Neighbors

Last week at this time, I was delighted to find the above postcard in the day's mail:  The stranger I'd briefly talked with on a walk in February to whom I'd sent a surprise Valentine had written back.  The postcard's front was one of Monet's dreamy water lily paintings.  The note on the back mentions that, "[His] water lilies also resemble hearts."  Yes.  The postcard had made my day anyway, but that observation continues to tickle me.  How sweet this world can be.   

♥

On Its Way to a Neighbor

While out walking a couple weeks ago, I noticed the heart-shaped Ivy leaves growing along the front of a house.  I paused to take a few pictures of them, and while crouched down to get the right angle, I heard someone call out, "Is something interesting?"  I felt a momentary flutter of panic then realized I could hear a smile in the voice.  I looked up and saw a woman backing her car into the house's driveway while she waited for my response.  I explained that the Ivy had heart-shaped leaves and that they were too striking not to photograph.  Still smiling, she said she was glad to hear that something on her property was photogenic.  She had been living there for more than forty years, she went on, and it was nice to hear that other people saw things they liked about it.  The property is beautiful, so I easily found more than a couple other "photogenic" things to mention about it.  "Are you a professional photographer?" was her next question.  I explained about my walks and how the camera makes them more fun for me, and as I gestured to her Ivy again, she commented that the picture would make a nice Valentine.  She was quite right, so after making a mental note of her house's number, I had the photo made into a greeting card last week and I mailed it out to her address this morning.  I have been wrong about things like this before, but I am guessing this pleasant person will not mind the surprise. 

In Mom and Dad's Yard

Having returned from a brief trip home to Mom and Dad yesterday, I've already enjoyed a big part of my Christmas.  This week's "Merry Early Christmas!" visit, as it's come to be known in our family, at least according to my older niece and nephew's now-traditional greetings, was one of the sweetest ever.  I had so much fun--I think we all did--everyone seemed to be happy with the gifts they gave and received, my newest niece was even tinier than she'd looked in pictures and just as cuddly as I'd imagined and spent a good deal of our meeting asleep snuggled into my shoulder, I did some cupcake-decorating for Mom, enjoyed a lasagna dinner with my parents, brothers, and their wives and children Tuesday evening, and exchanged gifts with my parents while watching the Waltons' Homecoming movie--one of my all-time favorites--until midnight Tuesday night.  Mom and I went to bed at two in the morning then got up three hours later to head to the bus station with Dad.  I said "I love you" to him at the same moment he said "A short Christmas is better than none," and I cried while I watched his and Mom's car pull out of the bus station parking lot a minute later.  All the snow--more than a foot--in their yard added to the magic of this Christmas.  Temperatures are warming up--it's supposed to be in the lower sixties here on Saturday--but while I was home, it was a winter wonderland, and after I'd finished wrapping the gifts I'd had shipped to my parents' address and before my brothers and their families arrived for dinner, I borrowed a pair of Dad's boots and clomped around the yard taking pictures. 

Mom always decorates the back steps.  The only shame of heading outside to take snow pictures Tuesday afternoon was that doing so temporarily scared away all the birds that come to my parents' trees and feeders.  Dad and I both love Chicadees best of all, and we spend a good amount of any wintertime visit standing still at the sliding glass door or one of the kitchen windows watching them flit around.  Chubby loves, they're such dear little birds. 

These are the steps I kept checking and worrying over before baby Bianca was carried up them for this first visit to my parents' house Tuesday.  Dad had kept an eye on them too, and I think they and the yard were more thick-with-snow than slippery. 

The Rhododendrons had had the sweetest cone-shaped piles of snow on top of each leaf cluster Tuesday morning, but by the time I ventured outside, the snow had melted some.  Off and on all Tuesday morning and afternoon, Mom, Dad, and I would call out bird updates to each other as we watched this feeder and a few others that can be seen from the kitchen.  "The female Cardinal's back!"  ♥  ". . .Look to your right"--"I'm still not seeing her"--"She's not the red one, the males are red"--"I know that, Dad, but I still don't--Oh, I see her now, yeah."  ♥  "Look how CHUBBY this one is!  Oh, I love Chicadees!  They look like little wind-up toys!"  ♥  "Mom, move slowly, but look at this Dove.  It's HUGE.  I thought a CAT had jumped into the tree."  ♥  "And there's that nasty Blue Jay, scaring them all away." --"It's so pretty, though, Dad."  ♥  On and on, all day Tuesday until it grew dark out. 

At our last apartment, Mike and I saw birds in our yard and on our fire escape all the time, but not so in this one--a couple Gold Finches spent some time in a tree out back months ago, and that was the last memorable bird-sighting--so it is always a joy to watch the trees and feeders while at my parents' house. 

Magical.  ♥

Such a gorgeous snow. 

One of my parents' neighbors kindly plowed their long driveway while I was trudging around taking these pictures. 

I stepped off to the side to get out of his way and ended up in snow almost to my knees, but oh!  It was all so beautiful. 

The Sumac trees out back are lovely all year long, but their drupes show so vividly against the winter sky. 

