Stick Season

Each year, when we reach November, I find ways to distract myself from – well, all things November-y. The damp chill that settles into bones. The protracted dark of the mornings and evenings. The stark bareness of the landscape once all the leaves drop from their trees and the growing, blooming things of summer have turned to dormancy.  

The moniker of Stick Season is certainly apt for this month between the blazing colors of autumn and the sweeping snow and lacy frost that decorate winter. I prefer all the other seasons to this one. Even Mud Season, on the other side of winter, at least holds the promise of more light and warmth and blooming. 

 

During Stick Season, I will myself to appreciate the little things, the everyday blessings. I revel in the sunny days, even if they’re cold, just for the fullness of light. I am thankful for the leaves that hold on for a bit longer – on the rugosa hedge and the lilac bushes. For the lingering golden glow of the tamaracks. And for the views – both macro and micro – that open up during Stick Season: mountain vistas obscured in other seasons by dense foliage, a cecropia moth cocoon hanging in the cold light from a now-bare branch.

 

I notice things I miss in other months. The deer that come to eat fallen apples in our just-mown field, which at the start of autumn was filled with a riot of goldenrods and asters in various hues. The few ferns that remain green through the year – even now, amid the browns and grays – but are just part of the landscape of color during summer and early fall. The artful form of trees emerging in their bareness: the bend of each trunk, the spread of branches ending in intricate webs of twigs. 

 

It seems right, too, that Thanksgiving comes near the end of this month, this Stick Season. It is easy, perhaps, to be thankful for spring’s pastel flowers and summer’s easy cheerfulness, for the colors of autumn and the festivities of winter. Stick Season allows us – or forces us, perhaps – to consider the things right before us and to contemplate the things for which we are thankful.  

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's November 4, 2021 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

Giving Thanks

Some years ago, when the children who are now as tall as I am were still small, we established a family routine of sharing “thankful things” around the dinner table. In part, this was a replacement for saying grace, which my family did when I was a child. But really it is more an act of focusing, even for a few minutes, on some of the good things in our lives, no matter what kind of day we’ve all had.

Some evenings it is easy to spout off a list of thankful things. Others, of course, this practice is more challenging. On this week of traditional thanks-giving, near the end of a year that has been challenging in many ways, it seems more important than ever to focus, even for a little while, on the good things.  

Thanksgiving is next in 2020’s this-year-it-will-look-different lineup. Since the middle of March, most things have been a bit – or a lot – out of whack. School has been different. Work has been different. Grocery shopping, soccer, visiting friends, going to the doctor, getting a book from the library – all different.

We’ve all adjusted, to varying degrees, to the shifting normal. I no longer forget to don my mask when I head into the post office (although it still feels a little odd). My kids have grown used to longer class periods in school and lunchtime spent six feet away from friends. Last weekend, my family celebrated my dad’s birthday with a woods walk and hot cider sipped around a fire, rather than a sit-down dinner and cake with candles. (I do wonder if I’ll ever again be comfortable eating birthday cake after the guest of honor has blown across it to extinguish candle flames.)

But holidays are different, and I think many of us are feeling a tinge of sadness at traditions set aside, for now, as we head into the first of a string of holidays that normally brighten a literally dark time of year.

My crew is lucky to live within a few miles of lots of extended family. My kids have grandparents around each corner, aunts and uncles down the road, and a cousin across the street. Normally, holidays are a time for blending the local McPhaul and McCarthy branches of the family, with the odd additional out-of-town guest or local friend adopted for the day – and the feast. Our average holiday dinner guest list is usually between 12 and 20, generally tilting toward the higher end.

Our normal gathering place for this particular holiday is my in-laws’ house, which we can reach – literally – by walking over the river (a brook, really) and through the woods. This year, though, along with most other folks, we’ll be marking Thanksgiving in our own homes, without any large gathering.

