The Harvest

A large horse chestnut tree stands in one corner of our front yard shading more than half of the grass that lies between the sidewalks leading to each of the units in the row house.  A good portion of the old paving stones that stretch in front of the house also sit in the tree’s shadow while serving to crack the chestnuts that fall from the branches above. The tree has lustily thrown itself into autumn with an obscene display of chestnuts, showing wear only in the hint of bronze dispersed throughout the foliage. The nuts, clad in a bristly green shell, plop loudly onto the pavers and bounce on nearby cars, revealing polished brown fruit that glisten in new found exposure to the sun.  While the chestnuts fall less noisily onto the grass, the busy dropping and rolling resembles a number of simultaneous bocce matches going on at once.

With such tantalizing temptation, I expected that the squirrels would gather in large numbers in this hoarder’s paradise.  I did spy a gorgeous hawk the other morning sitting in the nearby oak tree casually surveying the area with an almost imperceptible turn of his head. But unmoved as he was by the squirrels chasing each other around the thick, grooved trunk below him I doubt that he posed  more than the usual threat to groups of squirrels preparing themselves for winter.  Alas, the multitude of urban rodents with the cute furry tails remains at bay, leaving me to ponder the oddity at length.   Had chestnuts gone out of fashion on the culinary palette of squirrels? Were the winter stores already filled with fish crackers and other finger foods taken from strollers in the area parks? (I have often seen the squirrels forage unabashedly above distressed babies, helplessly tethered while being robbed of their edible pacifiers.) Did last year’s mild winter create a false sense of security for squirrels that negated the need to prepare for months of cold and snow? (I, too, am hoping for another “unusual” winter void of bitter cold and icy mounds of aging snow.)

The answer, it turns out, is not so complicated and rather expected. The squirrels are not stashing chestnuts because Rem is getting to them first.  I never have pretended to understand what churns inside of my children’s heads to make them act the way they do but even so, I am stupefied by Rem’s addiction to chestnuts.  Stockpiles of chestnuts fill the house. Mounds imprison every row of books on Rem’s bookshelves in his room. They line the stairs and sit atop every post along the way to the second floor (these often fall and produce tripping hazards as they roll underfoot). Chestnuts spill from every vase, tall glass and container in the house that Rem could reach without assistance. A huge pile fills the front vestibule necessitating an act of finesse in order to access the house where one’s foot slides the pile gently to the side (careful not to topple the peak) and uses one’s calf to keep the pile at bay while slowly opening the door only wide enough to slide in and in one quick motion hopping into the house and letting the door slam.  Ten or twenty chestnuts usually find their way inside and then scatter into various rooms because my other children are so accepting that nothing ever seems odd to them such as a heap of chestnuts in the hall (chestnuts could easily be tossed back outside). The children kick the pretty little things out of the way and go about their business.

Rem can be found under the chestnut tree day or night, with or without shoes and often in pajamas. Sometimes he loads his shirt, holding the seamed edge with one hand and filling with the other. His pants pockets bulge comically as he tries to walk away. He can’t. He returns to the tree with an incessant need to possess every chestnut the tree can bear.  And it seems that the tree is enjoying this uncontrollable urge in Rem, laughingly bestowing more and more nuts under a glorious umbrella of foliage ready to surrender into a blaze of color before settling down for a wintry slumber.

Racing and Pausing through Childhood

A pair of tundra swans, in an elegant descent, flew just over our heads today to settle into one of the salt marsh ponds to the right of us. I can't recall ever seeing a swan in flight and the sight of the powerful white wingspans and the slender, outstretched necks left me awestruck for a moment. The whiteness of the birds gleamed in the unobstructed sunlight of the summer-like day, the black of their beaks glistened with the lustre of onyx. The Parker River National Wildlife Refuge lies along most of Plum Island north of Boston composed of salt marshes, sand dunes and beaches as well as the wildlife and vegetation such an environment supports. People poured into the outdoors today to bask in the warm temperatures that spread across the country and reached most of New England this morning. Many flocked to the refuge as bicyclists, birdwatchers and beach combers, like us.

