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How curious, a Jew, the grandson of immigrants,  a lifelong admirer of the true Jesus Christ, a seeker turned Quaker,  writing about the meaning of Christmas. I love that about America, people mixing together, all kinds of ideas and way of living colliding, the pot is always stirring.

I have to admit that Christmas has always been important to me. I have celebrated it one way or another, almost all of my life.  But I think in order to save my idea of it, it’s time for me to leave it behind. For me to keep Christmas in a way I am comfortable wish, I need to stop celebrating it.

Mahatma Gandhi said once “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” I don’t know all Christians, I can’t say what they are all like. But I know what Gandhi means. There is often a wide gap between faith and practice.

I should be honest and confess that I don’t care for forced sentimentality. Christmas is filled with stress and pressure. It has been Disneyfied and emotionalized beyond recognition,  turned into an expensive and highly profitable brew of self-serving emotion. That is the Disney idea, of course, to help us fantasize our lives.

Christmas has a lot to do with money and profit, fantasy and yearning. It calls upon us to feel good while miming sacrifice and commitment.

Christmas is ostensibly about children in our culture, yet I suspect it is more often about adults wishing to be children again, or pushing our nostalgia for childhood onto the young. There is much talk of the poor at Christmas, but little talk of the poor on any other day, I’ve always felt that Christmas, like some elements of animal rescue, is more about giving people a chance to feel good than it is about being good.

No wonder you can almost hear the crash the next day, a great heaving sigh somewhere between exhaustion and relief.

“The memory of the revolutionary zealot who walked across Galilee gathering an army of disciples with the goal of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth, the magnetic preacher who defied the authority of the Temple priesthood in Jerusalem, the radical Jewish nationalist who challenged the Roman occupation and lost, has been almost completely lost to history,” writes Reza Asian in his best-selling book Zealot: The Life And Times Of Jesus Of Nazareth.

I loved this book, this religious scholar reminded me why I was drawn to the story of Jesus Christ in the first place, and drawn to his birthday.

“That is a shame,” wrote Asian.”Because the one thing any comprehensive study of the historical Jesus should hopefully reveal is that Jesus of Nazareth—Jesus the man—is every bit as compelling, charismatic, and praiseworthy as Jesus the Christ. He is, in short, someone worth believing in.”

And whose birthday is well  worth honoring and celebrating.

I have never seen a company touting Christmas products mention Jesus the radical, never seen him mentioned in those heartwarming movies shown on Christmas, I have never heard him discussed or explained at any Christmas gathering I have been invited to, or mentioned by any politician wishing his or her constituents a Merry Christmas. This true Jesus has never been portrayed on any Christmas card I have ever received.

I don’t care for the dominant idea of Christmas, the Disney idea, the Rockwell idea. It’s a super-hyped, stylized idea of life and family, it often seems saccharine and false to me,  way beyond the reach of most of us and way over our heads.  I don’t think it is even remotely attainable for the vast majority of families. Just as Christmas evokes the poor but has little to do with them, Christmas also evokes the idea of family but has little to do with families.

A holiday so centered on gifts and ribbons and trees and enormous meals seems thin and shallow, too expensive for many,  it seems to last just a few hours into the next year, another forced ritual of joy and celebration. Are we really helping the poor by hosting a holiday so complex and elaborate the poor couldn’t possibly afford to participate.

The business of making families, like the business of making sausages, or the business of democracy, is simply not as pretty as Disney World’s sold-out evocation of it or Rockwell’s fantasy paintings of Christmas dinners. Disney is much more popular and successful than I am, and I respect the very obvious fact that this idea of Christmas is an idea lots of people  are eager, even desperate,  to embrace. For me, Christmas epitomizes the way we would like family and life to be, so the current practice of Christmas makes inevitable the crash than follows, when almost everyone that I know comes to recognize another dream they have failed to achieve in the land of profitable dreams.

And this is the American idea, I think, we must always aspire to more than we have, so that we can equate expensive presents and things with love and connection. What child wouldn’t love Christmas, wouldn’t like to be showered with gifts, but what, exactly does this teach them about how to live? Christ’s idea of faith was giving things away, not acquiring them, of letting go.

