pacific northwest – Kim K. McCrea

Waiting on the Magi

Eight inches of snow fell Christmas night, a few more inches accumulated the next day. The world fell silent for a time.

The oil-filled electric heater in my little studio needs time to warm and fill the space. I wear fingerless gloves like Bob Cratchit where he labored at Scrooge’s ledgers with scant coal on the fire. I don’t shut the door, just prop it ajar with a winged bronze pig as a door stop so the dog can see me sitting in the corner. She doesn’t like to come in; she waits outside lying on a flokoti rug in the next room with a vantage of all approaches.

Snow still fell while I shoveled on Boxing Day and Mercy circled the hill casting for the missing quail and squirrels—snow in big tattered flakes like ripped muslin, not the crystaline shapes cut from folded Christmas paper. The shoveled path from house to road and then down it filled in again and again with fresh heavy snow, but it’s wiser to shovel two inches six times than twelve inches once.

I offer Ethan $20 to help dig a track down the hill to the crossroad. He is thirteen now, born in the house next door. He doesn’t understand why we are shoveling when more snow is forecast. I point up at the sun rising above the fir trees and tell him the day will help melt new snow from the bare pavement. He wears a lion’s head hat as he shovels. I give him a $5 tip.

The old year is as shaggy and soiled as the melting snow.

Dragon’s Head

Dragons are ravenous.

The duration of the full moon lunar eclipse visible in North America will be the longest in 580 years. The eclipse will last 3 hours, 28 minutes and 23 seconds. Although it’s not a total eclipse, the earth’s shadow will obscure ~98% of the lunar surface.

Shadows fall.

Eclipses come in pairs, usually twice each year and sometimes more, at new moon and full moon. An eclipse occurs when the new or full moon is within 15 degrees of the lunar nodes. The moon’s nodes are calculated points where the moon’s orbital path crosses the ecliptic. The ecliptic is the Sun’s apparent yearly path over the earth. There are two nodes: one rising to the north; one descending to the south.

The north node is the Dragon’s Head, called Rahu in Vedic astrology. The south node is the Dragon’s Tail, called Ketu. Some consider the north node to be the place to confront Destiny, while the south is an encounter with Karma.

The full moon occurs early in the morning of November 19th in the States. The earth will block most of the solar light from reflecting silver off the moon’s surface. Rather, the face of the moon will turn dusky and red illuminated only by bending solar rays that still reach its surface. A blood moon.

The Dragon needs feeding.

Hallows

hail_clouds

The sun slips into the Scorpion, sign of the Eagle and the Phoenix, and conjures whirlpools down from the Gulf of Alaska, atmospheric rivers from the Pacific. The wildfires are doused. Snow falls in the Cascades. The garden is done; the moldering squash plants pulled. There is rice to bake with wild mushrooms tonight.

We walked down the road, the dog and I, to the park–me treading thoughtfully over the slick moss and fallen leaves strewn across the steep hill, and Mercy straining at her lead to hurry while I braced her. I fell two years ago, catching myself on the right hand while never releasing the leash. My wrist is still tender from taking the brunt of the fall.

The wind whipped hair across my face and then flung it out into the air; a squall broke in cold waves across my bare cheeks. Mercy shook off the rain and rolled in the wet grass. We toured the sodden ground, maskless to the elements and churning cloud, before climbing the hill back home.

We paced two wild turkeys up the hill before us; the dog tested my grip on her leash, but I held her back. The heavy birds gawked back at us every few yards to see if we were gaining ground. They hurried to the verge at the top and took flight for the fir trees.

Swirling bright waves of maple, birch, and oak leaves spun up from the crest as we climbed and crashed down the hill in waves. I closed my eyes against their breaking over us.

Another Cusp

harvesting

The moon grows full tomorrow at the penultimate degree of the zodiac to herald the coming equinox. Night grows longer.

Persephone is damn tired and ill-tempered. She’s leaving early, ready to shrug off the birthing work of the field. The Goddess casts down her seeds, takes up her torch, and returns underground into welcome darkness. Comes the cusp of the fallow season.

Tomatoes gathered and stacked on the table before the rain forecast finally arrives to split their skins. Squash and feathers. Clusters of dusky grapes. Rain came, crowned by thunder, fast and fierce and flooded the street.

A cusp is a pointed end where two curves meet. Such a cusp is seen in the pointed ends of a crescent moon, the lip of yet another precipice, molting away one cracked skin for another.