The mute swans gliding through the water in the Boston Public Gardens, though beautiful, are as ornamental as their namesake paddle boats. Because we knew Make Way for Ducklings long before we came to Boston, the gardens feel like a theme park in homage to the illustrations of the beloved children's book especially amid the squeals of children as they discover the bronze mother duck and her line of babies near the garden's edge. The story, while sweet, is my least favorite of Robert McCloskey's books.  Blueberries for Sal, One Morning in Maine and Time of Wonder stand as gems among the endless number of books read aloud to my children. Additionally, they hold the prestige of being the requests of all three during the period of repetition.

My own Sal, Lise, didn't wander off along Blueberry Hill but instead found the fullest, ripest bush in Graveyard Fields and plopped herself down, the green and white sundress covering her sturdy sandals while she picked and ate the small, sweet berries within reach of her pudgy, toddler hands. Miren liked to re-enact scenes from the book during our breaks and Rem walked the footpaths around the bushes singing, "kerplink, kerplank, kerplunk".

With each new discovery on the beach today, from a mermaid's purse to a growing pile of "beautiful" sea shells, Rem's joy brought to mind the explorations of McCloskey's characters in and around Buck's Harbor. How wonderfully his words resonate with both children and parents as we navigate the wonder of childhood and the bittersweet passing of time.  Miren and Lise seem to have accelerated childhood's passing, especially this last week with high school acceptance letters. Sentimentality feels appropriate.
      

         "Take a farewell look
          at the waves and sky.
          Take a farewell sniff
          of the salty sea.
          A little bit sad
          about the place you are leaving,
          a little bit sad about the place you are going.
          It is a time of quiet wonder-
          for wondering, for instance:
          'Where do hummingbirds go
          in a hurricane?'" 
        - Robert McCloskey from A Time of Wonder

Winter Takes a Vacation

I imagined myself, a stack of nineteenth century literature nearby, enduring long winter days huddled inside turning pages and drumming up indoor activities for Rem. Noreasters would noisily roll in dropping ice and snow while I returned to the abandoned blog and penned paragraphs of accumulated wisdom or trite anecdotes about family life.  But alas, the end of February is in reach and winter has not yet laid itself at our feet. Winds blow and temperatures drop but never enough to keep us from enjoying a myriad of activities; more recent ones with the added bonus of my neice who spent her winter break with us.

We accompanied Craig to the picturesque town of Fall River yesterday. He'd been wanting to tour the collection of military ships docked there.  Lizzie Borden murdered her parents in Fall River but there is nothing sinister in the quaint rise of buildings from the water, especially under a bright blue sky. Even the vessels of war that greeted us at Battleship Cove focused more on ship life, living histories and honoring those who served than the atrocities of war. The entire family was unprepared for Rem's unbridled enthusiasm as we navigated the many passages and levels of the battleship and then the submarine. After all, he had spent most of the day before staging us in a theatrical production of Sleeping Beauty. The girls and I fell hapily behind, now that Craig, at last, had found a worthy companion.

New England through Celebrated Eyes

Ghosts hover wherever we go in New England. Many, honored in bronze likenesses, stand watch over places that claim them now, even when they didn’t in life. The towns and cities we visit stand with heads held high, waving storied histories like national flags on ships, sometimes above tattered todays. Already, we have visited two places described as the Venice of their time.  We spent a late December day, cool but tolerable, in Salem. The off-season enabled us to experience the town as unspoiled and subdued as its dependence on tourist dollars could allow. Hawthorne’s ghost served as our guide.