Every serious biography of Christ describes him as an compromising, committed,  hell-raising radical, a fierce advocate for the poor. Worrying about the poor has fallen out of favor in America, it has yet to be mentioned in any presidential debate.

“As I read the birth stories about Jesus I cannot help but conclude that thought the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog,” wrote Philip Yancey, the American Christian scholar and author. Sometimes I think Christmas is tilted towards the rich and the powerful as well. Christ was always tilted towards the underdog.

David Platt, author of a biography of Christ called Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From The American Dream, wrote of Christmas that “we are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.” If the Christic idea of faith had prevailed over the corporate one, it is quite possible we wouldn’t be destroying the earth with our super-heated waste.

Pratt wrote that he could not help but think that somewhere along the way we had missed what was radical about our faith and replaced it with what is comfortable.

An important point, I think, comfortable is the right word to describe the Disney Christmas: roaring fires, laughing and loving families, plentiful and lavishly prepared meals, special and carefully chosen gifts specially wrapped. Comfort and Joy.

“Radical obedience to Christ is not easy,” writes Platt, “it’s not comfort, not health, not wealth, and not prosperity in this world. Radical obedience to Christ is to risk losing all these things. For Platt, such risk finds its reward in Christ,  that is more than enough, he says.

For the vast majority of people I know of who celebrate Christmas, that is not nearly enough. I’m not at all certain I could do it myself.  The poor, the very people who marked Christ’s life in the world, are a footnote. Nobody is trying to sell things to them.

On my Christmases, the pile of gifts under my family Christmas tree extended to the ceiling, it took a whole day to open them, hours to eat and digest dinner.  We had little money, we spent way too much. People of limits lost their boundaries on Christmas. Yet we had no idea how to give each other the most important gift of all – love and an understanding of what we were doing. I don’t imagine Jesus Christ would join in the Disney Christmas or like it very much.

The great flaw my family’s Christmas celebrations was the hypocrisy of them: we were Jewish, we belonged to a Temple, we were stealing someone else’s holiday. We were not doing this out of faith but out of a desire to go along and fit in. And out of guilt. My parents wanted to  make up for all of the quarreling and miserable days that preceded this day of giving. In many ways, I never knew whether Christmas is a secular holiday or a religious holiday. I still don’t, the businesses whose very existence depends on Christmas giving don’t care.

For sure, Christmas is the holy day of the Corporate Nation. Christ tried to burn down the Temple in Jerusalem, he found the priests both greedy and corrupt. Our Golden Temples are the big corporations, sucking money and wealth out of the very air and hanging onto it for dear life. They don’t care about the poor either.

I don’t know how hollow Christmas rings for  many millions of others. I know good people who live for it.  I know people who struggle to survive it.

I had dinner with a friend the other night who said Christmas is mostly stress for her. She starts shopping in July, insists that her children – they are adults – pretend that Santa is real – and starts cooking for family and filling stocks the day after Thanksgiving. I have many friends who close their eyes and struggle through painful family gatherings, trying to be joyous.

For me, Christmas has left the real lives of people behind,  and become an idea to which everyone aspires but very few can  achieve.

I like Laura Ingalls-Winder’s idea of Christmas:  “Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.”  Graham Greene called Christmas the feast of failure, sad but consoling. Sylvia Plath said she always felt overstuffed and disappointed after Christmas, the promises of the carols and the Christmas turkey never came to pass.

And she didn’t have to deal with Black Friday or Cyber Monday,  Amazon Everyday, or Giving Tuesday or big screen TV’s 40 per cent off, open till Christmas Eve!

I think the sadness comes from the bar being set so high we can never reach it, all we can do is jump up and down and shop earlier and earlier each year.  Christmas cannot transform us or our lives, it just promises to. Scheduled joy is ephemeral for me, an illusion.

I’ve celebrated Christmas too many times to count, this year my wife and I have decided to leave Christmas and it’s pressure and twisted roots and false promise behind.

