It is November 26th, which means, in my experience, steel-grey skies and a damp cold. Winter clamps down on Pittsburgh in November and won’t loosen its grip until mid-March at the earliest. The closets of my childhood home have, I am sure, already undergone the necessary exchange: all signs of summer and short-sleeves are replaced with knits and bulky sweaters.
Sigh. I miss that.
I’ve lived here in the South for twelve years now, but my Yankee upbringing still instructs my expectations for the weather. And so it is not ungrudgingly that I begin my Advent preparations in what, by northern standards, might be called balmy conditions. For what we’ve got today is really exquisite weather: high 60’s and cloudless. Beautiful.
Where, oh where is the bleak mid-winter promised me in all my Celtic Christmas carols?
We went out today, which was the right thing to do. All five of us set out for a ride on the Tobacco Trail, a six-mile stretch of converted (read ‘smoothly paved with a nice dotted line down the middle’) railroad that extends from just beyond our house into downtown Durham. Three of us (Bill and boys) were on eight wheels (roller blades), one of us on four (Gracie on her bike), and one of us (me) on foot.
It was good to be outdoors. The sun found an angle on everything, even the thin blades of the pine needles that cling, away overhead, to the loblolly pines. The trail is wooded on both sides, and late-summer undergrowth still leans toward us; I even saw (the audacity!) a bumblebee performing some late-autumn work among some white-blooming weeds.
I went on foot to help the girl—she’s had her bicycle for almost a year now, but stability had yet to find its way into her skill set last time I checked. She surprised me today by taking off on her own in a pastel clatter, and sometimes even gave Everett the opportunity to coast as he hung on to her shoulders.
Everett also is transformed on his transportation method of choice. Where once we had a stuttering skater who struggled to keep his feet underneath him, we now have a boy who glides and flies and performs neat semi-circles, feet turned outward, when he wants to turn around. A spill means a smile and, “I’m okay”—and he is.
William is a born athlete; I’ve never seen him take on a sport that presented noticeable challenge. The roller blades he has now were gifts from his grandparents for his birthday and they are, he declared, “much faster” than his old pair. He stayed with us on the trail today, if by “with us,” I can mean far ahead and now behind and now shooting past me again. But once in a while he was also clinging to my waist or my hand just for fun.
Several times it was Bill clinging to my waist, and then all my companions disappeared. I heard them laughing and my walking was getting difficult. “You’re pulling all of us, you know,” he said. Behind me William held his dad’s jeans and Everett held on to William, and Emma Grace, with one hand, gripped Everett’s shirt. It wasn’t such a heavy load; not so heavy as one might think.
The sun is low outside now, even though it is only twenty past three. The trees have that amber cast on the sunny side of their trunks; their shadows are long; the sun picks out the finest branches and makes them glow electric. Everett is in the kitchen making tea; Emma Grace leafs through a photo album on the coffee table; William and his dad are glued to the game the Steelers are losing in Baltimore; I am recording this Right Now for posterity.
The weather might be more seasonably appropriate in Other Places, but I think I’m happy Here.
