A hot tub was not on our radar until we made plans to get the back deck resurfaced. I remembered how much we enjoyed the built-in tub at our place in Virginia, so I thought we could extend the deck and add a spa. Bob liked the idea and our friends with hot tubs said we wouldn’t regret it.

We went with Ted’s recommendation and chose the Aria, a five-seater Freshwater Salt System Spa with pulsating jets and a triple stream fountain. The price tag was staggering, but we had the money and figured it would help ease our aches and pains for the next twenty years or so.

We decided to name it Sweetwater in honor of the crumbling tree house in our back yard where I used to sit and relax before it became unsafe.

But first, we had to get a concrete pad thick enough to support 4,600 pounds—the estimated weight of the tub, the water, and five passengers.

We had them throw in a sidewalk to the garage because, why not? (It also made the concrete load large enough to be viable.) It’ll keep our shoes from picking up grass clippings and dragging them into our cars.

A few weeks later, we watched four guys wrestle the tub from their truck onto the pad that Bob (aka “Project Manager”) had measured and marked with blue tape for the precise location.

And then Bob, aka “Spa Boy”, filled it with water. He tests the water nearly every day and is continually tweaking the salt, pH, total alkalinity, chlorine, and who knows what else.

After everything was in place, Martin and Pedro replaced our back porch flooring and added a step-down deck just six paces from our back door. I’m not going to lie, those six steps can be excruciating in the cold. But then we soak in that 100° water and gaze at the sky or make idle conversation until our bones are glowing.

I also picked up a water toy at the PTA Thrift Store in Pittsboro. We named him Hector. Bob pointed out that Hector is not a true octopus because he only has six legs.

We usually visit Sweetwater after dinner and TV—no more climbing into a chilly bed with frosty bones. We watch the planes, pick out constellations, and sometimes bathe in moonlight or catch glimpses of shooting stars. Occasionally, we have our morning coffee out there and watch the birds start the day.

So yeah, our new spa was a splurge, but it has already been life-changing. Our muscles and joints feel exceptionally supple, we sleep better, and winter has become bearable. No regrets here.

Something must have died, but I can’t see it from my desk.

When Bob and I pull out of the driveway an hour later for our trip to the gym, we see a dozen Black vultures and one dead squirrel. “Doesn’t look like much of a meal,” Bob says. We drive over another meaty smear a mile down the road, and I watch him steady the steering wheel, straddling the kill to avoid getting any on the tires.

The squirrels are everywhere these days, poinging around the yard, burying acorns. Bob calls them “Gay rats on acid,” which makes me laugh every time, politically correct or not. I watch the staccato movement of their shoulder blades ripple beneath their thick grey fur and marvel at their long fingers patting the sod back into place over each little stash.

“This one must be a youngster,” I say, and Bob jumps up from his desk to watch a squirrel with no meat on its bones bent over a nut hole outside our big windows. He won’t admit it, but he’s as fascinated as I am.

I’m washing dishes when I see one clinging to a wooden post, snatching at a deep red Oklahoma rose before scrambling to earth to munch down a blood-colored petal. I half expect to see her wipe her mouth. When I tell Bob, he says, “Those fuckers,” voicing my thoughts.

The squirrels are not alone in their quest for calories. We hear rustling through our open bedroom window at night, so Bob places a trail camera next to the fig tree. A couple of days later, we watch the footage: lumbering possums at night and hyped-up squirrels during the day.

That evening, we tuck into our easily-gotten dinner on the porch while the squirrels hop around the lawn, still working for their calories. One perches on a garden tote and stays even after I yell. Bob picks up a frisbee and hurls it to make him jump down. Even though I appreciate how hard they work for food, I can’t stand the idea of them digging up our carrots.

How can they know that although the acorns are theirs, we consider the carrots and the roses ours? Like all life on earth, they are just doing what comes naturally, trying to stay alive through another winter. How lucky Bob and I are that we were born in an era of prosperity and ease. We do not take it for granted that we can eat pretty much anything we want whenever we choose, without tanks rumbling down our street.

I feed the guilt
From indoor things I didn’t do
To the tawny canine
Yawning at my feet
Scrap by scrap

Take this, spring dog
Here is the writing I didn’t do
The un-edited audio tapes
The jigsaw in its box
My dead mother’s unread letters

Take the languishing clay
The pointed colored pencils
And all the unread books

Take it all, Spring Dingo, eat it up
Make me lighter
Set me free

In my last dream, I was driving on a highway with two passengers who felt like family. We had to get out of the city—Denver, I think it was—but we were escaping from bad people and had not been able to plan our route.

