Books We Love Insider Blog: winter fun

Cold, tired, eyes full of blue, black and glitter--that for me was January after our family moved to upstate New York in the early 1950's. I arose in the dark, ate oatmeal and the obligatory spoonful of cod liver oil chased with a shot glass of orange juice, and then got ready for the school bus--boots, leggings, coat, scarf and gloves plus whatever homework I had before trudging out into the sunrise over the snow banks. In those days, the snow had been piling up since October, and by now it was also well glazed with ice. I remember shivering, standing on our porch sheltering from the ever-present North wind and peering, eyes watering, into the gold and red of sun just cresting the stand of trees on the next ridge, anxious to see the bus in time to get down the long driveway in time to meet it. (Needless to say, there was BIG TROUBLE if I didn't.)

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I remember playing outside in that cold with friends on most Saturdays. There were sliding hills, of course, but there were also enormous drifts in every yard to exploit. We'd tunnel into them and then sit inside, pretending we were in caves or that we were Indians or Inuit, sheltering during a winter hunting expedition. I remember me and my friends bringing candles, throw rugs, dolls and matches along to better enjoy our pretend.

After we'd furnished our "igloo," we'd light the candles and apply the flame to the wall and ceiling of until it dripped. The melt would speedily refreeze, but after a great deal of this careful work, we achieved a shiny frozen shell that might endure, during a truly bad winter, well into March. Mittens beaded with frozen pellets of snow, toes aching from the cold penetrating our boots, we'd enter child's fantasy land. I have no idea how we endured outside as long as we did, before the inevitable surrender and numb escape indoors for warmth and hot chocolate. Those physical experiences, even so long ago, helped me to imagine some pivotal scenes in "Fly Away Snow Goose."

There are many birthdays for me to celebrate in January--of the living and the dead. Two cousins were born in this month, but also two of grand-girls, the youngest of whom just turned twenty-one! They are all Capricorns, like my mother, whose birthday was also in this month. (How many families, I wonder, have this aggregation of birthdays in a single month?)

In the days when my Muse was visiting, I also celebrated the birthdays of two Dead White Men during the month. Alexander Hamilton's birthday is January 11, either in 1755 or 1757, as historians argue over the date. Paper records kept in tropical Nevis have not always survived.

Perhaps Hamilton himself muddied the waters on the date, wanting, rather like Mozart, to keep his hard-won status as a prodigy for as long as possible. Born in the West Indies into a family in constant financial distress, with the appellation "bastard" attached to his name, it was of monumental importance to Alexander that every possible strategy to assist his climb the social ladder be employed.

Young Hamilton as ADC to General Washington by Charles Wilson Peale

I never had birthday parties for Hammie, although I'd loved him the longest of all my dead white man crushes. Here I am in Nevis back when it barely had an airport, and the electricity only ran between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. My mother took us there--intrepid travelers that we were--back in the mid-1950's. Here's a happy January picture of me on the lava sand beach near where the Hamilton home was once supposed to have been.

And of course in the days of Mozart madness, I'd prepare for weeks before. I remember the first birthday party we had, it snowed heavily and I spent the morning digging parking places for my friends. Some cancelled, because the weather was truly nasty and the roads treacherous, but here are the intrepid few who came to that first party, all of them writers.

Mozart's birthday party was a thing for many years here. At one gathering, an entire poetry/writing group of perhaps twenty souls arrived, and our small house was warmed by all of those folks, by Mozart's music and much spirited conversation. I always made syllabub, which has to be started a few days before you intend to serve it. The centerpiece was always a glorious German bakery treat such as the one seen below, and we all laughed like children, riding on the sugar/wine high. Winter was outside the door and life was tough, but right now we could forget it all and just be happy.

The baker I talked to about the cake turned out to be not only a recent immigrant from Austria, but a huge Mozart fan as well! He beamed and told me how pleased he was to do this. You can see that he fulfilled my expectations and then some.