Last Orders

bumble_artichoke

I remember rain.

Wildfire smoke is pushed by a high-pressure bellows to the east, dispersed again when the wind changes to pull marine flow from the Pacific. The grass crunches underfoot; the hill is a tangled warren of burrs and foxtail, all things sere and seeding. Weary of drought and heat, wonder at the prodigious flooding in the east, scanning the sky for rain before the west is ash and withered bone. The cracks in the earth grow wider.

Birch and locus leaves float on the surface of the scrying bowls clouded with wasps. A fresh pail of water set out on the hillside every day during these three months of drought for birds and wild night creatures is drained or toppled by morning. At first, while a trickle of water remained in the creek, they eschewed the metal bucket. Now they depend upon it.

The garden presses to her longed-for languishment and release. The grapes are ripe. The tomatoes sigh and sag under a harvest of Romas, Brandywines, and Sungolds.

tomatoes

The zucchini, the courgette, the green summer squash the Greeks call kolokithia, now dominates the terraced beds and relentlessly births thick heavy fruit. Somehow, through camouflage or inattention, great squash clubs grow overnight. With their large seeds muffled in pulp, these giants are useful only as filling for nut bread, fritters, muffins, or pita. Shred the flesh against the box grater and squeeze out the water between two cotton kitchen cloths while resolving to pick the smaller squash before they transform.

shredded_zucchini

At least the flesh is mild, versatile, and forgiving–

A zucchini cake filled with crushed pineapple and coconut, finished with a buttermilk glaze; oatmeal muffins studded with blueberries, kolokithia scraped and broiled stuffed with tomatoes, feta, and breadcrumbs; slices layered with potato, onion, and tomatoes, bathed in olive oil and baked into Briam; stewed with fresh bay leaves, eggplant, tomatoes, and olives to eat on crusty bread; sautéed in a frittata sprinkled with goat cheese and topped with yet more tomato.

Hungry for a change of season, I remember rain.

frittata_zuc

Threshold

low_water

Like Shrek with his gourd green head, this thirteen-pound watermelon watered by the Columbia River, ripened outside Hermiston, was trucked west to the valley to be sliced open with a wide sharp blade; it’s bigger than a man’s head, this, the size of an ogre’s, rich in sticky red juice flooding the sluice etched into the cutting board.

Hum-sing the theme chorus “Accidentally in Love” from the second Shrek film, cube the flesh, and suck the nectar from the board. Come on, come on/Turn a little faster-

The first dangerous slice along the scalp steadies the rocking. Then carving rind shells away along the broad curve until the melon is flayed raw and crimson. Come on, come on/The world will follow after-

This is nature’s Gatorade, this sweet pink water. Chop the rind to set out on the hill for the doe still nursing spotted twin fawns. The rind is nearly gone by morning, gone by evening. Come on, come on/’Cause everybody’s after love.

Drought and wildfire, smoke and thunder, cracked earth and dying trees: Only the moon can bring rain, and who can rule her?

There are thresholds before and after, an Old English word with Norse roots. A threshold defines the barrier or bar used to contain the threshed matter lining dirt floored cottages, a boundary to keep the reeds dry within. Some thresholds are as visible as the plank or stone that lies under the door. Others are unnoticed, until they are crossed.

Strawberries

strawberries

The first bowl of strawberries from the garden, before the squirrels pick them, or the deer mice sample mouthfuls of several berries for ripeness, daring Mercy to charge out of the house and catch them. The dog lies out in the sun until it’s too hot, waiting for strawberry thieves, but I think the deer mice creep out in the evening or early morning when she’s dreaming.

The first sugar snap peas came on all at once, white blossoms like moth wings folded around their pods.

There’s so much garden to water. There’s so much to learn about publishing a novel.

Ladybird

For the second year, dozens of ladybugs hatched inside the house. Somehow a nursery took root in the sunny southwestern room and ladybirds awoke and marched across the windows toward the light. We tipped them one-by-one onto an index card and carried them outside, ever so gently so they wouldn’t take flight, and offered them room in the geranium pots.

I keep a stack of index cards in the sideboard drawer. They are useful in many ways besides saving ladybugs: grocery lists, chore lists, recording vaccine registration codes to hand over at intake, or a bench scrappers if salt spills from the cellar.

