Winter Village Dream/ June, 2022

"Do you like the snow?" I asked the child with me.


"I like magic snow!"


"Magic snow? What's that?" And as he described the scene to me, the images rolled out before my eyes.


"Magic snow is when it snows for piles and piles and then they sweep it up, shovel off the road and paths and put all that snow wherever they can, in the yards and off to the side." Now I saw more white falling down, this time in fluffy weightless wisps, and the boy said, "That's magic snow!" The second downfall, he meant, just when you can't imagine where you can put any more.


We kept walking down the lane, me pointing out the cabins and huts made of logs. As I cooed at one rustic house, someone said, "It is what it is" and I recognized the place.


We were there. My sister's house. She did not look at me much while I stayed with her, I did not know if I was welcome, but neither did she ask me to leave either. I pet her blond toddler, who then wandered off. She spent time in her bathroom, sitting on the tile floor, looking into a bright mirrored light for the anti-darkness exposure.


I tried to compliment the things she had, to ask questions and engage her, but when I inquired about the tracks next to the house, the train arrived and it was three burnt out and rusted school buses shackled together on the track, screeching and falling with the engine-less propulsion of a roller coaster, turning a gut-wrenching corner next the house, then falling at a sickening angle down the twist of track, revealing the gaping hole in the side of a bus where anyone inside would need to hang on for life to not fall out.

Therapeutic Crafting

Last night at the Board Meeting, I ran into a librarian I respect and love. 

"You can't retire!" I said as we bumped forearms, that familiar COVID gesture that I won't stop using because handshakes? Ick. 

"Oh, yes, I can!" she laughed.  Her hair is a chic cloud of silver.

"Do you have plans for next year?"

"I'm going to take a year and just make things!"

I laughed too, with joy and affirmation at her plan and called out that it sounded like a dream. And maybe limitless creation is my dream, now that I think of it, although I know I'm such a multi-tasker (cough, short-attention-spanned dabbler) that a year of free time would probably mean an avalanche of new opened and re-opened projects. 

But I did finish one this weekend, a quick craft that I found on TikTok, melting wax to stick three fingertips in, then closing the fingers together to form three joined wax cuplets that resemble a small flower blossom. 

I lit three scented candles, then waited for a pool of liquid to form. We have a candle drawer in the kitchen for birthdays and stinky onion moments, and a yellow birthday cake taper caught my eye. The scented candles were all white so I lit and dripped the thin yellow one over the Paddywax metal box to mix in a little color. The resulting mix was a pale green I loved, even more so for its little dash of complicating soot. 

The first dipping in the melted liquid was an intense sensation and the cups took a few long minutes to harden and turn opaque. I sped up the process by plunging the tips of my fingers in ice water, but no matter the temp, I wasn't able to adhere the cups together -- the wax was too thin -- but I managed to produce a few tiny individual blossoms. I pierced them with the tips of a branch left over from a flower arrangement and the result was ethereal, delicate and fragrant.

Truisms

 When presented with incomplete information, we leap to conclusions.

We are always presented with incomplete information.

 

Family is everything. Family is culture, nurture, nature, determinism, education, everything.

And we strike our own way.

I saw Baccaria in the hall yesterday and offered her one of my Starbusts. Yes, she did want one and she asked without preamble, "Ms. Fey, do you want to be Black?" 

We talk like that. We've known each other for the four years since she was a freshman. She is Melroy's cousin and she was selling pins with a photo of Child's gentle face before his funeral in December.    

"Well, um, when I was in college, my idol was that singer, she was Black and wore a gardenia in her hair, Billie Holiday! And I wanted to be her...but my friends..."

Baccaria laughed, as she does, not merrily, but a laugh nonetheless.

"Oh, Ms. Fey." And she sighed, as she does. 

I don't blame her. I don't understand her fully, but I know a bit about her. A tiny tiny bit. A surface scratch.

"Ms. Fey, you couldn't be Black. You're not strong enough." She was kind enough to soften the truism with "Ms. Fey, you're my favorite," but we both knew she was right.