Upstairs, in our room, the bed creaks, then Tom clinks his coffee cup against its saucer. Across the tiny landing the cat sits glowering at my closed study door, where the young people are holed up. Occasionally he yowls ostentatiously and pokes a paw under the door, in hopes that they will invite him in. But no such luck yet.

It is Monday morning and my house is full of bodies, and I am so happy. It's too bad that T has to work both days before Christmas. Employers are such buzzkills, but what can you do? At least I will feed him well when he gets home--for instance, he can have another bowl of that eggnog ice cream. Boy, did that turn out well. It might be the most perfectly textured ice cream I've ever made, and the flavor is heaven. 

Today I need to make a pie crust, and then Lucy, our friend from the homeland, will drop by for a visit, and I ought to run an errand or two, and eventually I'll figure out what we're eating for dinner, but otherwise I am dedicated to doing nothing but hanging out.

Weirdly, though, the public poetry train keeps plowing ahead. Yesterday Tina Cane posted a video of me on her "Poetry Is Bread" reading series. In the evening I got notice that two of my new poems are out in the Maine Arts Journal (alongside poems by my friend Marita O'Neill). I thought I'd just be washing floors yesterday, but the words said otherwise.

Today the young people arrive! Their flight from Chicago will get into Boston in the early afternoon, then the easy bus to Portland will bring them into town before dark and the holidays will begin. The cat is already electric with excitement. Ruckus is a fiend for parties, and he adores his young people. He knows something's up as soon as I start setting up the guest bed, and he cannot wait for the fun to start.

My jobs today center around cleaning bathrooms and the downstairs floors and making eggnog ice cream. As you may know (the recipe is floating around somewhere on this blog), I have honed over the years a particularly delicious version of homemade eggnog, and this year I am going to use that recipe as the base for a batch of ice cream. Thus I need to make the nog early in the day so it can be well chilled before I embark on step 2.

Otherwise, I haven't done any fancy planning for meals. Tonight I'll fry up some hake and make a roasted Brussel sprout salad and maybe a batch of biscuits. For the other days I figure the kids and I will have the fun of deciding together what we want to eat: everyone in this family is a cook and a lover of food. We'll be heading to Vermont on Christmas Day, so the big dinner is out of our hands anyway. We will just play with the small ones.

Yesterday the glass dude showed up to replace my windshield, and then I waded into the ridiculous arena that is pre-Christmas grocery shopping. It was a scene, but I persevered, and now today I will comfortably drive nowhere other than the bus station. Our young people are coming! The only thing better would be if the Brooklyn young people were coming as well, but that set is far away in Oklahoma, where they are performing different family duties. As well they should, the dear ones. They are all so family-oriented, these young people. It is touching, how devoted they are.

I am still a-flutter about my big day of public poem stuff, but the holidays are bringing me back to earth. It is not my job to be a poet at Christmas. It is my job to be a mother and a daughter and a sister. Picture me on my knees scrubbing toilets. Picture me bent over a wet mop. The poet vanishes slowly, like the Cheshire Cat: smile last to go.

Remember, a few days ago, when I was moping about book reviews and my bad marketing stamina and generally behaving all woe-is-me? Well, this morning I am here to humbly apologize for being such a goon.

If anyone were to make a B-level Hallmark Christmas movie about the happy endings of poets, they could borrow some plot ideas from me. Because yesterday, I for some reason clicked the Instagram icon on my laptop. I rarely post anything on Instagram and hardly ever even look at it, so I don't know what I was up to there, but in any case I floated onto the site and saw that I had a notification. Eh, someone wants me to friend their cute dog's page, I thought. But I clicked on the notification anyway, and when I did I discovered I'd been awarded a prize: Scoundrel Time's 2024 Editors' Choice Award in Poetry. Huh? To add to the confusing hilarity, I learned that my good friend, the novelist Tom Rayfiel, had been been awarded the nonfiction award, so of course I immediately emailed him and repeated Huh? and he promptly wrote back pretending that we would soon be swanning around at an imaginary gala in crushed velvet, so that was a fine, if startling, entry into the day.