When I make a sweet I take a portion over to share with neighbor Vic. I write out an index card to hand over as well because he rarely wears his hearing aids. Perhaps he has no reason to, living alone since Shirley died, perhaps they hurt his ears. When I call to tell him I’m coming over, he knows there’s a sweet coming, but can’t hear what it is nor any other news I have. Last week’s card:

Blank side:

Carrot Cake with Buttermilk Glaze, has Coconut and Pineapple
(written in big bold capital letters)

Lined side:

We will take out your garbage and recycling bins on
Sundays with ours, so look for them in the street if needed.

We take Vic’s empty bins up the steep drive on Monday’s, but after he nearly rode the recycling bin down to the street, it’s better we all agree on the take-out as well. Since his last seizure, he walks with a cane to the mailbox and gathers his mail into a bag hung from his wrist. The heavy blue wheeled bin is a beast.

At the farm and housewares store today there were crowds thronging between the nursery aisles and shelves of seed, pet food, and kitchen gadgets. I wondered if it was because it is a sunny March afternoon and spring break from university, if more travelers venture here, or because more people are vaccinated. Everyone wore a mask, but I could hear my own breath and paid and left.

I’m not eligible for vaccination until May. I’m envious.

Slow Thaw

plum_new_moon

The little chest freezer in the garage is about the same size as a child’s desk. It barely fit in the cargo area of the Forester to haul home after D. bought it for me as a birthday gift a dozen years ago. I wanted to freeze more blackberries, more blueberries, more tubs of Oregon strawberries. Back then, I filled it with berries and jam..

I thought there was a whole chicken in the freezer. I rummaged among the pounds of butter, frozen peas, beef bones from the butcher for Mercy, lamb bones from summer souvlaki, and cartons of leftover bean soup stashed when we grew tired of it. In the panic of the pandemic, the freezer was stuffed full and the chicken remained mythical or a memory.

Last March, California locked down to the south. Seattle was ravaged early by contagion to the north and paralyzed. We were caught in the middle between the anvil and the hammer. Lettuce, citrus, avocados, and other vegetables travel I5 from Mexico and the San Jaoquin Valley to feed the West Coast. We didn’t know if supply channels would hold. I couldn’t find seeds to buy.

Dad eats a banana and fresh berries on his oatmeal every morning. He was bewildered by the bags of frozen berries I shoved in his freezer. California locked down, I said. Butter freezes well, I assured him, and four pounds is not too much. It may not be enough. Toilet paper was scarce, as was hand soap and bleach. I filled the freezer week by week and bought cans of tomatoes, salmon, tuna, and pineapple to add to the pantry shelves.

There is a cardboard box next to the freezer filled with anchovies, tomato paste, sesame oil, shoyu, a kilo of basmati rice, and cans of dog food. The box is slowly being emptied. I rummage through it, taking from the hoarded goods to use, resisting the impulse to buy more to drop into the box. I wonder what I was thinking when I bought the package of grilled artichokes or dried bing cherries, but realize it was not thought so much as premonition. We’ve come through better than many, better than most.

I found the chicken down at the bottom of the freezer. I rolled it out like an icy bowling ball, cradled it to the kitchen, and dropped it in the refrigerator so heavily I thought the plastic drawer cracked. Every morning for four days, I put the frozen chicken in the sink for an hour to thaw. On the fifth morning, I put the chicken in the sink and took up my cauldron. Mercy ate simmered giblets for dinner.

The garlic planted in the dark of winter is now two hands high. This year I found sets of red and white onion and golden Dutch shallots. I put them in the ground flanking the garlic on the waxing water moon. The green tips are barely visible now.

In the I Ching, after Heaven and Earth, follows the third Hexagram of Difficulty, which gives birth to all the ten thousand things, the tao of “Bursting, Sprouting, Hoarding, Distress, Organizational Growth Pains, Difficult Beginnings, Growing Pains, Initial Obstacles, Initial Hardship.” Of this, like the onion first spying sky, the commentary notes: “It is visible, but has not lost its dwelling.”

It’s a slow thawing spring.

Year of the Ox

When Rat finished with us, it scuttled away under the brier whipping a naked tail in a long last lash. Cursed Year of Rat.

We crossed under the tall firs down to the river edge but saw no sign of Ox. It’s the Year of Metal Ox come along with the new moon and Lent. Ox is a slow beast like the freight engines pulling across the water heading east into the mountains across country, strong like a big yellow bulldozer. I found a small river rock painted by a child among mushrooms and lichen sprouting from a fallen log; it was a dragonfly, a totem. I put it in my pocket.

