Christmas 1985, in a Country cottage near Liberty in the Catskills.

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Through the glass door, the deck is thick with snow and last summer’s chairs still standing casting shadows like a David Hockney painting. 


The snow. And the bare brown trees, the green pines sprinkled  white up the hill on the other side. An old brown barn, then a wide open snow-filled space to the tree line and soft, gray clouds rolling from the west casting shadows across the landscape. 

 

This morning I saw a Blue Jay flitter across  this picture, alight on one of the scrawny apple tree branches, flutter and flit then stand motionless so I could no longer define its form against the brilliant white backdrop. 


From where I sit on an old cane whicker chair with red linen covers and random scatter cushions, bright colors and stripes, I can see the remnants of Christmas in the fairy lights, the red and green around the stone fireplace, the cards across the mantle on top. 


He squints slightly over the half-frames, reading the sports section of the New York Post and absent mindedly takes a home-baked cookie from the cookie jar beside him. There is an unfathomable lassitude about him, a quietness, waft of a tropic breeze even though its the dead of winter here. Long stints of work in the Far East and over thirty years in the garment business gave him a sense of urbane sophistication. 


Perhaps it is the result of the high quality hashish he imported from contacts in India. It was delicious and he was generous and cut a piece off the block with his pocket knife and it crumbles and I could smell it and he desiccated with the side of the blade and sprinkled the divine golden dust on the American Spirit tobacco nestled in the rolling papers cupped in his hand. 


He’s lived in this white clap board country farm house for almost ten years now. When his son was much younger they lived here for an entire season right through winter. Their son went to first grade up here in the Catskill Mountains. Its far enough from New York City to escape the buzz and sink into the country vibe and its good. The kid caught the old yellow school bus at seven-thirty, snow, rain and shine and was home by three.


For his mother, those days were spent reading a lot and cooking and gardening in the plot out back overlooking the gully and up the other side to the tree line on the far hills that were just this moment turning pinkish from the last of the sun slanting across the bare branches and through the pines. 


This time of year in upstate New York its always like that, draped in snow but not crackling cold when the sun’s out. Though yesterday when we walked for about an hour down the hill in the shade of the mountains you could feel the ice on the edge of the day cutting your cheeks and my feet got cold too. 

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