And then, in the afternoon, I got an email from the poet Rebekah Wolman telling me she'd just published a review of Calendar . . . and what a review! . . . long, and detailed, and thoughtful, and generous. I am, as I told my friend Gretchen, gobsmacked. I feel like a cat after a nice long brushing: electric and purring and wild-eyed. I mean, what the heck? This kind of stuff never happens. Winning a prize that I didn't even apply for? Receiving such a dense and careful book review? This is Christmas right here, friends.

Anyway, I am sorry you had to listen to me groan last week, and I'd like to swear it will never happen again, but of course I am human, so it will. I tender my regrets in advance, and give you permission to slap me around a little (via rhymed couplets only, please) if I get out of hand again.

* * *

Okay, now that the mea culpas are out of the way, let's talk about Christmas decorating. Christmas is basically a display of seasonal kitsch. I am a person who dislikes clutter and cutesy, so my approach to the season always strikes me as comic, because in December I am wholeheartedly devoted to sentimental knickknackery. Awkward little-boy-made ornaments, a rubber King Kong, strange styrofoam gingerbread men, a newspaper cut-out of Elvis, the nativity set my great-aunt Rose made in her ceramics class . . . all take pride of place. In about a week, the onslaught of stuff will be driving me nuts and I'll be desperate to pack it up again, but for the moment I am awash in delight with the silliness. Tomorrow our young people arrive, and so I am scrubbing candlesticks, assembling the candle chimes, setting votives in the windows. I'm not sure how my mind is working here: maybe This place needs to look like it's on fire is a form of parental affection. Whatever the case, I am having fun laughing at Christmas, and maybe you are too.

For whatever reason, my writing group was especially fun last night. Everyone was in a party spirit, our dear Betsy had recovered well enough from her concussion to take part, and people were writing like fiends. Everyone's draft felt like a marvel. It was thrilling to listen to them, thrilling even to read my own.

I brought along a prompt based on the Swift poem I posted in the comments a few days ago. What that means is that the conversations I've been having with Teresa are now bleeding into the conversations I'm having with the Portland poets . . . i.e., my inner life is swirling beyond my thoughts into chatter and experiment, which is exciting. Poetry as social currency is a dry way to put it, but what I mean is that art-as-public-life doesn't need to have anything to do with publication or performance but may simply be "Hey, pals! The eighteenth century is talking to us!"

This reminds me: a couple of days ago the folksinger Dave Mallett suddenly died. Dave was a thorough Mainer, born in Piscataquis County and living most of his life there, but he was also a legend in the folk world--most famously for writing "The Garden Song" ("inch by inch, row by row . . . "), which Pete Seeger made legendary. He performed widely, and his children also became traveling musicians. (His sons are the Mallett Brothers Band, an alt-rock band with a wide New England following.) In the days when I lived in the homeland, I'd run into Dave often in the grocery store. We'd chat a bit; sometimes he'd appear at the shows I played with Doughty Hill. He was a presence--someone who had managed to become a national figure in his chosen medium while remaining a regular local guy.

I've been thinking of him this week. "How rare that is, to be both local and extremely serious," I started saying to myself, and then I thought, "Maybe not so rare." Alan Bray, who teaches the visual arts arm of the Monson high school program I lead: he's another one of that ilk--trained in Italy, selling his paintings in NYC, but never leaving home. Then there's my friend Steve Cayard, a nationally renowned birchbark canoe builder, tucked into his quiet shop in the woods. What I'm saying, I guess, is that art-as-public-life can be as simple as sitting around a dinner table talking about the grove where you harvested spruce roots for sewing birchbark or which local hayfield is most beautiful under the setting sun.

***

Speaking of art in the homeland--

Soon Monson Arts will be opening registration for the 2025 Conference on Poetry and Learning, and I'll be able to announce our guest faculty and talk about a few of the adventures that Teresa and I are planning for that week. Last year's conference was a real eye-opener for me, in lots of personal ways. But amazingly it also turned out to be a boon for Monson Arts . . . which is to say, our classes filled and we netted a small profit. Meanwhile, we've also made the decision to strictly limit class numbers to 15 people, which means that we will maintain the intimacy of the experience but will never be a giant moneymaker.