I bought a Thanksgiving turkey over the weekend for the first time – ever. The kids and I sat down about a week before Thanksgiving to plan out our own dinner-for-five menu. The main event, of course, is the bird. But also included are Gaga’s famous sticky rolls and a dish my kids call “glop,” along with Nana’s Swedish apple pie. While the setting and the company will shift, my kids insist the menu should stay as close to “normal” as possible.  

One tradition we’ll maintain, especially on this day of thanks-giving, is to share our thankful things with each other. In this year of feeling regularly uncertain and unsettled, I’m thankful for many things, including that my children have these family traditions, which will continue to evolve – even if, like most other things, they look a little different this year.

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's November 25, 2020 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record.    

Teasing Winter

Winter has been teasingly indecisive lately, leaving snow-lovers alternately giddy with powdery joy or grumpy with LOSS (Lack Of Snow Syndrome).

Red sky in morning... will it be rain or snow?

The season of cold and white made an early visit with snowfall at the end of October, enough of the white stuff to inspire skiers to dig out the boards and hike to ski what we like to call the fast grass – that skim layer of white barely covering the not-quite-frozen vegetation below.

October snow is not all that unusual around here. North Country kids know they’ll likely have to wear snow boots to trick-or-treat, and plan their Halloween costumes to allow for plenty of layers. It’s also not unusual for that October snow to melt quickly, which this year’s did.

But November was another story. Multiple dumps of heavy, sticky, lovely snow inspired some to nick-name this month of Thanksgiving “Snowvember.” Before it was time to feast with family, my kids had constructed multiple snow figures in the front yard, honed their snowball-throwing skills, and taken countless laps on the sledding hill.

The scene was complete winter wonderland, with snow-draped evergreens and glistening snow-covered fields. By the time Thanksgiving hit, it felt – and looked – like January. The skiing was fabulous, the plow had been put to work multiple times, and the cross-country tracks were set through the woods.

December, too, started with promise, although little new snow. Skiing on the mountain remained fabulous, and mainly cold temps meant snowmakers kept adding to the base. The track through the woods got a bit crusty, but it was still skiable. The heavy stuff finally melted off the trees, but the mountains remained winter white. Occasional flurries kept the landscape sparkly.

All was, if not calm, at least bright. Until last Friday. Just in time for the Winter Solstice, the rain came.

It didn’t just rain; it poured. For a while that morning, it poured through sunshine, and there was a rainbow arched across the sky. I love rainbows. But not in December. Small rivers of water flowed down the thick ice on the driveway. The kids’ snowy creations, which had lasted for weeks, dissolved into sad piles, then disappeared entirely. Green grass emerged in the yard, and the stalks of put-to-bed perennials poked out from the front garden.

“Great. We’re going to have a brown Christmas,” one of my children proclaimed glumly as they were sprung from school for winter break.

There is nothing so cantankerous as a snow-loving kid on a rainy day in December. At least the big warm up came when the kids were considerably distracted by the coming of Christmas; only the promise of anticipated presents could combat that disgruntlement.

As I watched the dreary weather through the bright Christmas tree lights, I knew the woods would soon be a mucky mess, and I wondered what was happening at the mountain.

I found out the next day, and it wasn’t pretty. Where a few days before all had been white, tinged with green boughs of fir trees, now there was entirely too much brown. All the natural snow was gone.

But where the snowguns had been at work during colder days – and nights – the trails were still covered, and I was thankful for the wonders of modern snowmaking and grooming. After two days of rain, the crews had put the mountain mostly back together, and the skiing Sunday was surprisingly pleasant. A cool down and a skim of snow had turned the summits to frosty white again, even if the yard remains devoid of snow.

The forecast looks like cold and a bit of snow in the near future. All’s well that ends well, right? Here’s hoping Winter is done teasing.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the December 28, 2018 issue of the Littleton Record.