I drove Dad and Jo down to the fairgrounds after the new moon. I printed their names and confirmation codes in big block letters on an index card and handed it out the window at intake. The volunteers guiding traffic at the 80-and-over vaccine clinic were from Lane County Search and Rescue. They waved light wands to direct us to the next open tent as if we were a plane lumbering toward our gate.

We parked to wait 15 minutes afterward to ensure neither Dad nor Jo had a reaction to the shot. Jo opened the thermos of coffee Dad brought. He packed the same bag they always use to go on day trips to the bird refuge or Irish Bend. They nearly quarreled over the coffee cups and the coffee. I offered around diamond-shaped pieces of Revani, a coarse semolina cake I baked, soaked in blood orange syrup and topped with crushed pecans. We sipped coffee and ate the crumbly sweet while we waited.

In October, when I took Dad to his local pharmacy to get a flu shot, I choreographed the operation as carefully as a jewel heist. As we walked out, his pharmacist called out behind us “I love you.” Dad turned to me and asked me what she said.

In the Rat, I made vats and kettles and cauldrons of soup to share out, pans of spanakopita and lasagna, stews and sesame soba noddles, coconut cake, banana cake, gingerbread, and oatmeal cookies studded with bing cherries. I’m weary of my own cooking.

In March, on the day before California locked down, I asked Dad not to go to the grocery store anymore, not to go to any store, to stay away from crowds. I made him a mask from a bandana and hair bands. I buy his groceries every week as well as our own. (Though I know he and Jo snuck out to Costco to buy a cheesecake this summer for my birthday, I didn’t say anything.)

Even after he gets his second shot, I’m still uneasy about letting him go out among many people again. I feel the thaw coming, slow like learning to walk again, yet still feel like an anxious parent rather than his child. That’s beside the fact our weekly grocery exchanges go roughly like this:

“You got two turkeys but no chicken,” Dad drops deli meat in the refrigerator drawer as I bring in more bags from the car. I push the front door shut with a toe shove.

“There wasn’t any chicken,” I hoist double-bagged sacks up onto the counter.

“No chicken,” he’s disappointed. His dogs get strips of the prepackaged deli meat on top their dinner kibble, nibbles from slices he doles out while eating his lunch.

“What’s this?” Dad rummages in a sack and pulls out a bottle of dish soap.

“It’s soap, Dad. Palmolive, like you asked,”

“This is the green. I use the blue,”

“There wasn’t any blue,” I set the bunch of bananas, green enough to ripen and last through the week, in the ceramic bowl next to the kitchen window.

“No blue? I can’t believe that,”

“There’s a lot of empty shelves in the store,”

“What?”

“A lot of empty shelves, in the store,”

“What?”

“Do you have your ears in?” I gesture to my own ears, asking in pantomime if Dad is wearing his hearing aids.

“No, I was going to take a shower,” Dad hobbles along the counter to the nook where he keeps his wallet, keys, and hearing aids and fiddles the devices in to his ears.

“I need new batteries,” Dad returns and rustles a hand in another brown bag and pulls out a box of instant oatmeal.

“Now? You need them now?”

“The left one is dead, I think,”

“Sure it isn’t ear wax again? Are you using those Q-tips I brought you?”

“What?”

“Q-tips.” I shake the box of swabs next to the prescription bottles and vitamins lined up on the shelf above the counter.

“Those hurt my ears,”

“Dad, I don’t want to go back to the audiologist already, we just had them cleaned,”

“I just need batteries,”

“Fine. Ok. I’ll go back to the store after we put this away,”

“Go to Bi-Mart, they’re cheaper,”

“I’m not going to Bi-Mart. I’m trying to stay out of the stores. That’s why I want you to think about your list every week. Make sure you have everything,”

“I can go to Bi-Mart. I’ll wear my mask,”

“No Dad, you need to stay away from crowds, or why am I doing this?” I bang the cupboard door shut and, turning, stumble over Dad’s German Shorthair, Emmy, hovering at my heels. She yelps. “Dammit, Emmy, get back,” I clap my hands above her head and holler “Snap!”

“Come on, Em,” Dad shifts down to the stove and offers the dog a crust of bread from the big plateful he toasts every morning. They both avert their eyes.

Let the thaws come soon