“I stood beside a hill, smooth with new-laid snow, A single star looked out from the cold evening glow.  There was no other creature that saw what I could see --- I stood and watched the evening star as long as it watched me.”* Stars somehow look larger and clearer against a black sky, when the night is cold and still.  This week’s melt has left us with much less snow though tomorrow will likely remedy that ---- but the stars are still shining, waiting for us to connect whenever we gaze up.

Late February is when, a few years ago, the Spencer Grange would offer its annual Winter Wake-Up party.  By this time of winter, we all need some fun.  There was a dish-to-pass dinner and entertainment of one kind or another for anyone who wanted to come.  Sometimes entertainment was a pick-up band of community members who enjoyed playing together.  Sometimes, it was just “mental games” that people could do on paper at the table.  But it was an evening that brought some brightness into our long, cold winters.  Community events like this have been missing for nearly three years due to precautions around COVID, but those particular parties have been gone since the Spencer Grange closed its doors.  Whenever a community organization ceases to be, it is sad.  Unfortunately, even good things do come to an end.  Changes occur and we have to move with the changes.  The Grange building has become a community center where there are classes and events, and a gym ---- all good things too.

Life is, in fact, full of changes.  Robert Gallagher** said: “Change is inevitable---- except from a vending machine!”  In my office a Mary Englebrecht poster said something like “Be flexible or you will break.”  It seemed an appropriate slogan for those of us who worked for the county--- or the state ---- or any human services agency.   Some changes delight us, like the birth of a new baby into the family.  Some sadden us, as in the loss of someone we care about.  Some annoy us – perhaps in changes to laws that inconvenience us.  How we handle change is, perhaps, a measure of how well we have matured and learned that life is not all about us.

As a child, I clung to what was familiar.  I would get annoyingly homesick, whenever I was away from home or when my parents were away from home, leaving me with my older sister. I can remember my sister being exasperated with my seven or eight-year-old whining about “I don’t feel good.”   During my first week of 4-H camp, days went by before I felt comfortable.  When I went to SUNY Plattsburg, 300 miles away from home, I was homesick for most of that year, in varying degrees.  Fortunately, I had a cool roommate who was a lot of fun!    When I transferred to Cornell, nearer home, I was homesick all over again ---- for Plattsburg.   Emotions can be unreliable and capricious things, and emotions tend to kick and complain about change. I no longer need to be at home every moment, but a couple of weeks away is usually my limit.   I would like to visit far-flung places.  I’d love to meet some of the people in Kenya who facilitate the mission we support there.  I’d be over-the-top happy at visiting the Galapagos Islands and to see some of the places in New Zealand that I’ve heard about.  But --- to do so, I’d have to be whisked there and back again via teleporting (Star Trek) or floo powder (Harry Potter). I’m probably what is called a nester, and this is, no doubt, why we are currently skidding around on February ice instead of spending our winters in Florida or Arizona.

Nesters are home-makers and home-bodies. Our homes represent comfort and security; they are the safe place in a world gone amok.  One of our sons and his wife, are moving, this very day, and our second son is contemplating a several-hundred-mile move with his family.   I was thinking how much fun they will have in transforming a whole new set of spaces into rooms that reflect their tastes; places that will signal “HOME” to them.   Right now, while amid the daunting task of packing and the trials of moving, they may not be thinking that change is so wonderful, but once they are in, and boxes are unpacked, a better perspective will open for them ---- I hope. They will surely miss the homes they’ve left, but new views and a new community will soon be theirs and they will be comforted as they become connected.