Skiing Through Black Friday

The idea of joining throngs of hyped up shoppers the day after Thanksgiving has never appealed to me. I’m not much of a shopper to start – I can barely stand grocery shopping – and I don’t do well in crowds. For all my adult life, I have lived in places where it is easier to get into the mountains than it is to find a mall; this is one of the many things for which I am thankful – on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and all the other days.

Far from the madding crowds: scoping out a new season.

While the hoards of Black Friday shoppers rise early to stand in line, my family, if all goes well, will be making our way to the mountain for opening day of ski season. When there is snow on Thanksgiving weekend, I ski. That has been true since my immediate post-college years when I lived in Crested Butte, Colorado.

During those ski town days, I usually spent Thanksgiving working, then joined friends – and friends of friends – gathered in someone’s living room for a hodgepodge of holiday dishes and traditions around a makeshift collection of card tables and mismatched chairs. Most of us were far from home and family, working odd holiday hours in a town where shops, restaurants, and ski lifts were open on Turkey Day.

People showed up when they could, after or between shifts, coming together in the comfort of good food, friendly company, and talk about the fresh ski season. Back then I was thankful for being in the mountains, living in a beautiful place with other people who embraced that beauty and loved exploring the wide-open spaces around us. I was happy to have a job that included daily ski breaks, a decent place to live, and people to gather with on this holiday of giving thanks, even if they weren’t quite family.

I’m not sure I even knew about Black Friday until I moved back East. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention before. Or maybe this national day of shopping has morphed in the past couple of decades into the consumeristic beast it is now. In the modern era of constant connectivity, you don’t even have to leave the house to buy presents, and online shopping has its own special holiday in Cyber Monday.

Well before Thanksgiving, I started receiving texts and emails touting Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, sometimes from stores where I’ve never even shopped. They can send all the advertisements they want, I still won’t be buying today, and probably not Monday either. My holiday shopping tends to be on the small scale (even with three kids) and as local as I can make it.

During the Black Fridays I worked as a reporter, I spent a good portion of the day after Thanksgiving popping into those local shops in the post-parade crowd of Main Street Littleton, talking with local business owners and shoppers. The resulting story was generally a combination of fluff (what were the “hot” items this season) and substance (how important were Black Friday sales to these small shop owners).

Surrounded by hustle and bustle, and jotting soundbites into my reporter’s notebook, I longed for the steady hum of the chairlift’s bullwheel, the sensation of skis slicing through snow, the comfort of not being corralled into small spaces with so many people. (My claustrophobic exception is the tram car, where the end result of a top-to-bottom run absolutely justifies the sometimes crowded means of transport).

Lots of things have changed since those early post-college years, geographically and otherwise. My Thanksgivings have returned to a more traditional scene – a day off from schedules, gathering with family, eating too much. These days, I spend my winter weekends coaching 6- and 7-year-old aspiring ski racers. We kick off the season the day after Thanksgiving.

It turns out I am thankful now for some of the same things I was thankful for 20 years ago when I lived in the mountains of Colorado: work that allows me to ski quite a bit, a pretty nice place to live with the beauty of the mountains surrounding me, and the closeness of family. Plus, I get to spend Black Friday on skis.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the November 25, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

November Weekends

November and I have a touchy relationship. I could do with a bit more light and a lot more color than this month has to offer – or a quick switch to cold and snow, without the in-between damp chill and bare trees. It is my least favorite month. But there is one thing about November I like: the weekends.

Getting things done, November style.

My September and October weekends were chockfull of soccer games and Saturday meetings and short road trips to visit out-of-town relatives. Every weekend seemed to have some lengthy commitment – whether fun or purely obligatory. And a few weeks from now, my family will dive into our weekend ski routine. If you’ve read this column before, you know I love skiing. But winter is a long-haul season of full days in the cold, coaching on weekends, and getting kids up and out early seven days a week.

