“Good morning from Vermont.” Photo Copyright © 2022 by Richard D. Venne.
“You say you’ve been twice a wife,
And you’re through with life,
Oh, but honey, what the hell’s it for?”
Stan Rogers, “45 Years”
“Even though we don’t have snow heaven knows love will come through.” NexCyx, “We Don’t Have Snow”
ON THE SAME DAY, via WhatsApp, two of my brothers sent me pictures of snow.
These were of the first snowfall in their area for the year, the season, on November 16—though we won’t officially have entered the winter solstice until December 21.
Here in Barbados, we’ve had cooler temperatures leading up to Independence and Christmas. The grass growing more slowly. Decent rains. I’m tempted to say “predictably,” but our climate situation has not been stable these last ten and more years. The heavy arrival of sargassum seaweed wasn’t an annual or bi-annual thing when I came to live in Barbados almost thirty years ago.
What has been ever reliable are our holidays, whether we have seaweed or clear seas, a next pandemic wave or wane.
The picture from Rick, one of my brothers from another mother (or adopted, by decree of my own Mom), was of a big red barn of a commercial building beside a snow-covered lawn. Very American, I thought much later, reflecting on the flag above one of its double-doors. But then it was taken in Vermont, where Rick migrated to from Quebec over twenty-two years ago.
The picture from Cal, my eldest blood brother, was of his backyard in the hilly region of Gatineau, just across from Canada’s capital, Ottawa. The snow covering his backyard is totally undisturbed, its shallow depth measured by how far it drifts up his McIntosh apple trees and cabana door.
In both pictures, the sky is as white as the ground. Either could have been part of the front of a postcard or greetings card.
The snow has arrived [bright smiley face and snowflake emojis], Cal captioned his image.
*
A couple days before, Rick had texted me that he and his wife might get a Christmas tree this year. “Who knows?” They had moved into their own home the end of June, and I wanted to know how that was looking and feeling.
“We haven’t put up a tree in years. Without little ones around we didn’t see the point. Unless you’re approaching it from a religious point of view I feel that Christmas is a holiday for children.”
The house was a bit of a game-changer. Maybe they were feeling exceedingly young at heart? They have a grown son who visits, but no grans as yet.
I understood. If not for her children and their children coming and going over the years, never mind her love of the season on religious grounds and for its family celebrations, my Mom would have stopped putting up our tree long time, I think. A good eight feet on average, it became a bit of a hassle to take out, assemble and box away as her mobility decreased in her later years. But I thought it would be fun, for Rick and Martha to do something “special” or “different” to mark their first Christmas in their first home.
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Mom, us and her grans around her 75th birthday in 2008.
Cal, my elder by eight years and a lover of holiday cooking and baking (turkeys and cheesecake are two of his specialties), may have felt the same as I did.
I couldn’t disagree with Rick. In his Sunday Sun column of November 13, Adrian Green referred to Christmas as “no longer exclusively, nor even primarily, a Christian holiday. Just like Barbados is no longer exclusively, nor maybe even primarily, a Christian nation.” It doesn’t matter who the prime minister says she prays to, or what Bajans answered during our last census in 2010.
But Rick was thinking about a tree. Cal hopes to visit his son in Germany for the Holidays. Mom, with the help of Cal, my sister Shar and her two sons—who all lived nearer than me or my brother Pat in Missouri—made sure the tree went up, year after year, the last time being 2021, her last Christmas.
*
Gatineau under light cover.
What is this time of year for? I’m trying to figure that out again, and not for the first time. What does it mean—what do so many of our occasions signify—absent their obvious ritual, or in the presence of ongoing turmoil?
Bullets over Barbados. Putin’s War. Pox and pestilence. Several freedoms under siege. How would Mom have felt about continuing in this world? How should I? In her last weeks, at one point she said, “That’s it for me. I’m out of this. It’s up to you all to figure it out.”
Another observation from Brother Green, on what truly makes us who we are outside of our national Independence Days or feast days stuffed with Christian charity: “A nation’s culture shapes the psyche and consciousness of its people. A people’s consciousness is its main security.”
Since Mom’s passing in August, I’ve found prayer challenging (though a comfort) and my dreaming unsettled (not my dreams). There has been a grasping for words and understanding.
Mom was the type of person who helped to focus the mind, galvanize the spirit. Largely by being who she was—which was what? There is no one word to express it for me. But there was confidence in her presence.
She was shaped by where she came from in 1930’s Barbados and then where she went to in 1950’s Canada with my Dad. Her conviction, which became ours, came from how alive she was to her rootedness. To the need for its celebration and for the human achievement it represented.
Mom reminded me often of what I already knew was important in this life. In all the family stories she told and retold, she was that force-of-nature guide when I risked forgetting because of the distractions of this life. She still is. Except never again in that same way.
The job now falls to me more squarely to persevere, preserve, pass on. Find new allies who will help me, keep teaching me to know how; or hang with those who already do. Uphold what’s worth upholding, that rootedness, in all kinds of silly seasons.
To do that, I’m trying to keep faith with the old and sympathy with the young. Believe, especially in these unpeaceful times of guns and tyranny, of boldfaced political opportunism, that there are still other ways to resolve conflicts than with inarticulate rage.
Rick isn’t wrong to feel as he does: what we do, this conveyance of, really, a few good things from one age to another, we often claim to do for our children, the next generation. Like my daughter, Aeryn, who is also his goddaughter, or my own godchildren and nieces and nephews. Most of them are men and women now, but still. For all the li’l pickneys, as Mom would have put it. Us striving for something better.
What the hell is this life for, if not that? Snow or no snow.
Robert Edison Sandiford is the cofounding editor with the poet Linda M. Deane of ArtsEtc Inc. He is the author of several award-winning books and well-received graphic novels. Read more by Robert at dcbooks.ca, nbmpub.com and writersunion.ca/member/robertedison-sandiford.
Last Modified: October 20, 2023