The Custom House, once one of many, stood stately above the lonely wharf, also once one of many. An old storehouse rose somberly along the grassy stretch where the shipping industry once boomed and peaked before the War of 1812. Hawthorne worked in the Custom House when it, along with its city was already in a state of decline. His descriptive “Custom House”, a preface to the Scarlet Letter, served as a relevant companion to our visit.  He wrote of “that period before the last war with England, when Salem was a port by itself, not scorned, as she is now, by her own merchants and ship owners who permit her wharves to crumble with ruin, while their ventures go to swell, needlessly and imperceptibly, the mighty flood of commerce at New York or Boston.”

Along with Hawthorne, we looked about us and imagined a different Salem as the park ranger spoke of the activities we would have seen from the second floor window where we stood.  Even after years of separation, tenuous strings pulled Hawthorne back to Salem, bound as he was in the explicable hold that a birthplace can command. The ranger told us that Hawthorne was fired from his post at the Custom House and run out of town in a way.  We have already discovered the Hawthorne of Concord among the ghosts of Emerson, the Alcotts and Thoreau from our visits there.

By tracing his own family history in Salem, we understood from Hawthorne, the Puritanical traits, “both good and evil”, that drove the first Hathorne’s life in the new world.  “He came so early with his Bible and his sword. He was a soldier, legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the Church. He was likewise a better persecutor, as witness to the Quakers, who have remembered him in their histories.” And again, Hawthorne introduced us to this first progenitor’s son who “inherited the persecuting spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him.  So deep a stain, indeed, that his old, dry bones, in the Charter Street burial ground must still retain it, if they have not succumbed utterly to dust.”

We stood in the rooms of the Custom House, amid artifacts useful during times of trade and a multitude of ship manifests that presented the trade histories of ships that left Salem with lumber and cod and returned with spices and fabric from the orient, tea and other goods deemed necessary by their availability. We looked out to the waters that first brought settlers and then brought the world to Salem. The witches we saved for another day.

We drove south on another day this past week, beyond the already familiar towns of Braintree and Plymouth and spent the day along Massachusetts’ most famous cape. Cape Cod’s shifting sands and glacial rocks allude to a continued geological precedence even in places as dug in as New England. The mounds of sand dunes like small mountain chains surprised us with its untouched appearance and natural beauty. We walked beaches and watched as the ocean deposited sand and covered exposed rocks with foamy, tumbling waves.

 A timeline of human history curves along the cape as it points back to the continent. A tower rises near the tip of the cape in Provincetown, a monument to the pilgrims who first landed there and spent one winter before continuing across the bay to Plymouth. Picturesque light houses rise sporadically along the coast and the life saving stations that preceded the Coast Guard stand imposing and silent near the beach. Boarded up shower houses and bathrooms hint at the summer crowds and the girls begged to return for sun-filled days in the sand and refreshing dips in the water. Craig and I were glad to explore away from the numbers.

Thoreau, our ghostly guide, like us, bore no history with the Cape. His four visits to the Cape and his subsequent writings about them (first given as lectures and articles then later compiled into a book) receive the adulation of a native son although Concord’s grasp on Thoreau is unrelenting. The National Seashore celebrates Thoreau’s Cape Cod writings and the park service pays homage to Thoreau’s observations with a short film that can be viewed at the Salt Pond Visitor Center.

Thoreau’s observations were fresh and his descriptions full of the moment. He aptly described the beach as we found it near Race Point and captured the mesmerizing spell of the Cape when he explained that, “None of the elements were resting.” I, too, felt a perpetual sense of motion as we walked along the noisy Atlantic and as the children, flush from the cold breezes, ran up and down the beach, chasing each other, collecting shells, and laughing. And again later, as the wrath of the wind pelted us with sand, like chards of glass on our bare skin and sent us running sideways to the shelter of the van. We left the Cape with a thin band of pink and orange at the horizon and the slightest hint of a rounded sun disappearing for the day.

