toni stone
wonder works studio
401 buck hollow road
fairfax, vermont 05454
January 6, 1998
THE JANUARY THAW
those little birds on the tree outside look like baby birds. i did not think
baby birds came round til spring. maybe this means early spring, on the horizon..
i can not be sure yet… but…..well……
this is the January thaw. i think i always mistakenly see signs of early spring, mostly since i hope for it. there are these false starts in spring, as well as winter. there are many, so many of them. one must learn to really see what is there. someone needs to blow a whistle, reminding us. one baby bird,
or even a few, does not mean spring. one forty degree day, or two, does not target the
early spring. melting snow can sometimes mean tomorrow’s glare ice.
…..a thawing day, with fog so thick, like this, only means it is difficult to see.
it does not have to mean much more. i’ll get the seed catalogs out. they send them
this time of year. there is plenty of time to drift through them, this time of year.
there is a lot of staying home, this time of year.
i think we’ll start tomatoes in the house, in late March. we will need to see them right about then.
its not too early to send in the seed order. i’ll put the seed envelopes right on my desk as a symbol
of expectancy, with garden plans as a hint of optimism, a sign that winter too, shall pass.
i got an e-mail from an old buddy who tried years ago to move to Vermont,
but didn’t weather even a year. living up north, so far like this, does
call for something i do not have one name for yet. he told me
he thought it asked much he was not ready to give, but that someday
in the future he might try it again. he said, “in some ways i envy you your winters. because they are so tough, they allow you to sit quietly, to stay at home for days, to watch and listen and never have to be anywhere else.”
i know, quite a few other people who tried to come here too
and didn’t make it either……but they never mentioned it again…..that is strange.
there was a pretense, like it never even happened. there was silence…..
it was so bad it could never surface to words. there was deadness, around, under and on top of it.
covered over like arcane upholstered furniture,
drapped with plastic, in rooms where no one goes, in old sea captain’s houses,
on hills. those rooms are just off limits. everyone knows it. if you try to
go in there, someone will yell at you and you quickly remember.
when my old buddy wrote me that e-mail message, esteem increased.
he was praising, in an offbeat fashion for a kind of courage
he knew something about…. i was uplifted with his acknowledgement.
i did not realize how rare… this was the first time in eight years
anyone had ever acknowledged that living in Vermont was, a sort of
victory, for someone not raised here.
i think it might even be a victory for the people who were born here too.
long winters call for warm thinking. each winter day, it seems we
just got up, and its night time already…..dark, and time to draw the drapes…
but……well…….spring always comes next. this we count on and we become deeper, rooted characters
in the meantime….sending e-mail essays out, on the computer to the world of people everywhere…..
