Weather Captivity

January creeps along as days fall into one another marked by an endless grey of barren trees and sky. Sleet falls like the shattering of fragile glass and interrupts the drizzle of near-freezing rain that resonates with its own rhythmic yet barely perceptible drip, drip, drip. Other days pass as the silent but chaotic bursts of snow fall into seamless white carpets. The precipitation and freezing temperatures essentially bar the door and the black arm chair in the living room corner becomes a refuge where, nearby, a stack of quickly absorbed library books grows daily and is replaced weekly.

Often, during bleak winter months I declare the consumption of all books in a particular category. For instance, I’ll read everything by Henry James, or read only women authors of the nineteenth century. But this month, I randomly choose books off the shelves in the small West Asheville branch of the library near my home. I’ve already worked my way through a couple of English country estates where wealthy extended families have nothing to do but fall in and out of love. On I go to austere Norwegian winters, through unhappy childhoods, marriages, and lives. A particular passage might beckon to be read aloud and I oblige, savoring the art that can assert itself through the written word while other narratives run forgetfully into each other.

Rem, too, eagerly races through his library books. Decidedly in a repetitive phase, Rem insists that we read the same book three or four times before moving to the next. This week a Mrs. Fox encourages us to go green while a haggard mother bird feeds each of her seven chicks one by one as the father bird rests comfortably on an adjacent branch. Laughing yet again at the drooping, downtrodden mother bird and her nonchalant partner, Rem returns to his new-found passion for drawing. Page after page of various scenes of his favorite pirate and his crew litter every room in the house and clutter the bulletin board as Rem seeks, quite seriously, to capture the images in his head onto paper. Tickled with a particular detail he presents his latest sketch with much aplomb. Upon close examination, the scribble reveals an anchor, a feather in a hat, a peg leg, a superfluously decorated sword. Without assistance I point out the skull and crossbones on the flag and cannons on the ship and enjoy that over-celebrated maternal sensation that my child is a genius.

The girls spend more days at home than at school, thrilled with the idea of freedom from the constraints of education, reading and sleeping through the morning before fretting about the loss of summer and the threat of school on Saturdays. I like having them underfoot on most days, Miren directing Lise and Rem in elaborate games of make-believe, costumes and sets cluttering bedrooms. They share a siblings’ camaraderie that stirs within me a pleasant jealousy. Darkness falls early still but the days feel long without Craig. School days and the subsequent running of children here and there fill the time that, on homebound days, sits expectant and empty.

Hats, under armor and gloves do not surface just for sled rides and snowball fights. Spring soccer commenced in the first week of January but practices took a back seat to the snow and ice that settled on the fields. Now in full swing, teammates hidden under winter gear and indistinguishable from one other, move quickly on the bright green turf, the snow piled just along the riverbank and up the surrounding hills.

All is not dismal. The practice fields at John B. Lewis Park represent the most picturesque setting for soccer that I’ve ever seen. Appealing, even in winter with the leafless trees revealing the entire length of passing trains, the subtle depth of the rolling hills and the blue hues of distant mountains, JBL’s canvas of seasonal beauty creates an environment synonymous with Asheville itself. The layout of the fields at JBL, not unlike Asheville, follow the contours of the land. The atmosphere reflects the laid back ease of life that we found prevalent when we moved here. Even the soccer club’s philosophy resembles the self-sufficient traditions of the Scotch-Irish who settled here, focusing on individual ball handling and skill building that sometimes doesn’t match well against the power teams from the larger clubs pulled from the Charlotte area whose parents scream and berate from the sidelines as their girls kick and run all over our girls.

My experience with the citizens of Asheville and the nearby areas match the children’s experience within their schools and on the soccer field. People from various means and walks of life come together easily and warmly for a common purpose. Children unload from cars, oversized gear bags slung over their shoulders, hailing from charming historical neighborhoods in the city and surrounding small towns or from carefully constructed self-contained communities along the interstate. They come from developments that rise up and down the mountains behind low rock walls that boast mountainous neighborhood names and from remote stretches of mountain property. Some of the children’s parents grew up in the area, went to school and played ball with each other while others come from places all over the country and even the world.

Undaunted by the winter weather, Asheville hosts a soccer tournament this week-end, daring teams from milder climates to brave frigid temperature as an added measure of the competition. This will be the first tournament of the spring season. Spring; I don’t think anyone’s fooled by this misnomer, hopeful, maybe, but not fooled.

Journeys

As Craig traversed the eastern part of the country under, I hope, the same clear blue skies that penetrated the frigid temperatures here, we spent our day following routines that felt foreign after the long snow-driven respite of late. Large, over-indulged snowmen and women stood unflinchingly stalwart through the sun’s brilliance in the white blanketed yards of the neighborhood as we drove to school for the first time this week. Tired Christmas trees, waiting at the curb for recycling were revived for winter displays behind the snow creatures, or, in our case, at the entrance to the t-shaped igloo that covers most of the front yard. A snow-king on Sulphur Springs earned his title with a stunning crown of icicles, both delicate and extravagant, that shimmered in the sun. Rem’s own coveted icicles lie in the freezer, crossed like a pair of ancient swords, too cold to hold in his hands and too lovely to relinquish. Without his snow-mates, Rem returned to lavish Captain Hook enactments that necessitated unloading the toys in his bedroom into the living room where a large number of stuffed animals sat piled in a dismantled soccer net as I kept guard.

I paged through more of young Kerouac while waiting in school car lines moving from the earlier, stately New England of Emersons, Alcotts and Thoreau to the gritty, factory landscape of Kerouac’s childhood. During the last week, as Craig alternately fed the fire with wood from the woodpile and scraps saved for various projects never to be realized, I stayed near the hearth to soak in the intense heat and read aloud from Craig’s architectural guidebook for Boston. Brief summaries of buildings old and new that together string a timeline of Boston inundated us with every imaginable significance of a place so thick with historical, literary and academic achievement that the notion of New Englanders’ aloof and impenetrable nature seems well-earned (even if not desirable for a family with no relatives or friends within a six hundred mile radius).

The moon shone from the darkness into my bedroom window like a movie projector light in the theater, interrupting the quiet that finally settled into the house with a bright intensity that felt loud. I looked up distractedly from my book, having read the same page over and over without following the words, and watched time pass as the moon moved out of view. Strangely, the Bo Deans played in my head through the day but I chose Beethoven piano sonatas to lull me toward sleep before the phone rang and Craig’s tired voice, as though he was in the next room, announced his arrival “home” and I could fully succumb to dreamland.

Winter Wraps us in a Blanket of White and Idle Luxury