For those who are new to this blog: the Conference for Poetry and Learning (which I direct) is dedicated to helping teachers and other community builders bring poetry into their workplaces, into conversation with other art forms, and into the daily civil discourse this nation so desperately needs. Many of the conference participants have institutional support: that is, some or all of their tuition comes from school professional development funds. But others work in poor schools or outside of institutions altogether. Last year we gathered together enough scholarship money to bring in several people who would not otherwise have been able to attend, and I hope that will again be the case this year.

And as you know, I'm also devoted to Monson's high school studio art program, which allows a cohort of rural students to spend an entire school year focusing closely on their writing or visual art. That program depends on outside support to survive. So here, too, we would welcome anything you could toss into the pot to make sure that these kids, many from poor isolated northern communities, continue to have the opportunity to live in the world of art.

The Monson Arts donation button allows you to choose where you'd like to allocate your gift. If you're able to help us keep these programs going, all of us at Monson would be endlessly grateful.

Alarm didn't go off this morning, so we are floundering, elephantine, around the house trying to pretend we remember all of the steps to the get-Tom-off-to-work dance. But I did manage to make coffee, and now I am sitting here in my couch corner attempting to become awake.

I spent much of yesterday with my friend Betsy, who's recovering from a concussion and is highly bored by not being able to read, write, or even watch convalescent TV. We went for a long walk, and then we ate lunch at her place, and we talked nonstop, so I am hoping that at least I made her tired enough for a nap. Otherwise I had a pretty quiet day.

But what would a day be without car trouble? Would it be any day at all? On Wednesday, as I was coming back from Monson, a truck kicked a stone into my windshield, and the ding, which I considered ignoring, has turned into an expanding crack, which I cannot ignore, and so there goes another $400 into the pockets of the car guys (a cost that neatly slips under the insurance deductible, of course). Meanwhile, T's truck is still in the shop: we have yet to learn what that astronomical fee will be. [Cue teeth gnashing here.]

Well, at least I don't have to go anywhere. Tom can borrow my wounded car, and I can stay home and dust the shelves and polish the dining room table and work on my poem and read a sad novel and walk to the store. It would be nice to never need two cars again. Those days are not here yet, but maybe someday.

I did end up teaching yesterday; and though the day was shortened by the ice delay, most of the kids actually appeared, so that was a relief. We worked on self-portraits--via description, voice, favorite song, and ode--and it was such a pleasure to watch them burrow into their thoughts. Kids are so great.

Now here I am, home again, with three weeks of unemployment unrolling before me. Sometimes I do wonder what it would be like to have vacation and a paycheck. Still, I treasure these cycles of off-time, even if they are financially dicey.

Mostly I'm ready for the holiday. This week I'll shine up the house for company, and before long I'll be hanging out with my Chicago kids and completing my baking assignments for Christmas dinner. But otherwise my time is my own: no teaching, no editing . . . just reading and writing and walking. And traveling, of course: there are trips to Vermont and NYC to throw into the mix, and I'll be teaching while I'm in New York, which will be challenging--not to mention we'll be staying in Ray's apartment, so it will be emotionally draining as well. But that's a few weeks away. I don't need to focus on it yet.

I've started rereading Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day, one of the great novels of World War II London. I've written about this novel before: it is strange and difficult, and I love it deeply, but it is one of the saddest stories I know. I wonder if sad is a good choice, and I wonder what good means and also choice. Sometimes the books seem to fall off the shelf into my hands. Read me now. I am at their mercy.

Apparently last night it snowed up here in the homeland, and now it is pouring rain, and I slept through the whole thing so was confused when an email flashed on my phone: school delays, huh, wha? It looks like at least half of the schools that feed into Monson Arts have one-hour delays because of icing, so I guess my class will not be getting started quickly this morning, if at all.

Thus, here I shelter in bed, listening to trucks rumble past in the slush and considering the sad fact that the store doesn't open for another hour so I can't acquire any coffee till then. In the upstairs apartment someone's talk radio swoops and yawps, then suddenly falls silent. It feels odd to be in this place for work purposes and now suddenly have my day hip-checked. I can't decide if this is restful or a pain. I mean, I want to love a snow day. Doesn't everyone? But what about a snow day when I'm far from home in a coffee-less apartment and might not get paid, even though I drove all the way up here with a sheaf full of teaching plans? Kind of takes the shine off the situation.