Shopping for Trees and Other Sundries

Although the states are small in size, tumbling in and out of each other at many points, New England collectively is large. Boston's metropolitan spread reaches beyond state lines.  Asheville, constrained by its topographically defined boundaries narrowed my field of vision both actually and mentally as I navigated places and sought opportunities and activities for myself and my family. Although the choices I faced did not feel limiting, they were limited and I sauntered through my days in Asheville with a more carefree bounce to my steps than I now do in Boston. Boston dabbles in a little bit of everything and everything presents one with innumerable choices. Narrowing the field provides a challenge to the most mundane activities.

Boston is a tale of many cities. It is old and older. It is a city with a proud, celebrated history of freedom seekers and justice fighters and a notorious past of a prevalent underworld and violent racism. The city boasts scenic harbor walks and charming historic neighborhoods amid industrial waste lands and abandoned, deteriorated buildings.  There is great affluence and excess and extensive poverty.  The weather is both mild and extreme (really, since I’ve been here, the weather has been fantastic but all of the locals throw out warnings of winter’s wrath like prophets of doom). Dense pockets of urban landscape are relieved by spacious parks.  Hilly rises overlook gritty beaches...  You get the point.

As I momentarily left the landscape of Boston public high schools to explore the possibilities in Christmas tree farms of New England, I found the process just as daunting, just as varied and just as complicated only with slightly less lifelong ramifications.  The websites of Christmas tree farm associations for each of the states listed mind-numbingly long lists of member farms.  I decided to stick with Massachusetts.  Now, many farms offer many things.  There are sleigh rides, bonfires, Santa visits, gift shops and cafes.  You can actually “tag” (reserve) your tree in the fall months and return to collect it in December.  Some farms are only open for one week-end in December.  Others are open until they run out of trees (noting that they could run out of trees by Sunday of their first week-end). Most farms don’t have many trees at ten feet or above.

I found a random farm that didn’t have a web-site, seemed small and as far as I could tell by the description and phone call, didn’t have any gimmicks.  We piled the kids in the van and let the GPS take us to Salisbury, MA.  The farm sat on the edge of a spread-out neighborhood, behind a rambling white farmhouse and barn and amid an assortment of sheds and abandoned farm equipment.  After warm greetings we were shown around the barn where the handsaws and carts waited. The simplicity of the farm proved a perfect fit for the Chenevert clan. Craig grabbed a saw, Rem jumped into the cart and we stepped into the marshy area where the grove of trees stood calling.

The weather was unseasonably (I’m told) warm and after a lovely afternoon picking out a tree we drove through Salisbury, a coastal town, and walked along the beach.  A beautiful blue fanned out above us and the ocean placidly stretched from the horizon toward us, voluptuously rolling and then crashing rhythmically at our feet.  Lise combed the beach for treasures while Rem stockpiled “fossils” and Miren and I created stories for the guy in the wetsuit gliding through the slick water standing on his surf board using his paddle like a pole-ing stick. Craig envied the group sitting quietly in chairs at the edge of the beach where the sand met the sea grasses.

The temperatures may be warm but the sun fades more and more quickly each afternoon.  These are the brightest of days, these are the darkest of days.

A Quiet but Thanks-filled Holiday

Thanksgiving Prelude

Our family will spend a quiet Thanksgiving this year that with only the five of us around our table. We are, however, all lovers of ritual and tradition and will be creating our usual menu of "must-haves" with a few substitutions. Craig must have a turkey stuffed with oyster dressing and after a few stops around town for ingredients he will get his desire. The kids, of course, don't eat oyster dressing and must have a secondary dressing, usually one made with crawfish. Alas, New Englanders do not share a fondness for the mud bugs. and our move cut us off from the trafficking routes of family members delivering such goods. The children will have to settle for shrimp or crab stuffing. 

Lise must have her sweet potato balls, certainly worth the lengthy preparation if anyone would eat them. Miren must have chocolate. Collectively, the group requires brown and serve rolls and can cranberry sauce to counter balance the butternut squash and apple salad and whatever other side dish I will prepare that will get snubbed without the benefit of guests to defend. I must have enough food to carry us through the entire week-end.  And so, I purchased the 22 pound turkey, I will make the two different dressings and I will re-serve those sweet potato balls until, tired of turkey-cranberry sandwiches, my crew eventually consumes a dinner that we won't want to be reminded of again until next year.