While I am looking forward to the start of ski season, I am also appreciating this relative weekend downtime for the short while it lasts. On November weekends, there is wiggle room. Time to go for a meandering morning run or meet up with friends or linger at the table with a second (or third) cup of coffee and some reading. The kids can do as they please – stay in bed with a good book, scout out potential new bike trails in the woods, run around the yard with the puppy.

These November weekends give us time to catch up and regroup. Last weekend, as I was hauling the winter clothing out to determine which kids (all of them) have outgrown which gear (most of it), I also – finally – put the leftover summer stuff into winter storage. We haven’t been swimming in ages, but in that slow shift from summer days to fall, there seemed a lingering chance we’d see one more hot afternoon and head for a dip in the river. By the time the seasons had fully transitioned, I was too deep in the thick of back-to-school, homework, and soccer chaos to notice the bag of beach towels and swim goggles still hanging in the mudroom.

Winter, of course, has infinitely more gear than summer. Instead of flip-flops and bathing suits, there are heavy fleece layers, hats and mittens, wet snow boots, and bulky coats – not to mention skis and ski boots and helmets and goggles. Each November I have to figure out again how to make it all fit into the designated space. Each year, as the kids grow, it seems that space takes over more of the house.

It takes all of November’s weekends to make the transition from the last season to the next. We spend time cleaning out the gardens, picking up the yard, finishing up any warmer-weather projects that have loitered through the summer and fall. But the chores are fit into space with comparatively fewer time constraints than we had a few weeks ago and will have again by the end of the month.

Come the day after Thanksgiving, we’re on the slopes. Then comes the rush and full-bore excitement of Christmas, followed closely by our family’s two straight months of birthdays to celebrate. Winter weekends are fun, but very full. And they’ll be here soon enough. For now, I am stuck in November, a month that will probably never be my favorite. I could easily skip its Mondays-thru-Fridays. But I’ll take what I can in the freedom of November weekends. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the November 11, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

Winter Deer

The garden fence will need fixing come spring. We enclosed our vegetable plot years ago, primarily to keep the dog – and later the toddling children – out of the plants growing there. The wire fencing has been sagging for a while now, between the sturdy wooden posts. But this early winter the fence has been pushed from merely drooping to downright dilapidated by regular visits from a neighborhood deer.

We first spotted her from an upstairs window at the back of the house, the week before Thanksgiving. A shape shifting in the dusk drew my eyes to the rectangle of field enclosed by that slightly sagging fence, where the doe was pacing and sniffing around the garden near the compost heap. The pumpkins that had been our Halloween jack-o-lanterns were at the top of the pile, broken into softening shards, their autumn orange fading but still bright against new snow.

I called the kids – now far beyond their toddling days – and we peered into the growing dark to watch the deer as she examined the fence, repeatedly lowering her head to sniff at its edge, then wagging her ovate tail in apparent frustration, the discarded pumpkin bits just out of her reach.

Two days later she was back, this time as light crept into the day rather than out of it. She repeated the routine of pacing, sniffing and tail wagging. After several minutes of deliberation and scouting her options, the doe gave a final tail wag, twitched her big ears, and with easy grace hopped the leaning garden gate. She stayed within the garden, munching composted pumpkin, until the dog went outside 20 minutes later.

We see deer often in the fields around our house, along with the narrow paths they trod from the field into the cover of the forest. Some seasons we are able to identify the regular cervine visitors to the old apple orchard in the field. Last fall we enjoyed daily visits from a large doe and two smaller ones who came together, always a trio, to pick at the fallen apples or stretch their necks to reach the fruit still clinging to branches. Often they were joined by a young buck who sported only a single spike.

There was an abundance of apples last year, and even after snow had covered the field, the deer came to scrape through the white in search of the frozen morsels below. On the very morning after the last day of the final hunting season, a six-point buck strode regally through the field toward the mountains, not bothering to pause for apples. We’d never seen him before and haven’t since.