I think gardens are every bit as beautiful in winter.  It's easier to admire the tree branches' shapes and the flowers' forms when they're bare but for the snow.

I love winter skies.  Christmas decorations and cards always seem to feature greenery, but it's the bare trees that really say winter to me.  This hill is across the road from my parents' front yard and their view from the living room and my former bedroom. 

'Amazing that this all will have melted in a few day's time. 

From inside the living room--

--and looking toward my former bedroom's windows.

And back inside and looking out the kitchen window before beginning cupcake-decorating and table-setting. 

The one snow picture I didn't get was one I shared with my parents after I came inside:  While the three of us watched the birds for a few moments from inside the sliding glass door, the sun began to set over the sparkling field behind their house, and its last hurrah was to make it and the trees around it glow in the day's first--and last--truly golden light.  For a minute before my brief visit home's Tuesday afternoon became Tuesday evening, the entire backyard was a shining soft yellow, and those moments, while Mom, Dad, and I watched, standing together on the sheets of newspaper beside my dripping borrowed boots, was one of my favorites from this sweet visit.  Photographers call this the "golden hour" or "magic hour."  And it was.  It really was.  Merry Early Christmas, indeed.  ♥

One Christmas Eve

Now that I'm decades older than I was in this photo, I better understand how much effort it took my parents to make the kind of Christmas for me and my brothers that's pictured here.  In the mid-1980s, my parents were in their thirties, my brothers and I were all under the age of twelve, and only my dad worked outside the home. Although Christmas Eve dinners at my parents' house for a number of years now has meant a shrimp tray, oyster stew (or clam chowder?  I skip it and don't remember), a pot roast, and various sides and desserts, Christmas Eve's supper was not that elaborate when my brothers and I were kids.  I don't remember what we ate in those days, and whatever it was, I'm sure my mom made it special for us, but she and Dad are certainly living more comfortably now than they were in the mid-1980s.  

Awhile after we'd finished eating supper one Christmas Eve, there was a knock at the front door.  Our nearest family was my grandparents half an hour away, and we knew it wouldn't be them, so none of us could think of anyone who would be visiting us at such an hour the night before Christmas.  Dad roused himself from his blue slipcovered chair and stepped out onto the front porch, while Mom and my brothers and I waited and wondered.  After a few moments, Dad called out  a Goodnight and Merry Christmas to whoever he'd been listening to and walked back into the living room carrying with a large pizza box.  "From Marv and Debbie!" he declared, explaining that the delivery person had said that our neighbors across the street had ordered it for us and wished our family a happy holiday.  Our neighbors!  A pizza!  A second supper of anything--and on Christmas Eve!  Mom quickly cleared a space for the box on the coffee table that always served as our snack table back then, and soon we were laughing at the surprise and novelty of it as we ate our slices.  I remember that we all agreed how nice it was of our neighbors, and I remember too that that pizza was loaded:  I'd never seen so many toppings before and probably wasn't even aware that pizzas could be topped with all the ingredients our neighbors has ordered for ours.  Green peppers?!  Black olives?!  Sausage?!  Wow!  Ours was an especially happy--and especially full--family when we went to bed that night. 

I only remember a few moments from a few other childhood Christmas Eves, and that is the only Christmas Eve meal I remember at all.  I'm sure Mom and Dad thanked the neighbors, and if we hadn't done so already, I'm sure we kids decorated sugar cookies for Marv and Debbie later or colored a winter coloring book page for their refrigerator.  Marv was a walrus-mustached older man with glasses who I remember as always wearing a white t-shirt that showed off his arm tattoos.  Debbie was also older than my parents, and her bleached-blonde hair contrasted memorably with her year-round tan.  If Marv is remembered as sporting Fonzie-esque t-shirts, Debbie always comes to mind wearing a tank top.  Surely, this isn't what they wore in cold weather, but this is the only picture that ever comes to mind of them.  Their home reeked of cigarettes.  Their motor-home remained parked outside their garage the three or so years they lived across from us.  They gave me and my younger brother a giant stuffed dog that had belonged to Marv's now-grown son.  When Marv's high school-age daughter visited him one summer week, she and I were allowed to camp out overnight in their trailer and then go back-to-school clothes-shopping together at the mall the next afternoon.  "Don't show me what you bought.  Try it on for me so I can see you wearing it," Debbie chided us as she mashed her cigarettes into one of the many ash trays around the house when we returned.  "If I wanted to see clothes on hangers, I'd just go to the store myself."  I still hear her saying that every time I show Mike or my mom any item of clothing I've bought.  The Christmas Eve Pizza remains their most memorable kindness to our young family, though.  It speaks to the sweetness of surprise and the comfort in discovering that someone has been paying attention and is looking out for you.  Angels tend to be depicted in flowing gowns and gossamer wings, but in the mid-1980s, two chain-smoking ultra-tanned and multi-tattooed ones visited our home in the guise of a pizza delivery driver, and their act of kindness gave us not just unexpectedly full bellies but also delightfully full hearts.