Snowbound

So we've had a bit of snow around here - this is what the house looked like after the first day, with 9" of new powder:

And of course, the view from our sunny adirondacks on the deck, before we got another four inches:

Even the new walkway lights look festive with their hats of snow!

But here's the best stuff of all:

This is what Christmas looks like for me and my siblings - sour cream sugar cookies! Made with the traditional buttercreme frosting and sugary decors. I only baked up half a batch this year, since there's only the three of us, and we've already delivered some baked goodies to the friends and neighbors this year. They are still delicious, even if we're a bit tired of being stuck in the house and sharing the same sniffly cold. Santa is going to love eating one of these.

Scatter my ashes to the wind, but let some land in Idaho

Here's another post I made elsewhere, that I feel like quoting...

At my grandfather's funeral a couple of years ago this month, I was wandering around the cemetery in the small Idaho town he was born in and would shortly be buried in, and just by looking at the tombstones I could tell I was probably related to about half the people whose names I read. I hadn't been there for a decade, since my grandmother died and was buried there. They were returned to their roots, buried in a town that they were both born and raised in, but hadn't actually lived in since the 1930s. He died a couple of weeks shy of his 94th birthday. He'd been away for over seventy years, but it remained his psychic home, even as they'd lived in far away places like Washington D.C. or Managua, Nicaragua or Bogota, Colombia. In reflecting on that, I realized that I don't share that kind of connection to the place I was born, or the place I was raised. In some ways I'm envious.

I don't expect I will make many trips in my lifetime to visit grave sites. That's not the sort of place that matters to me when it comes to remembering family or friends that are gone. I tend to make trips instead to the places we lived, or the places we visited and had fun together, to have more fun and to enjoy some reminiscences, when my travels take me nearby. Remembering is part of living, and I prefer to do my remembering when it happens and not on some schedule of holidays or anniversaries.