What is home? Not as in the houses where we park our cars and bodies at the end of the day. That’s one way to think about home. But there’s some other way. It’s what we mean when we say “there’s no place like home.”
Two years running (by my count) winter has arrived in The Valley before the Thanksgiving table is even set. This is how I remember it from when I was a kid, but that was a long time ago. Trick or treating in snow boots. Since then, and by my reckoning, winter has become the most unreliable season. What other time of the year routinely serves up 50-degree, 24-hour temperature swings? I don’t think it was always this way. I think winter has changed. Memory – an untrustworthy source if there ever was one – tells me so.
But here we are, smack in the middle of the coldest December anyone can remember. So maybe it’s fair to say winter is changing. Again. And surely will again. I’ll admit, I can be irrational about winter. My expectations for the season were formed by thick-flake lake-effect squalls in and around Buffalo. Winter – cold and white and uninterrupted – holds my heart. Even though as historical fact I’ve probably never experienced such a winter. And when it spurns me, I tend to take it personally. So, nice anyway to have a good start – a welcome return – two years running. And no matter how empathically I remind myself of its fickleness, I’m ever hopeful. Fingers crossed.
I’ll also admit that nostalgia has a hand in how I feel about winter. And probably that has to do with Christmas. Nostalgia has something to do with home. So does Christmas. Nostalgia is that bittersweet sensation of longing for something that never actually existed. Not anyway as held in memory. There’s a way to look at it that says nothing ever returns. Everything is always new. It’s the idea that you can’t step in the same river twice. Maybe it’s the sensation of longing for what’s never really existed that is what we really want. Needing a reminder of our essential insufficiency. This is why we invented our gods – including Santa Claus. Why our greatest gift is storytelling.
Nostalgia could be another word for Christmas. The 1943 Bing Crosby hit “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” hits the point in the refrain “...if only in my dreams.” Longing is more than wanting, as dreams are more than passing whims.
December snow invites longing. It is written in the tracks groomed into the fields white and staked for skiing. Longing is nostalgia for the future. It is more than mere wanting. As home is more than a house.
I’m keen – I long – to see again what makes it so that places here gather me. That gathering? That’s home of the other kind. Being gathered. Wanting to return. And accepting that it’s at least a little different this time. I’m different this time. How? The truth lies just inside the eyes. And so I’m eager (maybe not anxious as a child told to go to sleep on Christmas Eve) for: the Ole’s trails I’ve never skied but seen from East Warren Road all these years (I’ve promised myself that this year I’ll get out there); for the changes the new folks at Blueberry Lake have wrought (I’ve heard there’s a new grooming machine that makes all the difference – even if I thought it was fine before); exploring some as-yet unfamiliar Nordic center; breaking trail at the end of our road after a fresh foot; the new POS system at the East Warren Community Market; a couple days of fumbling and flailing on my skis until my technique returns; ...et cetera. All the delights of our unfolding winter.
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