“I think 6th Avenue will take us north and out,” I said. Flanked by purposeful drivers in fast cars, we scanned the signs for the words, “Ft. Collins,” or “Wyoming.” I wanted to slow down but that was impossible.

The dream before that had me telling a kindly, older gentleman how I’d just returned from Europe after giving away my baby. “My second giveaway baby,” I told him, reaching for his white, wrinkled hand, my eyes pleading for a kind word. Joni Mitchell’s song rang in my head, “Everything comes and goes,” and I began to cry.

In a third dream, a crazed mental patient crawled into my bed and threatened to kill me. I easily disabled him, frail as he was. Then I went searching for a nurse or an orderly to take him into custody. I found them celebrating the holidays and had difficulty getting their attention. “Look,” I said, “This guy has already killed several people!”

~*~

Bad people, lost highways, abandoned children, and demented patients. I’m surprised I didn’t wake with blood pouring from my nose. But that will happen a little deeper into the cold season, after a couple more months of forced-air heat.

I get up, pee, weigh myself, and slink back into bed. Three pounds over. I am a fat, winter refugee, lost and fleeing. No surprises here. Typical, sucky, winter morning. I reach for Bob and he reaches back. Thank god for Bob.

I get up and begin padding my day with purpose. I start a load of laundry, make a pot of coffee. I’ll have to do yoga and run errands. I could clean the bathrooms, get out the Windex and wash the mirrors. I drag my notebook to the fat, plaid chair between our bedroom windows to write.

Would I even get up if it weren’t for Bob? Can I give my life purpose if he dies? I feel a twinge of pain in my neck. The washer grinds away. I’m stuck in the corner chair.

Get up. Keep moving. If you stop, you’ll freeze to death. Find your way out.

She picks up the blue-handled knife and hesitates before slicing this perfect orb in half. It feels like a beheading, or the end of an era. She quarters it and cuts a notch away from each piece at the stem end.

Pulling down two monkey dishes, she fills them with slices. She puts a wedge into her mouth, and using her tongue to trap it between her molars, begins to mash it up. The flavor is magnificent.

She goes to the window and looks out at the tree that bore this perfect fruit, golden leaves at its feet, branches naked and sprawling. Exposed. She looks away in embarrassment. Didn’t those branches have leaves a few weeks ago? How we change from one season to the next.

Searching her memory, she finds images from the day her husband — the man who promised to grow old with her when their hair was still thick and dark — planted this tree. She finds an impression of him digging the hole, and tries to remember helping him place the sapling, gently, into that hole.

It occurs to her that humans have only one spring, one summer, one fall, and if they’re lucky — or not, depending on your perspective — one winter. Unlike the trees, humans do not drop their leaves and grow back new ones. Instead, they continue down the same linear path from cradle to grave.

She sets the other dish next to her partner and watches him reach for this last slice of summer. “Is it spring yet?” he asks on cold mornings. “I hate winter,” she says, tugging on a pair of black fleece loungers.

Although it crossed our minds to weenie out, we are walking early morning laps around Rock Ridge Park. We look like bank robbers, but there is no one to see us, no one dumb enough to trade chapped skin and dry sinuses for chit chat and exercise.

Bob and I get up in the dark and retire in blackness. The sun ditches us before I finish pulling dinner together, so I turn on the lights and pull the drapes. I feel cloistered, but what can you do? My kitchen lights up like a diorama when it’s dark outside, and I prefer no one see me poking around the stove in my fluffy socks and tired flannel. Lit up like this, we look like Billy Pilgrim and Montana Wildhack in their Tralfamadorian zoo cage, only not as young or sexy.

Bob sees me rush to the window and raises an eyebrow, so I let him in on my diorama bias. “You don’t look in people’s windows, do you?” he says, and I have to confess that I do. As a child, I took voyeuristic pleasure in what I glimpsed from the back seat of Dad’s Ford on the way home from Sunday dinner at Nana’s. I entertained myself with stories about the people watching TV, getting ready for bed, and working in their kitchens. Illuminated windows still draw my attention, even when I’m behind the wheel.

