The Last Leg

"Bill would HATE this," I commented as we drove up the winding mountain road; the higher we got, the steeper the drop-off. 

But the views! I would have loved them if I wasn't behind the wheel piloting us on the final 7 miles of our road trip to Mountain Lake Lodge. At 5:30, the December sun was long gone behind the mountains to the west, but the sky was magnificent. 

"Is that snow?" Heidi asked.

"Yup. Are those deer?" I asked in return.

And then, there it was: So many holiday lights! The lodge, the trees, the Christmas Village all lit up on the top of the mountain. Was it, dare I say? Dazzling?

Indeed it was.

Good for Something

In my many years of teaching English, I gave my fair share of standardized tests, both real and practice. Inevitably, there were student complaints, most along the lines of, "Why are the readings soooooo boring?" In real testing situations, I was prohibited by law from looking at these onerous passages, but the same was not true for the practice exams. Even so, I rarely read those tests carefully; usually, I was too busy grading and planning some activities that would actually teach the students to read and write rather than artificially gauge their abilities. But one day, the sighs and whimpers were too much. 

"What. is. wrong?" I asked.

"This test is soooooo boring!" a student whined, and many others agreed.

"What are you talking about?" I said and walked over to look at the passage. "Mysterious and Marvelous Mountain Lake" was the title. I quickly scanned the seven paragraphs and was not bored at all. Instead, I read a super interesting little article about one of the two natural lakes found in Virginia. For many years, its pattern of draining and filling baffled science until they discovered a huge drain hole in the bottom of the lake. It has also been a tourist destination for centuries: the first hotel was built in 1850.

"You guys!" I proclaimed. "This is NOT boring! Who knew there was such a marvelous and mysterious lake right here in Virginia!"

The class rolled their eyes at me.

"I mean it!" I doubled down. "It has a hole in it! It is beautiful! There is a historic hotel there! I am totally going on vacation to Mountain Lake one day!"

And that day? Is tomorrow! 

Last year, Heidi gave me a gift certificate to Mountain Lake Lodge for my birthday, and a few months ago, I booked a cabin there, just in time for their Christmas festivities. In addition to that lake, the Christmas Village and Marketplace, the miles of hiking trails, and other resort activities, the property was the filming location for Dirty Dancing. It's going to be uh-mazing!

I guess the SOL is good for something, after all.

Oh Hey, Heather

Reserve yours today! read the email. There is a Christmas Tree shortage this year. 

Heidi and I had been working to find the right time for this fun holiday chore, and this message galvanized me. Never mind the cold front sweeping through our region— wind chill be damned! We had to get our tree today! 

So I picked her up from school at 3, and we headed out to a local nursery—the very one who had sent me the email. The lot was deserted when we arrived, and there seemed to be no shortage of trees, so we sat a moment in the warm car, scoping out the situation as clouds of random topsoil and mulch swirled by. At last, I switched off the ignition, put on my mittens, and walked into the icy wind toward the nearest row of Fraser Firs.

A couple of days ago, I heard a story on the radio about the challenges that Christmas Tree farmers in North Carolina, the leading producer of Fraser Firs, were facing: climate change, extreme storms, and a spreading root rot called Phytophthora (Latin for plant destroyer). As bleak as that all sounded, I also learned that there is a whole field dedicated to preserving resilient Christmas Tree DNA, and that made me happy.

Today, I pulled out the second tree in the first row of Frasers, and dang! It was perfect. This particular nursery happens to name all of their trees, as regular readers may recall, and this one was Heather. We walked around a bit to make sure, but we needn't have, in less than 10 minutes, Heather was tied to the top of our car, and we were on the way home.

Riding the Cycle

By the time I retired last June, I'd been threatening to start a pickleball club at school for a couple of years. Unfortunately, the stars did not align: I was too busy, the activities coordinator was too busy, and the rec center attached to our school was unwilling to share space.

Since then, a couple of things have changed. Besides the fact that I'm no longer very busy at all (Hallelujah!), the activities coordinator offered the court on the school side of the fieldhouse if I was willing to do it on Wednesday when the teaching staff has meetings. I agreed, so he sent out a couple of messages on the LMS and added some info on the morning announcement, and today was the inaugural day. 

Of course, I came prepared. Knowing my clientele and the time of day we would meet, I researched age-appropriate strategies, drills, and games. I brought my bucket of balls, some cones, the extra paddles a parent donated last year, and some Jolly Ranchers. I also borrowed a Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese, Pizza deck from Heidi. (It's a good icebreaker, and the cards are like tickets for the winners of the mini-games and challenges.)

At 2:45, a group of ten seventh-grade boys voluntarily assembled. I knew eight of them. The court was in the middle of the unstructured after-school sports choice activity, which was a distraction as I led them through my own very structured activity. It wasn't flawless, but it worked, and at the end of the hour, the kids had a better knowledge of the game.

And now? I have lots of ideas for improvement. Of course.

Birthday Adventure

My aunt set her purse on the restaurant floor and scooted her chair over. We were on the final stop of our adventure, an outing we had planned to celebrate her 88th birthday. 

Over the last three hours she had given me a tour of historic Greenbelt, MD, the community she and my mom had grown up in. We had seen their houses and retraced their routes to school, the lake, the shopping center, and the pool. She had pointed out the tree under which the two of them waited every afternoon for my grandmother to return from her job at the Pentagon. "We saluted every car with a person in uniform in it," she laughed. "It was wartime, you know."