We are in New England for Thanksgiving and I thought we should introduce a regional dish to our table.

"What about Indian pudding? I asked the children.

"Absolutely not," one daughter retorted.  "No one would eat that."

"What about fluff?" the other daughter asked.  "Everyone eats fluff here.  Practically my whole class eats fluff sandwiches for lunch."

As far as I can tell, fluff is another name for marshmallow creme that enables you to eat it at will rather than just as an ingredient for fudge. Jars of fluff line the shelves everywhere, even at the convenient store in the yard. People must hate to run out of the stuff.

"I think we'll just stick with what we have," I tell them and start divvying up kitchen chores.

"I lick the spoons," Rem shouts.  He is forever shouting as though his voice only works at one volume setting.

"You can lick spoons," I tell him distractedly.

"I lick spoons until they're shiny.  You don't even have to wash them.  I am the dishwasher." (Mental note: Rem will be returning dirty utensils to the drawers.)

"I need you guys to come up with a nice blessing," I tell the children.  "This has been quite the year for us and we have a great deal to be thankful for. And come up with something to fill the two hours between when Papa tells us the turkey will be done and when it actually comes out of the oven."  Luckily, Rem serves as their puppet on such occasions and the three of them always entertain. Happily, we await the holiday.

New Englanders

Autumn, my favorite season, carried us quickly through the months of September and October with dazzling displays and fabulous weather interrupted  only briefly by a winter storm. Although many of the neighboring areas experienced power outages, downed trees and snow and ice, the storm brought us only a dusting of snow and an end to the brilliant crimson backdrop behind the house that had showcased a lush stand of Boston Ivy.  The maple out front is almost bare but the oak is reluctant to shed the reddish-brown leaves that gives such fullness to its tall stature.  Rem and I have spotted three hawks in the last couple of days and, like much of the urban wildlife we encounter, they seem unfazed by human proximity. Rem worked hard to shake the small tree by the park to get one hawk to fly so that we could see his wingspan. And the bird only flew to the next tree. One dad warned us about the squirrels this time of year as we witnessed an increased brazenness exhibited as squirrels jumped into momentarily neglected strollers and bags. Craig watched a squirrel devour a bagel while fending off other squirrels on his walk to work.

The kids enjoyed Charlestown's celebration of Halloween.  Rem basked in the attention as he marched in the parade and trick-or-treated through the neighborhood around Bunker Hill. Our neighbor led the girls expertly to the most generous houses and buildings in a shared candy-crazed quest to fill bags with sugar. My parents, as usual, were with us for most of October contributing to the whirlwind pace of passing time. Dad astutely recognized the anonymity factor still present for us here when, amid the Halloween throngs at the foot of the monument, he remarked that we didn't have to check our behavior because we wouldn't run into anyone we knew. But even Dad is slowly spreading roots into the New England soil. He recognized a costumed boy that Rem plays with at the park and could call him by name, is a "regular" at a neighborhood barber shop, and joked with the priest about particular athletes who are, unlike Brady, Saints (this, a New Orleans reaction to a homily directed at the children about the saints in their lives). A fisherman friend of a friend of Craig's provided the Cheneverts with fresh lobster yesterday morning and although we did use a little crab boil and couldn't help referring to them as really big crawfish, we felt very New England-like around the dining room table last night.

The children's routines, so similar to our life in Asheville (except for all of the driving), help us to feel increasingly at home in this foreign place. I do still waver in the favorite local road feature: the roundabout. I cannot cross the four or five lanes of traffic with the required local swagger and speed and I still look when moving from one lane to another on any street. And with the end of daylight savings time, I'm not sure of what to make of pitch-black darkness at five o'clock. By the looks of it, I'll have lots of evening time to ponder the affects of such short days.