In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
-Christina Rossetti
Peering outside off the porch, Corning is gray and a little snowy, bathed in the insipid December sunlight that I've seen in movies but as a Southerner (sort of one, anyway, as Peg points out) never really experienced until we started spending time up here.
I love it, but must acknowledge that this cold gloom is best shared, and not experienced alone. Maybe that's why people up here move to Florida in the late innings of life, or one reason anyway. Existence can feel pretty isolating when one can't just go outside and take a walk around the pasture to break the solitude.
Speaking of which, the latest from Wyldswood shows a now empty barn, without its loft and ready to begin the expansion into a wedding reception hall dressed up to look like a barn.
The boys have grand plans, sufficiently grand in fact that it makes me fidget a little in my chair, at this moment when the country seems poised for a significant economic setback that may already be unfolding around us. I've suggested to P that we have George pull together a bid, or at least a take-off on the drawings, to make sure we know exactly what we're biting off here. The Splinters renovation, all in, cost about $110 a square foot, by my math. The enlarged barn will be about 4,600 square feet under roof. An equation involving those two numbers just isn't an option.
Particularly now that P has a little of that boat fever again. Let me explain.
Friday after work I flew back up to KELM, shooting a night ILS down to minimums in the mountains of West Virginia for my gas stop along the way. She only has another couple weeks here before following the geese and the snowbirds south for the winter, and I was determined to spend this time with her even if it meant navigating low ceilings and a little ice to get here. So after I finally landed at 9:30 and drove back to Tara, scraping the ice off the windshield of the roadster and navigating through a little hole I wiped in the fog covering the inside above the steering wheel, we enjoyed Friday night on the couch between a lovely Christmas tree and a roaring fire, cats in our lap and happy to be together again. These separations just keep getting more difficult, which in a back-handed way may be a good thing. What if the opposite were true?
We spent Saturday morning over a leisurely breakfast, and then took a day trip up to Canandaigua, an hour and some change to the northwest.
The town of Canandaigua sits on the northern shore of Canandaigua Lake, one of the largest, and perhaps the loveliest, of the Finger Lakes, ringed by undulating hills and without the frenetic Pigeon Forge tackiness of Watkins Glen or the snooty tourists in Skaneateles. We drove through hills covered in bare, gray trees with a little snow along the ridgelines, valleys and deep brown fields now fallow for the season.
The last time we made this drive was on a similar weekend maybe a year ago. Or was it two? We drove through gloom and fog and didn't see much, or even get out of the car as we rounded the top of the lake, cruised down the nondescript main drag of town (which might as well have been 23rd Street back home in PC), then back down the eastern shore of the lake towards Corning.
But this time we drove under brilliant blue skies on a 30 degree day, with the western horizon just taking on that silvery opaqueness one learns up here signals snow on the way. And rather than experiencing Canandaigua out the window of the car, we peeled off the main drag and stopped for a little tapas and wine at The Lake House on Canandaigua, a spiffy new hotel that sits right on the marina.
We ate there at the Sand Bar, to Peg's left, which for its decor and garage doors opening onto the water one might mistake for Harrison's in PC, but for the fact that there was a single television, showing the World Cup of all things, and the service was impeccable. The food was, well, so-so, but no one up here can cook.
And it was at this point, as we drained a fine bottle of Austin cab, that P spied those empty boat slips in front of her, and a new dream took hold. We should get that picnic boat, and dock it right there. It'll be our weekend cabin during the summer, allowing us to putter around the lake, dock there in the evenings, and even stumble into the hotel for a night cap if we get claustrophobic in the salon. In my mind's eye I always add a couple grandkids to the fantasy, but for now that's not part of the picture. Maybe we can take Lily and JuJu with us for a cruise on some perfect July afternoon.
I worry about money too much these days--we're doing fine, with food in the fridge and bills all paid up. P reminds me, more relentlessly lately as we start to lose folks we love a little at a time, that our world's just going to keep getting smaller in the not-so-distant future, and this is probably the last season of our lives when we'll have the energy to enjoy things like puttering around on a boat or hosting a hundred of our neighbors for a big wedding out in the barn. My folks stand in mute witness to what's coming, if we even last that long. Why not relax and enjoy this last part? Won't we regret it later if we don't?
My mediation cancelled today because one of the parties didn't realize they had to have someone at the mediation with full authority to settle, per the rules. A ridiculous mistake, but after billing 64 hours over six days (!) I'm sort of grateful to have a relatively easy day of drafting, researching, and returning a few phone calls. Peg's already made her big phone call of the day, at exactly 7:41 as she's done for the last 28 years, on this particular 12 December to wish Issac a happy fortieth birthday. He and Olivia are celebrating the milestone with a few days' adventure in Iceland. Those two get it right. We could learn a little from them.
And so it goes.
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