This year the apples were not as plentiful, and we haven’t seen deer as often in our field. Our winter deer, the one who raids the compost heap, seems to be our only regular for this season. Often at dusk or before the morning has fully brightened to day, we’ll notice her large ears and twitching tail in the garden out back. She has become quite bold, actually, and we often find her standing just beyond the garden, gazing thoughtfully at us as we come down the driveway after school in the afternoon.

By the time we are out of the car and in the house, the deer is in the garden. She stoops to nose the pile, searching for the best scraps – carrot peels, stalks of wilted lettuce, browned apple cores, perhaps – then raises her head as she chews placidly, dark eyes rimmed in white surveying the landscape, ears turning toward every sound.

When we open the door to let the dog out, the deer is immediately alert, and with one smooth, powerful leap she is over the fence and out of the garden, her white tail waving with each high bound through the field.

She is lovely to watch, and our compost scraps seem easy picking in what must be, for a deer, a very long, hungry winter. But I know we’ll have to break our winter deer’s bad habit. I wonder, as I watch her in my garden out back, if this is the deer who ate the tops off every carrot in the small garden boxes in the side yard, and nibbled every lettuce down to the stalk there as summer faded to fall months ago. There are no fences around those boxes, and we’d never had an issue with wild vegetable thieves before last year. Perhaps it’s time to enclose those veggies, too.

Yes, the garden fence will need fixing come spring, and maybe a jolt of electricity added as well.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the January 9, 2015 edition of the Littleton Record.

From Giving Thanks to Sharing Joy

The march to the holidays beyond Thanksgiving seems to start earlier each year – Christmas decorations appear in stores in October, holiday music plays on the radio in mid-November, and Black Friday deals are hawked well before Thanksgiving. It seems Thanksgiving – this day set aside for gratitude, for gathering with loved ones and sharing food – gets short shrift in the hurrying to what comes next.

The rush to Christmas and the relentless barrage of spend-centric advertisements is my holiday pet peeve. I love the holiday season, including Thanksgiving, and I will buy a good few presents in the coming weeks. But I will not join the shopping hoards hopped up on caffeine and consumerism during Black Friday or Cyber Monday or any other cutesy-monikered days following Thanksgiving.

I don’t like shopping, or crowds, on a normal day, and the two together are soul crushing for me, which negates the joy of finding presents to give to loved ones. I’d rather hold on to the feel-goodness and relative calm of Thanksgiving for another few days.

I understand, of course, that these days and weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are crucial to the bottom line for many stores, both the big chain outlets and the Main Street boutiques. I realize that Christmas and Chanukah are holidays in which people traditionally bestow gifts upon friends and family members. But bestowing thoughtful gifts is not the same as simply buying more stuff, even if the sales are incredible.

Whether we are religious or not, whether we celebrate Christmas or Chanukah or both or something else, whether we are surrounded by family or far from home, this season is meant to celebrate hope and peace, love and light, helping others and sharing joy.

                                                                                                                       

With three children in the house, it is easy to embrace the joy of Christmas. My kids are at the sweetest age for holiday magic, for baking cookies and decorating the house and visits to Santa. Come Christmas morning, they will find presents under the tree and stockings brimming with goodies.

I know that these – the brimming stockings and pretty presents and, most importantly, the excited children – are among my family’s many blessings. And I try to carry the spirit of Thanksgiving into the holidays beyond so that gratitude is mixed with the sometimes chaotic joy. Surrounded by gift-touting grandparents and aunts and uncles, my children know Christmas to be a time of plenty – plenty of love, plenty of good food, plenty of presents to unwrap.

Sadly, there are many children who do not know a world of plenty, and this lack of abundance must be exacerbated during a season when joy-filled advertisements of colorfully-wrapped gifts abound. I cannot imagine what it is like to wake up as a child to a Christmas morning without presents.