Only a few days ago, after a week of open-window weather, I brushed aside willow oak leaves and pushed Cylindra seeds into the loamy soil. I’m not a risk-taker by nature, but the stakes are low. Either they’ll sprout and flourish, or they won’t. We’ve got lots of beet seeds, way more than we’ll use this season. Working my way westward, I planted Detroit Dark beets, May Queen and Buttercrunch lettuce, and smooth-leaf spinach.

We’ll see if they make it. Time will tell. Hopefully, I’ll make it, too, through another dark winter without too many people seeing me at my worst.

A few wheelbarrow loads later, one bed done and one halfway beautified, I think, just one more, and my back groans. I’m in a race with time to get the mulch deployed as quickly as possible. If I’m quick about it, the weeds won’t get the upper hand and the summer will be easy. This is the time of year for pushing through, mind over matter. It’s the season of ibuprofen, liniment, and extra yoga.

I see why the tourists who stayed with us in Belize and Nicaragua said they couldn’t live there because they had to have their seasons. At the time, we didn’t get it. Bob and I chewed on it a lot and decided they were only talking about one season, spring. We figured they loved spring because it followed winter, that abysmal stretch of cold, dead months so familiar to northerners. Now, after the winter we just had, I see their point.

I have to admit, spring in North Carolina is glorious. It’s sleeping with the windows open time. Everything’s coming to life in the yard, peonies popping. Birds going ape shit, singing their hearts out. Especially the whacked out mocking birds, who evidently are the last to find mates and settle down. If they would just shut up for a few minutes, or at least stop repeating themselves and pretend to listen, the she-birds would flock to their sides.

But every penny has its backside, and the downside of spring is this: my writing life takes a huge hit. Spring is a gut punch to anything desk-related.

I did sit at my desk the other day long enough to put together my summer schedule. In an effort to encourage myself to write without adding undue pressure, I changed the word “write” to “Create!” If this doesn’t get my creative juices flowing, nothing will, I thought. Less than a week later, I pitched that schedule out the window.

I had the whole day to myself on Thursday, no social commitments, and could have spent hours crafting some great piece of writing. As it turned out I spent most of the day working outside. We had a long, crappy winter, and now I can finally get outside and pretty up the place. That $165 load of mulch is going to keep me happy for weeks.

After two (or four) wheelbarrow loads, I come inside, fish a couple of stray pieces of bark from my tank top, and wash my hair. I dry it with a clean, sun-kissed towel I just pulled off the line along with our pillows and bed sheets. It’s burrito night, and we are halfway through a good movie. Clean hair, towel, and sheets. I’ve hit the simple pleasure trifecta. Christmas in April, spring is the best!
 
 

It helps that Bob dislikes winter as much as I do, and that he loves me unreservedly even when I’m stuck in the shadows. It helps that I have a job which forces me outside, and that my desk faces south. It helps that I have walking buddies. Shelley and I share our best and worst stories every week over a long walk. Lately, we’ve been shaking off holiday stress by bursting into song with: “It’s the most wonderful time, of the year!” It makes us laugh, and clears our lungs. Of course, we’re kidding.

To make things worse, there’s pressure to make the holiday season bright. And while I love the holiday lights, I find myself attracted to the blue bulbs. There are ample opportunities for making merry, but I’m not in the mood. I end up hugging the food table and stuffing myself with sweets. I keep my car radio tuned to holiday tunes, but the phrase that sticks in my head is Elvis’s “I’ll have a blue Christmas…”

Every winter is harder on my Mom and Dad, hanging in there at eighty-five and ninety-one. I’m concerned that one or both might not make it through another winter, and wish I could make things easier for my brothers who are taking an active part in their care. I regret that my childhood memories aren’t sunnier, even though I know very few people can say their images of Christmases past match the Normal Rockwell archetypes.

And so I’ve developed strategies for coping. Here are five of my favorites:

Go for a walk outside, preferably with a friend
Take a long, hot shower
Sit down and write about the challenges of the holiday season
Put on some music and sing along
Bake some cookies and give them away

Last week, I surprised my neighbor, Noah, on his twelfth birthday by bringing a plate of chocolate chip cookies to him at school. On Sunday, Judy and I went for a walk, and decided to go off-trail. When we reached Stinking Creek, we immersed ourselves in the business of dragging logs to make a crossing. “I feel like I’m 9 years old,” she laughed, and I agreed. I’m sixty-three, and Judy is ten years older.

In addition to my favorite tricks, I’m drinking a lot of water, getting plenty of sleep, and enjoying my friends one at a time. I am not forcing myself to be sociable, or indulging my afternoon cravings for caffeine. In this way, I walk the line between withdrawal and engagement. I assure myself the days are already getting longer – a whole two seconds longer today, the first day after winter solstice. And I know from experience, that I’ll make it back into the light.

