7:00 AM –Michael has to go into the city
for a meeting and we head to the train. There's some time so we stop at Relish,
a small breakfast and lunch spot across from the station, where Dana, its
excellent short-order chef owner, grills up an Amtrak – a fried egg sandwich on
toasted wheat berry bread, gooey yellow with cheddar and yolk and anchored by
7:30. I'm unaccustomedly early, Sue, the
Salvation Army's cook, isn't in yet. Jill, the director, is in her office, and
Ria, the Assistant Director, is right outside it sitting at one of the lunch
tables. They are counting kettle money, the spoils from the Christmas volunteer
bell ringers. Coins are strewn across the surface, so I sit down and start
stuffing pennies into paper cylinders while they make fun of me after noticing
I'm doing it upside down. Charlie is moving large boxes back and forth into the
cooler and the pantry. He is 75 years old, about five-five, and comes in every
morning between two and five to organize the storage areas and set things up
for the day. After about 15 minutes, Sue arrives and Jill presents us with bags
of our presents, pendants of silver chains hung with polished stones. Charlie appears
from the kitchen with cards and small wrapped packages. I open mine to find
commemorative Canadian coins from 1976, Queen Elizabeth's youthful profile
gleaming on their surfaces. It is hard to describe how wonderful Charlie is
without using saccharine words, like angelic, so I continue.
8:00 – 9:30, In the kitchen, before we
start preparing lunch, Sue and I share guilt over the lazy inadequacy of our
own gifts, which we'll be bringing in tomorrow --- wine for Ria and Jill and
sugared treats for Charlie. A hodge podge of ribs have defrosted and are spread
out on the counter. A bag of potatoes and carrots lean against it. The cooler
and pantry are stuffed to the door with donations. We can't get in to see if
there is anything more interesting to cook, so we'll make do with what's
already out. Robin comes in and unwinds her scarf. She's a young charming
Fulbright scholar, home for the holiday month from Syria, where's she working
off a research grant on ways to develop educational approaches for improving
human rights. She asks what she can do. I put her to work cutting up potatoes
for future mashing, while I scrape and cut up carrots.
9:30 to 10:00. Doreen comes in, as she does
every Tuesday, with a sack of dish towels and aprons that she launders and
returns each week. Being 84 with a mild kyphosis also does not stop her from
hauling empty cauldrons into the sink, scraping off caked lunch remnants, and scrubbing
the pots back into purity. Doreen also brings gifts, bright wooly things made
by local pals. I remove the wrapping from mine and discover a Christmas dish
towel printed with holly and berries dangling through a buttoned up red
crocheted band. It's actually something I need.
11:00 – 11:30. The carrots, swimming in
butter and cider, are simmering. My plan is to reduce the liquid and finish
them off with a wash of balsamic vinegar. The ribs are in the oven and the
potatoes are cubed and starting to boil up. I check my phone and read an email
sent by an editor from my former company. She wants to talk to me about some
captions I've been writing as part of a big contract with them. "Shit,"
I announce to the kitchen, "I have to go home and check out something from
work." I grumpily pull on my coat, wish everyone a merry Christmas, and
head resentfully to my car. I open the door, shove my O. Henry gifts onto the passenger
seat, then stop. "Fuck it." I close the door and go back into the
kitchen. "It can wait," I tell Sue and Robin.
11:30 – 1:00. The lunch service starts. About
10 diners have already lined up outside the door, and more are ambling up
toward the Center. In the kitchen, Sue, Robin, and I serve the ribs and
potatoes onto stiff plastic plates, while singing and dancing to "Rockin'
Around the Christmas Tree" crackling from a beat-up radio someone had donated.
Toward the end of service, Janie, one of the regulars, leans through the door
that leads from the lunch room into the kitchen. When she isn't high and mean
on something cheap and synthetic, Janie is usually severely cranky about the
food we cook. She growls at us: "Good carrots. Can I have seconds?" That's
a good morning.
1:20 – 3.:00 I pick up Michael at the train
station and we head home. It's raining, part of the freaky globally warmed up
December. He says he wants to check out the solar trackers, which should be
installed today on the house site. I return to the barn and work on my
captions. After about an hour, I hear him calling me from the kitchen. "They're
about to move!" I throw on my boots and we slop through mud down to the
site, where two giant solar trackers now stand 17 feet tall and about 50 feet
apart, each set of panels pitched table flat on a stolid leg. Two young men in
yellow hoodies are making final adjustments to the wiring. One flicks a switch
and moves a ladder away from the northern tracker. We stand in the drizzle
waiting. Everyone is silent, and suddenly it produces a birthing squeak and
slowly begins to swivel, a bird just out of the egg, checking its environment,
straining for food. The sky is gray and whatever sun exists to feed those ebony
wings is thin with winter and blocked by shades of cloud. Still, the giant baby
finds it and tips down to greet whatever milky light can sustain it. Its southern
partner is late. We wait nervously, fearful that we have a runt of the litter. Then,
it too squawks into life, turns and tips, rain water sliding off its surface. Minus
some adjustments, they are now both in place, our new twins, monstrous and
weirdly fragile. I love them.
3:00-6:00. We drive back into town. Michael
has to retrieve his credit card from Staples, where he left it yesterday
copying off our house factory contract. After that we need to stop at Lotus
Energy, the providers of our solar stalkers, to pay them for our new babies. We
also stop off for wine and unworthy presents for Jill, Ria, and Sue. Once home,
we get a message from Michael's daughter, who injured her middle finger and is
just back from urgent care. She proudly texts us a picture of it, splinted up
and bleeping the world.
6:00 -8:00. Dave, our
landlord/neighbor/friend comes over for a glass of wine, talks about the
computer he bought for his sister Sue, but has no interest in watching my
three-minute video showing Michael, me, and the tracker workers stare up at the
unmoving solar panels for two and half of those minutes.
8:00 -10:00. We have dinner at the bar at
DABA, mine a juicy chicken breast resting on parsnip puree. Amy the bartender
is four months pregnant and she and I trade food craving and repulsion stories.
Daniel, the chef owner, is sitting across the bar with two of his cross-fit
pals. I overhear him mention the weekly pod cast he is hoping to record some
day, for which his modest goal is to influence a billion minds. We talk back
and forth across the bar about his latest idea, to become a food super hero
showing the world how to produce great healthy food for everyone. We finish eating,
wish everyone at DABA a merry Christmas, and head home.
10:15. Michael wants to check out the
trackers in the dark, so he slowly propels our car up the new driveway and we stare
out in the darkness, where the twins are now profiled flat and asleep. As we
drive back, I can see our barn apartment windows, amber lit and warm through
the skeletal trees. "Next year, someone else will be living there." And
after this best of all days, I am suddenly sad. We pull into the garage. "I
get so attached to a place." Michael turns off the engine. "Me
too."
