s time to drive Florence home.
I am walking to the driver’s side door of the car when I notice someone I don’t recognize lying in the front yard. I look over and see a tenant in their car; the person must be a friend.
I look back and yes, a person is on the ground.
They’re moving their arms and legs. A head pops up and I see it’s a woman. She looks at me and grins.
“Are you making a snow angel?” I ask.
“I am!” she says.
I get in the car and drive around the circle, then roll down my window so Florence can see her.
It’s about 3:40 pm when I drop Florence off. My mother died at 4:05 pm.
I can’t decide whether to go home as the hour strikes, or to go over to my cousin’s. His house is the one in which my mother grew up.
I decide to go to my cousin’s. I’ll confess to our adventure.
He isn’t home. I give him a call and he’s headed back, but an hour out. I ask if I can walk in the yard. He tells me I can walk there anytime.
I’m so happy to be at Bettie’s childhood home. I walk across the snow and sit on the brick wall, looking out at the river she loved so much. I look above the house and see an early moon in the afternoon sky.
Chopin’s Les Sylphides play on my headphones. It’s what was playing when she died; her ballet music.
We were so lucky. We had a difficult relationship, but we did have one. And both of us had a friend our entire lives—she Florence, and I Tammy.
Exactly a year after she dies, I spend the day with these friends. I am in my childhood home and hers. What extraordinary relationships.
The clock hits 4:05 and I walk back to the car across the snow.
“Good,” I say aloud. “I’m done now.” As she and I always signed off to the other,
Onward.
Loved this. I felt like I was right there with you… thanks for taking me along.
Such a beautiful story, Elizabeth. Thank you for writing about the special day.