I very much respect the people who live it and celebrate it, I wish them the happiest holiday. We have chosen to make Christmas a day for a different kind of celebration. We don’t need to buy things and exchange gifts, we don’t need a big dinner, we don’t need to vanish into the sometimes suffocating expectations  and rituals of family, carried out without consultation or much thought.

Perhaps as a non-Christian, and a Jew who has separated from his born faith,  I have no right to celebrate this holiday anyway, regardless of how I feel about it. But then, there is Jesus Christ…

I  have no right to tell anyone else how or whether to celebrate any holiday. And I have no idea.

But as a lifelong admirer of Jesus Christ, I want to honor his birthday by doing the honor of celebrating what he was truly about, to remember what is faith and what is comfortable. I want to shed the growing weight of it.

That is more than enough for me.

 

 

 

 

“I felt overstuffed and dull and disappointed, the way I always do the day after Christmas, as if whatever it was the pine boughs and the candles and the silver and gilt-ribboned presents and the birch-log fires and the Christmas turkey and the carols at the piano promised never came to pass.”

– Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar.

I always liked what the author Graham Greene said about the holidays, which are upon us. “Christmas it seems to me is a necessary festival,” he wrote, “we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.”

Everyone has the right to their own Christmas, and I think every Christmas, like every fingerprint, is unique. When most people I know talk about Christmas, there is pain and  joy, sadness and comfort. There are millions of Christmas stories, everyone has their own.

There is the Disney Christmas, of course,  and the Norman Rockwell Christmas, and the Corporate Nation Christmas: the perfect festival in the perfect houses, Santa down the chimney, perfect children beaming in eager delight, perfect parents offering expensive gifts (the gifts are important),  loving families radiating joy and good wishes, perfect table settings, wreaths and bows, sweet-smelling trees, twinkling lights,  a time of good deeds and empathy and charity.

At Christmas, the poor are no longer frightening or unwashed or forgotten, they are all transformed into noble and unfortunate souls, often magically rescued by the spirit of Christmas itself.

We know life is not like that for most people, or for most families. We are taught to yearn for it nonetheless, it is practically ground into our consciousness. Christmas is a pressured holiday. I have big trouble with such enforced joy, we like to pretend it is all for the children, and for the good of others, but in our hearts we know better. It is just as much for us, our way of hanging onto the threads of hope and promise.

Families, like the legislative process, are not pretty. If I learned nothing else as a reporter, it was not believe the images people love to project about themselves and their families.  There are lots of things happening behind those closed doors, some of them pretty, some ugly. There are no perfect families, just as there are no perfect lives. And who would really want one?  The really loving families acknowledge their flaws and defy them.

Some of us can find salvation and rebirth at Christmas, we can relish the spirit of it in a world that is harsh on spirits and good cheer sometimes. I see many families that try too hard at Christmas, they wade stubbornly through the stress and the pressure, and the planning and choosing and guessing, and the cracks and fissures that chew at almost every family, acknowledged or not.

“For me,” said a good friend recently, “Christmas is all about stress. The gifts, the cooking the planning, needing to make it perfect for everyone. I think it is a woman’s holiday, the men can just sit back and unwrap their gifts.”

That is the American story, the Disney story people – and corporations –  love so much, the one we yearn for and somehow need to believe. And I know some people for whom it is true. For most of the people I know – and for me – it is a fantasy, a surreal distortion of real life. Almost all of us fall short of the Christmas we are told we ought to be having, that  is the Christmas the people who run our world  very much wish us to believe in. The economy practically runs on it.

Over the years, I have fairly worn myself out trying to make it work in my own various families; scrambled, like my mother, to live up to it’s very high expectations.  I think it is more complex than the Disney people care to know, and actually, that is what gives it richness and meaning. Not the Disney story, but the real story.

I love Christmas, I will always love it, it was the one day of the year when my fractured family put their troubles and arguments aside and tried to bury one another in gifts and anticipation. The post-Christmas crash, the return to earth was ugly. But we sure tried. The Christmases I often see are full of stress, spending, quarreling, cooking and pacifying. Christmas is most often marked by excess, not the simplicity of its namesake.

