Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

April 2, 2008

 Today’s Announcement

Don’t forget to order your copy of Angels Watching Over Me, the story of an ordinary woman facing less than ordinary challenges.  Angels Watching Over Me is a story of family love, sacrifices, poverty and an undying faith that makes heroes out of all of us. Here is the link in case you have forgotten it: http://www.lulu.com/content/964306

Important notice: Storytime Tapestry is a free e-zine, however donations are always needed to help with the operating expenses of running the newsletter and to keep Storytime Tapestry the quality newsletter you are so accustomed to.   You can make your donations to paypal at: winterose@videotron.ca, or if you would prefer to use the mail system contact the publisher at the same email address: winterose@videotron.ca

 ~**~**~

 Death of a Box

Louise Nomani

I need to have a laugh on this kind of night---------It is 0 degrees and the thermometer is plunging. The wind chill burns. This is February, and one should not be complacent thinking that winter’s end is near.   There is a fierce wind blowing that will freeze anything unfortunate enough to be without proper shelter. I could tell you stories about freezer burn and not the kind that sours that meat.  It’s not pretty. This weather is winter’s ugly side.  This is the kind of cold that would make you dig a cave into a snowdrift so that you could take shelter and keep warm.  Well perhaps that is not quite the right word.  You would simply take longer to freeze solid in that shelter. 

Tonight, I have ice cream sitting in the snow bank by the back door. It is not melting.  I remember my mother’s Maple Frappe that she would place in the snow to reach frozen pudding consistency.  It was delicious because of course, it was made from the rich pure Maine maple syrup that all love. The Maple Frappe had to rest in snow, I remember.  I thought it very strange that the refrigerator would not do. I still don’t know the spell of magic that snow had on the wondrous concoction but we would eat generous servings of it and know that we were in heaven. Of course dad would pour Maple syrup directly into a bowl.  He would dunk bread into it and call that dessert.  Is that called passion? 

Well I have frozen meat and vegetables  in the snow bank too, and I am at least a little nervous that those hungry coyotes  may clean me out of my food stuffs as I stay warm by the fire. My anxiety is colored blue because it is so awfully cold.  Frozen food, a frozen snow bank, frozen breath, frozen hands and a dead box do not make for humor.

            Yes, I have a dead box.  My refrigerator died. That old white box died. We pulled it from the wall and took its pulse but there was none.  I used my usual strategies of a well placed kick here and there but that was ineffectual as well.  As a last resort I hooked up the vacuum to clean all of the webs and dust bunnies holding that motor in place.  There was no reward for my efforts. Goodbye old thing! 

 It wasn’t a pretty death as the darned thing was full!  The box gurgled and groaned and then just died. It melted down and liquids ran making a repulsive pond in the bottom of the beast.    The white box was dead! 

Panic struck me.  One cannot live without their refrigerator.  It took a few moments before I came to my senses.  I recalled a cold flat in England in the 60s.  It had no central heat and no refrigerator.  The flat owner said to me--- (This in January and the weather was icy cold), “What do you need a refrigerator for?””  The question startled me.  My response at the time, clever girl that I was, was something like “What will I do for ice cubes?” Tonight, my memory prods my senses.

So, I have moved the freezer contents out into the cold by my back door.  They’ll do fine.  The handsome UPS delivery man will be impressed when he delivers that package in the morning.  I have moved the refrigerator stuff to a cool corner of the sun porch.  The milk and butter are not very handy but they’re in good company with the flowering Geraniums and Snapdragons.  I do love that porch in the middle of winter and have celebrated hopes of spring as I cut bouquets of those flowers for the kitchen table.  That is a joyous undertaking when the snow outside is up to the windowsills. But, I am back beside that fire now, and my memories make me smile.  They make me warm even in this cold winter Hell.  The memories calm my panic.

            I recall that when I was young, Mr. Handly and his son used a horse drawn sled that their horses would pull out to the middle of the river that ran by my home.  Those horses were majestic sorrels with pale manes and tails. They always looked sweet and proud, and I loved to just put a hand on their noses when they would reach those massive heads down and sniff my red knit hat.   Their winter coats were long and dense and the blond hair protecting their fetlocks must have been 8 inches long. Their feet were huge and sometimes one would stamp his foot in impatience and the ground would shudder.  I should have been afraid, but their eyes loved me and perhaps that is when I began my love affair with horses.  I recall that I would always race to pat one when Mr. Handly would deliver our milk in the wintertime from that horse drawn sled