I grew up in one place for 18 years, but Kerm and I have moved seven times since 1964.  Except for the first two small, furnished apartments, and one unfurnished, where we lived briefly, I never met a house I couldn’t turn into a comfortable home ---- even with very limited funds.  Until the boys were older, we were a one-income family, so I needed to be creative.  Our first large set of dishes came from a household auction; pretty porcelain with a small flowered pattern; 12 dinner plates, soup plates and luncheon plates.  They went well with the Oneida flatware and Libby glasses that were wedding gifts. Also, I became skillful at making large appliqued fabric hangings to enhance empty walls. As a result, I am amazed at the demands of home-buyers today. Far too many want perfection immediately, in whatever home they decide to buy; granite counters in the kitchen, tiled bathrooms, newly-painted walls throughout.  Perhaps this is reasonable if buyers are, late in life, looking for their ideal home after living in many.   But to expect the newest, glitziest surfaces and appliances to be waiting in every home one lives in, seems to me to be both unreasonable and a bit greedy/entitled. And what about all this “staging”?   We’ve never yet looked at a house that was “staged” as seems to be the current mode. Our potential homes have been empty rooms, and I’ve never had a problem imagining our possessions in them.  Actually, I think other people’s possessions might be distracting.  Imagination is a useful quality that seems to be lacking.

Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I remodel (in my imagination) the homes I’ve lived in previously. Or I design a suitable place for when we’ve decided to seriously down-size. There are certain things we want. We need to be where we can see trees and hear birds singing. We need lots of natural light, and enough space so that we can get away from each other.  We enjoy being together, but we also need time and room for our own pursuits.  It’s tough to hear the Mash episode on the TV when the sewing machine is running full tilt across the room, or a Bach oratorio with a football game in progress. The kitchen needs more than a hot plate and a refrigerator for our cookie jar must be full and the oven accommodating to large pans.   And bookshelves ---- we can cheerily dispense with much that we now own, but not our books.

Have you ever spent time considering what you can or can’t live without?

Home has so many different meanings, and what I want may be alien to others.  But a home of some kind is a human craving, I think, and one that I wish more people could have.  I was appalled when I saw my first homeless people on the streets of San Francisco.  Later, I learned that not too far from us in a well-to-do college town, there is a community of homeless people living in a tent camp, winter and summer.    I know there are people living in their cars, and kids in our small community who “couch-surf.”***  In a country as creative and wealthy as ours, we should be able to do better.

The imaginative “tiny houses” in some urban areas, for people who are homeless are a wonderful idea.   Not too far from us (Brooktondale) there is a whole community of wee, brightly-colored rental homes that will accommodate just one or two people.  Also hopeful are the shelters that work with people to find job training, then jobs, and --- eventually --- homes of their own.  Habitat for Humanity is great though it doesn’t provide homes on a large scale.  Maybe some of the abandoned malls could become lodging.  We need innovative solutions so that people find a peaceful, affordable nook to call their own.  I think that individuals in nursing homes should not have to share a room either.  Even at 105 years, we need our own spaces.  Efficiency should not necessarily be our top-most goal in these end-of-life residences.  As I sit by my own wood fire, watching the sun spots dancing on the ceiling, and listening to a Bach chorale, I know how very much I am blessed and wish that for everyone.

It is maple-syrup time in our region.  Those people blessed with access to sugar maples are out tapping the trees for the clear sap that, after many hours and hours of work, turns into the golden syrup that we find essential for our waffles and pancakes.  By the flowing of sap, we know the season is changing.  “For low, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle dove is hard in our land.” **** This essay began with a snowy field and ends with singing birds.  A metaphor for life --- and change.

Carol may be reached at: carol42wilde@htva.net.

*”February Twilight” by Sara Teasdale ---American lyric poet born in Missouri.  1884-1933

**Robert Gallagher --- American commercial and editorial artist based in LA.

***Couch-surfing is what kids do when they are unwelcome or hurting in their own families.  They stay overnight with whomever of their friends will welcome them --- and move from friend to friend.

****Taken from The Bible – The Song of Solomon Chapter 2

NOTE:   For those of you who knew Dick Cole, there is a time of remembrance on Saturday, March 5^th from 1-4 in the afternoon.  Family will receive people at the Montour Falls Methodist church.