You know, the stuff of families. Guilt and misunderstanding, love and loyalty.  My heart breaks for my mother on Christmas, the poor woman, raised by Orthodox Jews, honoring a sacred Christian holiday, desperate to make up to her children for all of the lost days of the year.

Do not ever tell your grandmother, she said every year. We never did.

My mother exhausted herself trying, she could never do it, of course, it was an impossible mission.

I thought of Christmas and the holidays at Foggy Notions tonight, “The Bog,” a very real place with good hamburgers, they pulled out all the stops this year, Kelly’s radiant and welcoming smile, her competence and efficiency,  lights hanging everywhere, a sense of excitement., a big crowd at the bar, a roaring wood stove, wreaths over the pool table.  Maria had an awful time with Christmas for much of her life, every present was a post-traumatic stress trigger. We are shifting gears, evolving, creating our own idea of the holiday.

We are doing it differently this year. We gave our gifts early, we are avoiding dinners and celebrations and expectations and mounds of presents. We have nothing to do on Christmas Day but be together and love one another, the sweetest gift of all. Perhaps, at last, we have found our Christmas, we have found simplicity.

I think are both done with trying to figure it out. We can’t. Blessings to those who can.

Our Christmas will be acknowledged in the living of our life together, our wishes to do good for people. We will give the gift of no expensive gifts, no excess, no stress, no family intrigue, no big dinners, hours of wrapping, no  pressure to dance in the heady swirl of joy. I’ll take some photos, read some books, herd some sheep, walk with Maria and her pony. I can hardly imagine a day filled with more gifts than I already have. Why did it take me so long to see that?

We are giving one another the gift of love, respect and encouragement, all wrapped up in the great bow of living.

It will be a special Christmas for us, I think, a consolation.

I do think Christmas is a necessary festival. Obviously, we all need it, or we would have abandoned it long ago. It forces us to come to terms with our families, and with ourselves. We can look back or move forward. I think Jesus would have liked that part, loved our idea of the simple Christmas. Really, chain stores were not in the picture.

We can see very clearly the flaws in human relationships, otherwise there would be no necessity for Christmas, no need to acknowledge the runaway train that is life and celebrate the idea of giving once a year. Everyone is trying  hard to do better, to understand that giving is a gift to the giver as much as the receiver.

Christmas is a respite, a deep and needed breath.

If there is much sadness at Christmas – people think of lost love, broken family, battered hopes, there is, in fact, also much consolation.

“Don’t grieve,” wrote the poet Rumi.”Anything you lose comes round in another form.”

That’s the thing about Christmas, I think. It comes every year.  Everything we lose comes around in another form, year after year.  Sometimes, the lucky ones  can get some of it back.

Let’s start our abuse primer  this way: The greatest abuse in the history of animals – corporate farming, the wanton destruction of habitats by blind governments and greedy developers – is not illegal. Even though millions of animals are tortured cruelly or perish as the result of corporate farming and development, no one is ever arrested for either, there are no raids, no animals are trucked out and re-homed on rescue farms.  Many more animals die awful deaths in corporate farms or die from development than could ever be harmed by a young farmer named Joshua Rockwood.

At the end of the very bitter winter of 2015,  Rockwood, a new farmer  in Glenville, N.Y., committed to the local food movement – he sells pasture-fed beef, pork, chicken and lamb – was reported to authorities by a secret informer. He was visited several times by the police, an animal control officer, and a worker for the Humane Society. Three of his horses and one dog were taken from him, and he was charged with 13 counts of animal abuse, cruelty and neglect. He was accused of having frozen water tanks, inadequate shelter for his pigs, overgrown hooves for his pony, and of keeping animals in an unheated barn.

On February 27, one of the same days he was raided by the police and charged with having frozen water tanks, the sewer pipes in the Glenville Municipal Building froze, and the toilets backed up and were unusable. No one was arrested

Rockwood’s arrest raises serious questions about the persecution of farmers. It also raises issues relating to freedom and  privacy, the right of the state to invade private property and seize it without hearing or trial, and the growing role of secret informers searching everywhere for animal abuse. Government, formed to protect freedom and property, does neither when people like Joshua Greenwood are denounced for animal abuse.