            In the icy cold of winter’s depth, Mr. Handly and other men would work to saw huge chunks of ice out of that river. The ice was two even three feet deep, and it glistened like marble as it caught the sun’s rays.  The horses hauled those huge chunks of frozen river to a storage shed where it was buried deep in sawdust.  It amazed me for my dad would buy blocks of that ice the next summer when I was in shorts and tee shirt and the thermometer read near 90.    Dad would transport the ice to the old Oak ice box, a so called refrigerator at our camp. That ice box was heavy with its thick Oak surround and slate shelves.   It was lined with tin, and I remember that the cover on that refrigerator was so heavy that I could hardly lift it.  That was our refrigerator at camp during the summer. We had no electricity there, and the ice would keep that box cool and our milk and meat and eggs cool for three days or more.  It also provided a ready supply of ice for that lemonade or iced tea.     I still have that old ice box.  It is stored out in my barn waiting for a daughter to claim it and transform it into a blanket or linen chest.  It will be beautiful when the dust of 50 years is cleaned from its skin, but I have no wish to place it in my kitchen and pretend that it is my refrigerator.  I am grieving for my white box.

I have digressed.  Our hot and cold water pipes froze while Riz and I were out hunting for a replacement refrigerator, but we know the corners of the dining room that are most vulnerable; and we sit on the floor with hair dryers after carefully removing pieces of board cleverly fitted to make false beams to cover those pipes. This is a very old house with extensions added North and South, East and West.  It is one of those old Cape Cod houses (1836) that kept growing wings as children were added to the household.  The house still challenges us with secrets from time to time. It is especially challenging on a bitter cold night when the wind races to find a crack in the woodwork.   If we live long enough we may learn all of it’s  secrets,  but tonight we patiently blow hot air into one corner or another trying to guess where the water has caught in those pipes.

That was easy. The water is gushing now from the faucet, and I rush to turn it off. The pipes are open again. What a relief it is to have flowing water.  Can you imagine my distress should I have neither flowing water nor refrigerator?  Bless those handy little hairdryers.  This cold weather makes for hard work!  The wind drives the snow, banking it against the doors; and one fights the weight of it to leave the house and find the snow shovel.  The Horses’ water pails freeze solid.  I break the ice out with sharp stamping of my feet. Thank goodness for those rubber pails!  We Haul wood and feed the wood stoves.  That central heat is not enough warmth.   We feed the stoves and then feed them again and again.  We keep that water dripping now.  No more freeze-ups please!

                        `

But that moon is out, and it is beautiful as the clouds race through the heavens and trace shadows onto the snow pack.  The chair by the stove is a wonder and my coffee is rich and fragrant.  It won’t keep me awake.  It is time for bed.  Tomorrow will bring more of the same challenges I fear. There will be frozen gas lines in the car or something----------- But, I will have a new refrigerator; and the thought makes me smile.  It makes me warm.   The dead box will find its final resting place.                              

Short story by Louise Nomani, February 2008

windmill@tdstelme.net

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Poetry Corner

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Spring

David Fox

Spring, such a refreshing season,

With flowers blooming, trees growing,

Birds coming back from a winter's vacation,

Butterflies aflutter around in the air,

Spring, the epiphany of nature

David Fox

davidirafox@yahoo.com

~**~**~

Spring, My Poetic Season

David Fox

I can get a tan

or get a refreshing dip

in the water in Summer,

look at the different

colored leaves in Autumn,

going sledding, making snowmen

and throwing snowballs

are fun in Winter.

But Spring is best...

rabbits romping in the field,

canaries chirping,

seeing all kinds of flowers,

so many great images -- this poet's best season!

David Fox

davidirafox@yahoo.com

Bio: David Fox's poems have appeared on the web in Storytime Tapestry, The Cat's Meow for Writers & Readers Ezine, SHINE! The Journal, The Pink Chameleon, The Poet's Haven, Laughter Loaf, 3 cup morning (Canada) and others.  In print he has appeared in SMILE, Poetic Expressions, Bell's Letters, Tale Spinners (Canada), upcoming in Handshake (U.K.), and others.  He edits the print journal The Poet's Art, a family-friendly publication.  To submit, mail up to 3 poems along with a $5 check (if from outside the U.S.) to 171 Silverleaf Lane, Islandia, NY 11749.

 Here is our Storytime Tapestry Angels: Also, I would like to thank those of you who chose to be a silent angel and gave an anonymous donation to keep Storytime Tapestry up and running.

Clara Westerfer, Mark Crider, Rosanne Catalano, Paula Booher, Kay Seefeldt, Mariane Holbrook, Mary Ellen Grisham, Louise Nomani, Sharon Bryant, Angela Walker, Hart and Helen Dowd, Keith Ready, Ginger Morgenstern, Ellie Braun-Haley, Surinder Jandu, Bob Shaw, Carol Meeks, Charlotte Hilliard, Marilyn Sink, Victor Buhagiar, Clarice Hinson, Conrad