After Greenbelt, we drove the short distance to American Legion Post 136, a place I had spent quite a bit of time when I was a child. "Do you think we'll find any kittens in the window wells?" I joked as we approached the converted farmhouse. Trying the glass door, I was pleased to find it unlocked, and we showed ourselves in. There was a glass display case with some memorabilia, and I could see the restaurant and bar through a door beyond. We paused in a room with plaques on the wall engraved with the names of all the past commanders and presidents of the ladies' auxiliary. There we found the names of both of my grandparents. "Can I help you?" asked a woman of about 50 with some alarm. 

It turned out that the place was closed; we had only gotten in because the door was unlocked for the contractor who was onsite to give an estimate for roof repair. She politely showed us out, even as we explained who we were and why we were there. She shrugged with a mixture of apology and indifference at the mention of my grandfather and the baseball league named for him, and then she bolted the door behind us.

The next stop was the house where my grandparents lived when I was a child. It was smaller than in my recollection, but I could picture every room. There was the bay window in the dining room, the small kitchen window, my grandparents' bedroom, the attic. I reminded my aunt of how hot and stuffy the place would get on Sundays in winter, my grandfather would be cooking a prime rib and smoking a cigar and all the other adults were smoking, too. The gas fireplace was cranking heat and all the kids would lie with our faces on the cool plastic of the carpet runner, gasping for cool air on the floor.

And now we were at a restaurant known for its southern-style cooking. A young waitress came over to get our drink orders, but paused before she did to push a chair over to the other side of my aunt. "This is for your purse," she said.

I remembered a friend from work who told us that in some African American circles it's considered bad luck to put your purse on the floor. "Thank you!" I told our server, "Otherwise she'll never have any money!" 

She laughed and walked away. "Who cares?" my aunt said. "I feel rich, because today was such an amazing day!"

Adventures in Advent

"Did we have Advent Calendars when we were little?" my brother asked me the other day.

"No," I answered. "We had the Advent Wreath, and Mom lit a candle every Sunday until Christmas. Remember?"

He nodded.

"I don't think it was thing," I continued. "I never even saw one until I was in school in Switzerland."

By the time my nephews were kids I the 90s, Advent Calendars were easy to find at specialty stores like World Market. Their Grandma Judy used to get both of them their own with a chocolate for every day each year, and those simple cardboard jobs with a holiday scene printed on them were the same ones I remember seeing in Europe.

For a few years in the early oughts, I read one chapter a night in December from Jostein Gaarder's book, The Christmas Mystery, which is essentially a literary Advent Calendar. The book is written in daily chapters and tells the story of Joachim, a boy who finds an old Advent calendar that uncovers the story of a girl named Elisabet, who disappeared from her home fifty years earlier. Elisabet has been taken back through time and space, across Europe to Palestine, to see the Holy Family in Bethlehem. Two thousand years of history flash by, and angels, shepherds, and wise men join her on her joyful pilgrimage. Joachim makes it possible for her to come home. It was a nice way to mark the season.

I'm not sure when it happened, but sometime since then, Advent countdowns have exploded. Even the NY Times Wirecutter has reviews and recommendations of products that will help you count down the days until Christmas. Even so, it wasn't until I received an email in October of this year from a specialty coffee retailer offering 24 days of exquisite beans that I finally joined the fun. The coffee calendar was expensive but so appealing: maybe it was the retiree in me, but I could totally imagine Heidi and me sampling fine coffees from around the world each morning in December. "This is the Framily from Yirgachaffee," I might say. "Can you taste the notes of citrus and blueberry?"

And that is exactly how it has been, two days in. The calendar provides enough beans to brew a single pot of coffee we enjoyed together. But I was so excited about the prospect of the coffee that I also ordered an Advent jigsaw puzzle: it's 1,000 pieces parceled out into 24 little boxes so that each day, Heidi and I work together to assemble 40 or so pieces to add to a fun holiday scene. 

And as if that wasn't enough, my sister got Heidi a gnome-themed Advent Calendar for her birthday in November. Even though it hasn't been exactly as advertised, we have had fun the last couple of mornings opening the little windows to discover what non-gnome thing is in there. Then we put an ornament hanger on it, and hang it on the tiny pine tree in the pot out in front of our house. It looks adorable.

So, yeah, I get it. I see you, Advent, and I'm all in.

Too Kind

It's been a warm fall, but the absence of our regular wood peddlers has been notable. The last time we saw Lisa, she was rolling an oxygen tank behind her. As always, I'm sure she rang the doorbell and stepped respectfully back from the stoop. "I see y'all need a fill-up," she might have said, gesturing to our wood rack. 

I probably agreed, or more likely, Heidi did because she's usually the one to answer the door, but I'm sure I paid Lisa when she and her cousin were finished stacking the firewood they had hauled from their truck. 

"That should take you through to next year," I'm pretty sure she promised.

And I know I nodded agreeably. "Thank you," I answered. "Take care," I hope I added as I handed over the cash we always kept on hand for these transactions. "See you in the fall."

When the doorbell rang this morning, I knew it had to be her. It was December 1, 38 degrees, and our wood rack was getting low. From the kitchen, I could hear more conversation than usual when Heidi answered the door, and through the window, I saw Lisa's cousin. I went around to the front door.

"How much do we usually pay to fill the rack?" Heidi asked me. In a quieter voice, she added, "Lisa died this summer, and she wants to make sure she charges us the right amount."

"I'm so sorry," I said to the woman at the door. "We have always really appreciated the excellent service you have given us."

"Thank you," she nodded. "Lisa always wanted to make sure we took care of you. She always said, 'We gotta stop by the girls' house to see if they need anything.' I don't know what you paid, but I want to keep it the same out of respect to her."