When I was a kid, my family picked a tag or two each year from the Giving Tree at our church. We kids would help choose a child, nameless to us, based on age and the few other details we could ascertain from the clothing sizes and toy interests listed on the small tag. We were always amazed that there were kids, just like us, who may not have presents to open on Christmas day.

A few years ago, when my own children were young enough that the boxes and wrapping paper were more fun to play with than the gifts they concealed, we chose a tag from a similar Giving Tree effort. All three of my kids were small enough to ride in the shopping cart as we looked together for warm boots and clothes and a few toys we hoped the unknown child would love. My kids were too young then to really understand what we were doing, and to my great chagrin we have not picked a Giving Tree tag since.

This year, moved by a friend’s efforts on behalf of a Giving Tree child, I am inspired to again choose a name with my children and to endeavor together to provide a bit of holiday joy to another child, who is probably not so different from my own.

My friend, as she was shopping for clothes for her Giving Tree child, sought advice from the sales clerk. When he learned of her mission, the clerk told my friend that people like her were responsible for the gifts he woke up to on the Christmas mornings of his childhood. He told her how much that had meant to him, and that it would mean more than my friend could realize to her Giving Tree child, too.

If that’s not clear testimony that these efforts to share a bit of holiday magic are worth it,

I don’t know what is.

My children are older now than that first year we picked a Giving Tree name. They’re old enough to wish for certain coveted things under the tree on Christmas morning. They’re old enough to understand that not everyone has a holiday season filled with family and hugs and happy surprises. They’re old enough to know that a kind act, no matter how small, can sometimes make a big difference in helping another person feel good and loved and happy.

It seems a good lesson to remember, no matter how old we are, during this season of hope and love and joy – and of giving thanks. Kindness can come in many forms. A smile from a stranger on a dreary day. A heartfelt compliment from a friend. A hug during hard times. And the simplicity of gifts to open on Christmas morning.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the November 28, 2014 edition of the Littleton Record.

Thankful things

Two of my thankful things

It’s November, the month of giving thanks, which precedes the month of giving (and getting) gifts. As much as I love the spirit of Christmas, with all its twinkling lights and excited children and peaceful good deeds, I have always cherished Thanksgiving. This is the calm before the frenzied holiday storm, a time of gathering family and eating good food together. Thanksgiving is a holiday that inspires us to look around and see all that we have to be thankful for – rather than brainstorming items to add to our Wish List.

There are myriad studies indicating that expressing gratitude is good for your health. Being thankful, they say, leads to better sleep, better mood, better physical and mental fitness. It seems logical that appreciating what you have will make you happier than lamenting what you don’t.

Still, in the regularity of daily routine, I often find myself taking many things for granted: food on the table at each meal, a warm house, a car that starts when I want it to, a really spectacular view from my window. For my children, who have known all these things for all of their lives, taking for granted is natural. And so, some time ago, in an effort to ease the taking-for-grantedness of our lives, we started a nightly ritual of sharing our “thankful things” around the dinner table.

When I was a kid, my family said grace each evening before picking up our forks. My brothers and I each had our own little prayer, memorized at a young age and repeated each dinnertime by rote, without a whole lot of feeling. (Well, except the night the local priest came to dinner, and my younger brother gleefully recited, “Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub.” My mother was horrified, until the benevolent guest of honor piped up, “You forgot to say, ‘Yea, God’ at the end.”)

Saying our thankful things seems more introspective, as each person’s “things” change from day to day, depending on what has recently happened, what kind of mood we’re all in, and whether there’s some longed for event coming up. Often the kids give similar answers. “I’m thankful for my whole family,” is a common one. Being thankful for our good food is another regular, especially when a favorite meal is on the table.

The children regularly express thankfulness for some event from the day – playing with a certain friend during school recess, scoring a goal in a soccer game, spotting a particularly interesting animal munching apples in our field. Anticipation is also a common thankful topic, as we look forward to a trip or vacation, a holiday or birthday, a visit from far-away friends or cousins.