The persecution of Joshua Rockwood is Orwellian.

Orwellian is an adjective that describes a situation or idea that the writer George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm,) identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. It refers to an attitude and policy of intimidation and draconian control of issues by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation of events. It describes the targeting of the “unperson,” someone  who is publicly denounced on modern media, whose past existence is expunged from the public record and memory, who is arrested by police with great authority, and who is thus disgraced and discredited. The dehumanizing of people, wrote Orwell, is a common practice of repressive governments.

The action against Joshua Rockwell was Orwellian, it fits every definition of the idea.

In our culture, people accused of animal abuse are shunned and disgraced, removed from the community of moral people, denied the right to acquire and own animals, listed on registries posted in public. Police invade their homes, seize their property, they are denounced publicly before trial or hearing, they become a non-person.

This is the fate Joshua Rockwood is quite determined to avoid. He insists on his identity, he defends his identity as an ethical human being.

The real problem here – and in many other cases around the country – is that Joshua Rockwood is almost certainly not guilty of animal abuse as it is known and has always been defined. The charges against him could have – and can be – lodged against almost any real farmer in the country in the middle of winter, and against almost anyone who owns a dog or a cat.

They could be lodged against you:

If your water pipes froze while you were at work, and you were running low on dog food, or built your own doghouse out of plywood and tar paper, a hostile neighbor, a disgruntled co-worker, an anonymous person on Facebook who saw a photograph you posted, or any other  informer,  peeked through your window, or drove by your home  and called the police. The police could enter your home on an open warrant, charge you with failure to provide water, shelter, adequate food or heat.  They might find that you failed to keep your dog’s claws properly trimmed. They could take your dog away. At any time.  You would see yourself shamed on the evening news, a photograph of your wet and miserable looking dog seen by your friends and neighbors.

And all this before you have any chance to defend  yourself.

Your dog could be euthanized without your permission, and if he or she were kept alive, it would cost you thousands of dollars to get it back, assuming that became possible.

Rockwood’s animals are right there for everyone, including the police,  to see –  healthy, hydrated.  Two different veterinarians said they were healthy and properly cared for. They survived an awful winter safe and intact. They were not beaten or whipped, seriously ill or injured, or abused to the point of grievous injury or death. At worst, Rockwell was guilty of being inexperienced, and unprepared for one of the worst winters in American history.  It is not easy to have animals on a farm, especially in a brutal winter.

He could have been charged with being overwhelmed, but that is not yet a crime. Or maybe it is. And he could have been helped instead of arrested. Is it abuse to use home made shelters for pigs? Is it abuse when a water tank freezes in – 27 degree or higher temperatures? Is it abuse when you are a month or two behind having the hooves of your horses trimmed? They used to call it farming. And  how many municipalities, I wonder, send the police into private homes when there is no heating oil and take the people inside to warmer homes.

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So I’ve written a short Q &A primer on abuse, I hope it is helpful. I have been working on it for a long time.

1. What abuse is: Animal abuse is defined almost everywhere, according to the American Legal Dictionary, as this: The extreme neglect of domestic animals to the point of great suffering, grievous injury, or death. There are plenty of laws on the books of every state and municipality in America regarding animal abuse. It is illegal. In recent years, animal rights organizations have lobbied to re-define abuse  – working with animals, being entertained by them, keeping them in low-fenced areas,  using them for research,  even their experiencing  inevitable accidents, sickness,  and death.

2. What abuse is not: The opinion of someone sitting at a computer screen in some distant city, diagnosing an animal from a photograph or image. The opinion of someone driving by a farm and seeing a cow sitting in the snow, or a photo online. The opinion of someone driving by a private home and seeing a dog sitting in the rain. A horse lowering his head and raising a rear leg (this is an equine sign of relalxation. The use of a tool – a bullhook, a crop, a stick – to control a large animal or steer them in a direction. There is no state in the country that has found the work of working animals to be inherently abusive. The use of dogs to herd sheep or work with the blind is not abuse, nor is the use of animals to entertain  and uplift people, as in therapy work.

