The weather was not traditionally “Christmas-y” two weeks before the holiday. We had unseasonably warm temperatures leaving only traces of earlier snow spilling into darkened crevices in the woods. Any precipitation fell in drops rather than flakes. We braced ourselves for a green (brown) Christmas.
We planned on taking the week of Christmas off, knowing that students might have travel plans anyway. I looked forward to the traditional day trips we take to be part of the bustle. Paul, is an original player in the Messiah sing in Stowe: that day we normally take extra time to explore the town, watch them make candy canes in a local candy shop and find a corner to share hot chocolate. Instead we found ourselves dealing with financial fraud.
Things like that don’t reveal themselves instantly. Insidious, like a snake slithering through long grasses, we began to notice small inconsistencies in our email account, emails disappearing, being moved to random files. Finally it all bled into a pool of missing money. Engineered carefully to avoid deception long enough to get away with it. It took us days of peering at the blue screen to untangle the story. It felt to me as if someone had crawled out of the computer and into our home. We pieced together the series of events and were sure the company hired to manage these things would get on it. I imagined them congratulating us on deciphering details and assuring us they would, indeed, “take things from here.” Instead it became days of doing the work to simply get them to answer our attempts at communication. Ultimately it became clear that they are only responsible for the taking a percentage of our income part rather than taking responsibility for any losses incurred due to their negligence.
Each night Paul and I lay in bed in the glow of the Christmas lights in the window, held each other’s hand, promising the other that it would, ultimately, be OK.
Daylight makes these things seem less frightening and so I welcomed getting up and going about the work of mucking and feeding animals. I finished the week of teaching and we began our “vacation,” the week of Christmas.
This week is, arguably, the most wonderful time of the year. Full of excitement and all things sparkling. Anticipation being fuel for this fire. It was the first year in much of my adult life that I did not have a child, of any age, at home. Things were weird, quiet, a little too neat. I had thought that this week would give us time to adapt and celebrate the what-is rather than the what-was. Instead it seemed celebrating would be at a minimum and untangling, the focus.
One evening we took the three dogs out. We walked silently for a while and then began talking about the importance of acknowledging difficulty without allowing it to become all-consuming. It did seem like a terrible time to have this happen but in reality there is no good time for this, or other tough things. They happen when they do. Christmas was coming regardless. The choice on how to respond remained one of the few things we had control over. It was then that I decided to build an apartment for the fraud to live in. It wasn’t going to be a nice one, it would have no string of lights and it would be separate from our house. I could go and visit when necessary but shut the door firmly when finished. I turned away from the fraud apartment and looked toward the holiday.
Thursday the east coast spun into a polar vortex: perfect name for a winter storm system. Interesting and confusing at the same time was the fact that the south got cold and the north warm. Our temperature went up to 50F and it began to rain. The wind came up and I stood in the window and watched the rain blow sideways past the glass. Aptly unfair. The rain and wind continued all day, large branches thunking onto our metal roof and dropping onto the ground as piles of sticks. Our green lights along the roof line swung back and forth like a decorated jump rope. Out to feed animals in raincoats and boots.
Paul and I stayed true to our holly jolliness. We wore those raincoats to Stowe- ski capital of the Northeast. We perused the bookshop, held hands on our way to the coffee shop and watched them make candy canes in the chocolate store. On the way home the temperature began to drop from its lofty perch of 50F. The weather stations called for a cold December rain but, as we drove home in the late afternoon darkness, I watched the temperature gauge with my right eye, and it kept dropping. It takes about forty five minutes to get to our house from Stowe, by the time we pulled into our local Shaw’s parking lot for yogurt, the temperature was 30F and the torrential raindrops became more plump and defined until they were frozen and bonafide snowflakes. Unexpected.
The wind continued to push on our ride home, our headlights finding it difficult to cut through the blowing snow. I watched it lift off the roof of a neighbor’s barn and dance across the road in front of our car as if in celebration. Paul and I looked at each other in our ridiculous raincoats and sopping wet hair and laughed a hard laugh that always releases some kind of pain. Snow falling fast and covering everything, like wrapping up a gift.
Stepping out of our car, bare hands now frozen, we stood for a moment and listened to the wind howl gleefully as it slid down the mountain. The wreath on the lamppost frosted with new snow, something from Dickens, flapping happily. The weather powerful, magical, and frightening in its intensity. We hurried to our front door, and stepped inside. Everything stopped, it was quiet but for the tick of a thousand clocks and it was warm from the heat of the pulsing wood stove.
I know the wind and the world will continue to swirl: that’s not part of a life in Vermont, that’s just life. Babies will be born, bills need to be paid and things will be taken from you. However, there is still hard laughter, Creme Brulee and Christmas which, I believe, arrives from the inside out.