Our thankful things turn out to be more experiential than tangible, materialistic items. Events and people (and pets) are mentioned often. Toys, clothes, and other “stuff” rarely make the list.

Sometimes, one of the kids, in a sulky mood, will claim, “I am not thankful for anything.” But the rule is each person has to share two thankful things – has to stop and think about two good things he or she appreciates right then and there. Sometimes the list extends far beyond the required minimum. Often, our thankful things are conversation starters, and it can take half the meal to get through everyone’s turn.

Sharing thankful things with my children has crept into my thinking beyond the dinner table. Sure, I still find myself in the occasional foul mood. I get annoyed at bad drivers and mean people, faulty technology and the perpetual need to do laundry. But when I stop to think about all of the things for which I am thankful, the list is overwhelmingly long.

Many of my thankful things are mundane necessities, which I am beyond grateful to have. Many are there for the taking – and the giving thanks – if only I pause for a moment and look around me.

I am thankful for a home that is not always (ok, hardly ever) clean and has leaky windows and faltering appliances, but is filled with love and the happy chaos of raising children. I am thankful for each of those children – for so many reasons – and for a husband who works ridiculously hard and adores his family. I am thankful for a schedule that, although it sometimes seems unruly, allows me to both be with my children for much of the day and do work that I love.

I am thankful for being born where I was and for living where I do and for all the places in which I have traveled and lived. I am thankful that my children are growing up within shouting distance of all four grandparents. I am thankful for friends near and far.

I am thankful that my children notice the brightness of the stars, the fullness of the moon, and the beauty of a sunrise and the late day glow on the mountains of home. I am thankful that when we sit down together each evening and reflect on the day just passed and the ones to come, there are many thankful things to be shared.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings from a full life. This essay also appears in the November 21, 2013 edition of the Littleton Record as Meghan's CLOSE TO HOME column.

Ribbon of White

(Wrote this earlier this week for the Record Littleton -- before it snowed! But with warm weather on the way, we're sure to be back to a ribbon of white soon, hopefully just for a while...)

It’s the third full week of November, which for most people means traveling to be with family, watching lots of football, enjoying and recovering from a huge Thanksgiving feast, and preparing for crazy holiday shopping sales. But if you’re a skier in the East, the third week of November probably means there’s more than turkey on the menu… that’s right, ski season officially began this week!

I’m not sure when Thanksgiving week became the traditional start to season for so many ski areas. The timing of “ski season” is something of an unnatural phenomenon, really, beginning before there’s usually much natural snow on the ground, and ending in early April, when some of the best skiing is still to come. I suppose by April, all but the most diehard of skiers have moved on to baseball and gardening.

So, with the relatively modern benefit of manmade snow, instead of skiing the longer, warmer, sunnier days of spring, we New Englanders strap on the boards for the first runs amid the colder, darker, somewhat dreary days of November. Locally, Loon Mountain opened last Sunday, Bretton Woods spun the lifts Tuesday for some pre-Turkey Day turns, and Cannon Mountain hosted its first skiers of the season today (Friday).

I’ve always been a Cannon girl, and I have a pretty good view of the mountain from my dining room table, where I do most of my work these days. Although I don’t normally ski until December, I found myself this week peering out the window each morning in the dim, pre-dawn hour, looking for plumes of snow shooting from snowguns to create their own weather system in Franconia Notch, anticipating the official start of ski season.

Whether I get out there in the first week or two or not, it’s comforting to see that one long, winding strip of white, unnaturally bright amid the dull grey-brown of a mountainside of denuded trees. The first days on the hill are generally not the best, with few trail options, minimal snow cover, and slopes crowded by eager skiers. But they lay the foundation for the good days to come. The days of soft snow, smooth corduroy, and – nature willing – sweet powder.

And so we fill up with turkey, grudgingly accept November’s darkness, and look toward the mountain, hoping to see that ribbon of white that means ski season has begun.