3. Killer whales. Is it appropriate for killer whales to be confined in aquariums and water parks for the amusement of tourists?   There is no law prohibiting killer whales in theme parks, but I am clear in my mind. It is wrong, it is not technically abuse, but it ought to be illegal. Killer whales are not domesticated animals, they have not ever worked safely or easily with humans, unlike draft horses or Asian elephants. They have never lived in confined areas close to people and structures. To me, the use of killer whales in confined pools and spaces is not acceptable to me, it is clearly wrong.

Animals fall into three categories – pets, domesticated animals, wildlife. Legal definitions of abuse are different for all of them, and all animals are not pets. Nor are they children with fur.

4. Why isn’t it cruel for all Asian elephants to be in any circuses? Because there is little or no evidence of systematic abuse of elephants by Ringling Bros.  Why not improve the lives of elephants rather than ban them, and doom them? A half- dozen courts have ruled the Ringling Bros. elephants have been well cared for.  Animal rights groups – the U.S. Humane Society, and A.S.P.C.A. were fined more than $21 million by a judge for paying witnesses to claim the elephants were abused. There is considerable evidence that their elephant trainers love them, train them gently.  Asian elephants have worked with people for thousands of years, there is nowhere else for them to go, there is no wild for them to return to.

5. I hope I am not the first one to tell you that everything you see on the Internet is not true, every image of a suffering animal is neither accurate nor genuine or tells the whole story of any species.  Be careful where your money goes.  (If you want to save money and see it go directly to animals, find organizations like Blue-Star Equiculture, which uses donations to save animals and encourage people to keep them and care for them. I support organizations that work to keep animals among us, not to take them away.)

So there is a sense of unreality and very selective morality about real abuse. Abused animals bleed, starve, die. Corporate farmers who house their animals in unimaginably horrific conditions – who abuse them in every moral and social sense of the term – go unpunished, while farmers, carriage drivers, pony ride operators, circus owners and sled dog mushers are considered criminals and are harassed and persecuted. Abuse has ironically become a blinding obstacle, a distraction that keeps us from figuring out how to keep animals among us. We ban them from their lives and work, and look away as they fade from the earth and are never seen again.

Stopping abuse is not the same thing as saving animals and keeping them in our world.

For all of human history, the relationship between people and animals have been private, sacred, individual and personal, as long as the animals are treated decently. They are not owed perfect lives, and cannot be spared the travails of life. The very people who insist that animals need to be released to the wild persecute farmers because their animals are sometimes in the wild.

Animals in barns in bitter weather can get frostbite just as quickly as animals outside without shelter And most of the real farmers in the Northeast could have been charged with abuse at almost any point in February. Everyone’s water tanks froze. That’s why they are flocking to support Joshua Rockwell. They  believe they have the right to live their own lives in peace, as long as they break no laws.

There is an epidemic of abuse emanating from the animal world, but more and more, it appears that it occurs to the most vulnerable humans – farmers and the people who live and work with animals and most often love them, rather than to the animals themselves.

Joshua Rockwood is not an unperson, a grainy photograph on the evening news. He is a human being, fighting for his existence because the people in charge of the welfare of animals no longer have any idea what animals or farms are like. Nobody is lobbying to pass any laws protecting Joshua Rockwood and his rights, or helping him to get through the worst cold wave in decades.

Maria and I just returned from three days in Vermont at an old inn we love, and where we spend our honeymoon. Maria got a very original tattoo of an alligator and a flower – she’ll write about it on her blog, I was going to get one (a dragon) but decided to spend our last day sleeping and reading, I needed it and we needed it and it feels good, I am rested and at peace. We had a great time, talking, walking – I got her socks, leggings, the tattoo trip as a birthday present, if I gave Maria a diamond she would be horrified, she was thrilled to get socks and leggings.

While we were at the tattoo parlor – we appreciate and trust our friend Alex of Mountainside Tattoo, he is a careful, responsive and creative artist in Bellows Falls, Vermont, I was invited to observe a timeless American ritual I knew belonged in my “Looking For America” series, I think some things about America are timeless, they speak to a world without change.

