The give and take - #145

Winter has arrived.

It’s cold in the loft. My wrists rest on the cooler-like temperature of my laptop, left up here as I remain increasingly busy with a 2-foot human. It tempers the warm blood in my veins, running back to my heart like running inside from the wind. My whole body chills. The window next to me is taped up at the seams with ducting tapes, its silver shine blending in with the other holiday decor. There is still an unsubtle breeze coming from the cheap panes. Winter is here.

The house, for this moment, is empty — save for a few cats. Ben is skiing in the backcountry, the avalanche danger high. His mom has the baby strapped to her as they hike up the pass, Jibs at her heels. Ben’s father left too, taking his own dog to catch up to his wife and his grandson. And I am not just at my computer, but at my desk.

I am at my desk! I don’t know if you’ve ever had a child, and then attempted to work while keeping that child, but being at my desk feels like finding a mixtape from high school. What will I find in these folders! What treasures are in these drawers! Look at who I used to be, the foundation of who I am! Of course, in reality, all there is to see here is that the climbing aloe has ascended another couple of inches, making her maybe 16 inches tall now, and she has sprouted an off-shoot who is a charming three inches by her side, not at all emblematic of my own situation.

Off to the side, my tradescantia has decided one pot is not enough for her. She has invaded the fishbone cactus and she’s on her way to the kangaroo fern. We’re going to need to re-pot her somewhere she can’t harass her neighbors. Though maybe the fern is calling to her. It has, after all, exploded and has such an array of aerial roots that I’m wondering if perhaps it would also like a bigger house.

I would not. The house is as big as it needs to be, perhaps bigger, as evidenced by the ability of things to appear everywhere, and more things are appearing: in the mailbox, at our doorstep, under the tree. It is the season of things, and there is (looks out the window nervously) a child here. A child cannot buy things, and yet, there things are.

This season more than any before, my circle (locally, broadly, online) seems hyper aware of the stuff problem. Going into Black Friday I had a very short list of sites I was looking at with a tight list of things I wanted: size 2 diapers from Esembly that W3 would need in about a month, a particular rug from Revival Rugs for our bedroom so my feet weren’t freezing when I rocked W3 in his size 2 diapers in the night, and if they had a sale, this one carrot blanket from Myum. They didn’t have a sale, so I didn’t get it.

We also bought bulk sale options of contact solution, dish detergent, and some other household necessities we know we’ll always need. Now is the time when we check the mail every other day. We collect our mail at a very small post office, and our mailman Michael is always stressed about how infrequently people pick up their packages through the holiday season, sometimes leaving him as little as three square feet of space to operate in.

Michael is already feeling the heat of the cold season, as the ten parcel lockers are full nearly every day. Packages are already piling up in his small room, and that was before the big sales hit. We are a country of stuff, and it’s hard to resist the siren song of the great cultural driver of capitalism. Just on my desk — my sweet, sweet desk — there is a snake-shaped lamp; a little pot holding hand balm, a hair clip, and a clearing crystal covered in dust; an incense dish from Mexico City with a piece of Palo Santo burning; a tiny ceramic pot holding matches; a Good & Well candle (Cuyahoga Valley, where I grew up, the scent of ripe pumpkin, cinnamon, and spices); several books including Kari Leibowitz’s How to Winter, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack, Mountains of the Gods by Ian Cameron, and Jungalow by Justina Blakeney; a coaster of stone and wood is keeping my yellow Yeti mug company; there is a sketchbook full of cut-outs of interior design ideas; there’s a notebook in case I need to write something down in which nothing is written down; on a small slab of wood sits a mug with a Vicki Sawyer print on it, and the mug is full of various weight pens; then there is a small bauble container shaped like a tomato but painted fuchsia, and in it there is an old necklace of my grandma’s alongside two fortunes taped for posterity: “Your independence shall lead you to bold adventures.” and “Your genuine talent will find its way to success.”

That is all the stuff on my desk. Plus the climbing aloe and its offspring, the welcoming fishbone cactus, and the traveling tradescantia. I will not even attempt to detail all the things in the desk, under the desk, or very near to the desk. Suffice to say, there is more stuff. There’s also the desk.

But I am of a gift family, and I did ask for things. I asked for boots and socks and a folding gym mat. I asked for air-drying clay and wool onesies. I asked for mental clarity and better sleep. I asked for more time in the day. I asked for homemade funnel cake. I asked for biscuits that rise at 10,000 feet. I asked for a windfall. I asked for less windfall. I did ask for things.

These things, the actual, physical things, are anchors. After I accrued so many things in college, I started to bleed them. I would move to whole new states in the effort to un-thing myself so I could become something else. Now, things keep the house from blowing away. They keep me from doing the same. The piles of puzzles I’d like to do again, the bowl of coins and worry dolls and shells from places I can’t quite place, the heaps of blankets and towels that always seem like too many until something goes wildly and catastrophically wrong. The piles and piles and piles of books. Books as plant stands, books as walls, books as nightstands, table supports, and computer platforms. Books as promises, books as gifts, books as, well, books.

In this room alone there are bikes and trunks, pillows and chairs, bags of soil and bags of bags, posters and paintings and things pinned to the wall. There are things from the Caymans and things from Costa Rica, there are things from thrift stores and things from Amazon. There are things I made and things Ben made. There are things that were gifted, handed down, or left. There are things we don’t even know what they’re for but we like them so much we kept them.

It’s a house after all. And a house without things is… well it’s this. Or it’s for sale. Or it lost the thing that called it a home. A home has things.

Gates were installed on our county road this past month to prevent travel during avalanche mitigation. Previously we would just put up our rinky dink signs and locals would drive past them if they needed to but everyone got the jist: try not to drive through while the avalanche is being triggered. But now there’s more oversight by people with job titles so there is some guarantee that all these people with all their things can get back to those things safely.

We’ve got all the things we need. A solar battery and a battery of wood. Frozen meals and frozen bread and frozen butter and frozen meat. Fleeces and wools and mittens and hats so we don’t end up frozen. A desk. Some puzzles. Some presents under the tree. Each other. That’s winter for you. She takes the leaves and the soil. She takes the sunlight and the heat. She takes her time, here at least. And so we give some things to each other to take a little back.

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