Bob wants to know what I’ll do with all my free time, now that Honey Sandwiches is published. I tell him I don’t know, and he looks a little startled. I sense him thinking, “Who are you, and what have you done with my wife?”

We’ve been a little edgy with each other lately. I’ll add that to the blame list. Neither of us thrives in the short, cold days of waning daylight. Thank god Helen turned us on to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Coffee gives me a reason to get out of bed, and dinner with Midge, the will to limp through the day.

I don’t remember feeling this way after Steph and I published Two Brauds Abroad. We had a lot of help from her mother, Andrea, so the editing process wasn’t nearly as onerous as this time around. Two Brauds wasn’t Andrea’s first rodeo; she’d worked in publishing and published half a dozen books of her own. “I love helping birthing baby books!” she exclaimed. She didn’t mention the risk of addiction to birthing books, or post publication depression, and neither kicked in until this, my second child.

I should be making veggie burgers. Or backing up my files, or deep cleaning the kitchen cupboards. Instead, I spend twenty minutes crafting a witty response to someone’s Facebook post, and resume staring out the window at another short day.

At the height of my push to finish the book by mid-December, I confided to Shelley that I had jettisoned “shoulds” from my life. She’d been super busy, too, and was also operating in prime-objective-only mode. “It feels good,” we agree, vowing to avoid shoulds after my editing flurry and her holiday imperatives pass.

Honey Sandwiches – From Riches to Rags went live on Amazon.com yesterday morning. I placed more than a dozen orders for books to be shipped to family across the U.S. before driving in to work. I high-fived Hannah and Jenn, my writing buddies at Abundance NC. I ran errands, and mopped up a water leak, and hauled a load of wet towels to the laundromat. The flat sky began spitting ice. Eventually, I made my way home to Bob and Mrs. Maisel.

Today, my accomplishment seems anticlimactic. The project is done, the unrivaled call for my attention, gone. I’m adrift, and it isn’t even a nice day for a long walk. But, I’ll rally with a few imperatives; I’ll make tortilla roll-ups for the Janeri Merry Chilimas party, finish off the Christmas cards, and wash my hair. Maybe I’ll write a blog post. And, if I get desperate, I can dip into my “shoulds” and make a batch of veggie burgers.

Bob and I were part of this group, a handful of long-time friends and neighbors, two eager youngsters and one sweet infant, hanging in a sling off his father’s torso like a mast head.

We had a time getting the fire to flare and were beginning to despair that Winter had won. Jason sacrificed a stack of old waxed produce boxes. Rachel and Linus came back and forth with buckets of dried wire grass. The rest of us worked branches out from the edges of the pile to feed the meager flame.

And then Liz remembered the location of some dry and seasoned wood. Several people went and fetched some robust logs and lay them together in a pyramid over the embers and we fed that.

By the time all light had left the horizon we had a roaring flame going. A white man’s fire which made us all step back a few paces in the face of its heat. A fire to end winter once and for all, showering Cassiopia in orange glitter.

Earlier that day, Liz and I had gone for a walk in the woods and ended up bushwhacking along Stinking Creek to an open area where two very smooth boulders nested amid the icy water of the creek. It was a magical place which captivated our senses. The dappled light, burbling creek, smooth shapes and greening grass all seemed something from the pages of a children’s book.

Liz wore flip flops, her way of nodding goodbye to winter and I soon had my jacket tied around my waist. We felt like explorers, stepping down onto those rocks, feeling them with our hands. Yes, they felt cold, but we imagined them warmed by Summer sun and covered in a spread of picnic lunch. We stepped across the creek and found a wide trail peppered with hoof prints – horse prints, that is. And a plastic robot half buried in the dead grass. We were as delighted by our discoveries as children, happily babbling about our adventure to Jason and Haruka upon our return.

Much later, after the bonfire, I went home and slept soundly. I felt a lightness in my heart, as if I really had helped escort out a cold, drab season in favor of one sunny and green. The next day was promisingly warm and bright and we encountered people wearing shorts, all ignoring forecasts for one more arctic blast next week.

Time will tell if our efforts had the desired effect but whether it snows again or not, the exercise was pleasingly cathartic. We people of the bend had burned winter in effigy, a team of exorcists enacting an age old ritual involving fire, song and dance.