A 16-year-old girl came to see Alex with her sister, boyfriend and mother, she wanted a tattoo on her right rear shoulder that said “Bulletproof,” it was in honor of her grandfather, who passed away recently, and whom she loved dearly. She was nervous, the family gathered around her, the boyfriend, who never spoke, hovered, nearby, taking her hand. Her mother was happy she wanted to honor her grandfather this way, his nickname was “Bulletproof” from his service in the Korean War. I felt as if I had walked into a Norman Rockwell painting, the single light in the ceiling bore down on this beautiful young woman, so full of love for her  grandfather she wanted to bear his nickname for life.

I have more photos of this, which all speak for themselves, I’ll put them up later, they deserve their own space. We are glad to be home, we visited the animals, let the dogs out, scraped up three wheelbarrows of donkey manure from the barn, filled up the woodholders. We are good about not making a big deal about coming and going, so the dogs don’t either. I have never had a dog with separation anxiety, and hope to keep the record alive. Deb Foster messaged us that Lenore is a “bed hog,” which we know, and she adores Red and is able now to rub Frieda’s belly. I don’t think there was much reason to miss us. More photos and thoughts later.

I like to say that life happens, just about every day. Today we had three crises going at once, and I was reminded why I am living in the right place for me, I love my town – Cambridge, N.Y. –  more in small ways than in big ones, I think, but I am grateful to be here, especially on a day like today. As a perpetual loner and outsider, I understand I am a refugee, I will never be a native, I have no great desire to be. All the more remarkable how much I feel I belong.

Our trip to New York was in some danger in my mind today, but not any longer. Life happens in all kinds of ways.

First, my car window blew out during last week’s storm, it wouldn’t open or close.

Then, today, a warning light came on about one of the tires – we are driving to New York tomorrow.

Then, this afternoon, we became alarmed about Red and were wondering if we could leave as planned for our trip.

When the window went out last week it was storming, we couldn’t make it up the road to a dealer or our usual mechanic, I remembered there was a small business called “Mr. Auto Glass” just down the road, in sight of our house.  I drove there and the nicest man came out and waved me into his small and spotless garage.

Eduardo, who is from the Dominican Republic, brought the car into his garage, he said he needed a part from Boston, it was delayed because of all the storms and ice. He taped up the window so I could drive it, offered to drive me home and back if necessary,  sent his father-in-law off to Vermont to pick up the part, spent this morning fixing it. I loved his story, he met his wife in the Dominican some years ago, they got married, had a child and moved upstate to her home. We talked baseball, the bill for the window repairs and parts was a little over $300, about half of what it would have cost at a dealer’s. Eduardo and Leah are coming to visit the farm when it warms up.

Then, there was the tire. When I picked up the car from Eduardo,  Maria and I drove it up to Matthews Automotive where Adam Matthews, the owner, put on his ski hat and gloves, took a look and found the spare tire was sending off the warning signal, he fixed it, wouldn’t charge us. I took this photo of Maria in the waiting room, it looked Norman Rockwell’ish to me, Tom, the office assistant,  was at his desk.

On the way back, we picked up Red at the groomer’s and she told us about his water gulping and we became further alarmed and I called the vet, they said bring him right in, right now, and we did, and Dr. Flaherty came right out to see Red instantly, the vet techs ran around with him outside in the cold until he peed and they got a sample, and they drew blood and told me to come back in a half hour – they are just down the road – and they gave me the test results and send more urine off for further testing, they said they would bill me later.

The Cambridge Valley Vet feels like family to me, there is nothing but trust and efficiency there.

We did all of these things in a couple of hours, we felt comfortable with everyone we saw, everything we spent was reasonable and beyond fair. I do not live in paradise, there is no perfect life, no place is without it’s problems and issues, I love where I live you get as good as you give here, I feel I am always dealing with neighbors, I am surrounded in a cocoon of community. People love to help people here, it happens again and again. They are business transactions, yet they are not, they are more.  I told Maria I couldn’t help but think of what this afternoon would have been like in  Washington or New Jersey or New York or Philadelphia, places I have lived.