… I finally checked in. After writing the obituaries for Jenae and David and then Phil, I just wanted to retreat into a kind of close and holy silence, the kind that I can feel this Christmastide. The town is tender. I can’t look at the wide, now white tongue of a landslide that dominates the views on the Chilkoot side. It’s too hard. It is also why I won’t take a picture of it to share with you. I’m staying close to home. The lights are pretty, and the tree is too, and there is something very comforting about Papa Bob asleep on the couch and the dogs breathing unevenly in their dreams on the rug. (Although it is a little farty and they all blame each other.)
Christmas, in spite of the tragedy in Haines, was nice. It helps that I celebrate the incarnation, and believe it– I mean, I don’t want to get in an argument about the virgin birth– but I believe that God was made man, and that somehow we now all share in that spirit, that divinity– and that is a great comfort this season, more than ever. On Christmas Eve Papa Bob and Chip and I had our traditional smoked salmon fettuccine– it’s way too rich, but only once a year– sort of. Now it’s a birthday dinner favorite for some of the grandchildren. And I baked some more Christmas coffee cakes — a total of seven this year. My grandmother’s recipe. The seven part wasn’t on purpose. I bake them two at a time, and usually there are four: one for each of my daughters that live in Haines, one for the Podsikis down the road (it’s a tradition) and one for us, to eat on Christmas morning. This year I baked a fifth for my friend Beth and her neighbors– it was big, so she shared it with her fisherman husband Gregg, and the yogi Sarana and playwright in residence Aaron who are here this winter thanks to Covid in CA, and the buddhist builder whose name I better not write or he may get grumpy– but he did like the cake.
If you are counting you may ask where are the other two?
The chickens ate them. On purpose. I gave them to them.
I don’t know what happened, but I baked two cakes on Wednesday afternoon (I gift them on Christmas Eve) and set the butter, sour cream and eggs out that night in order to bake the other two cakes first thing on the 24th. ( It’s not a complicated cake, but the ingredients need to be room temperature so it requires a plan.) Anyway, maybe it was over compensating to prove I was fine, but I made a huge mistake. I doubled the butter, sour cream and sugar, but forgot the eggs and halved the flour. They were flat, greasy, and sweet. Then I cried. Chip came home on Christmas Eve from his hardware store (he closed early) and caught me feeling bad, and said he’d eat a squashed one. It tasted fine he said. I said, no, he could not. “It’s Christmas,” I wailed.
Then he said his version of Anne Lamott’s father’s advice to her brother when he had a term paper about birds due the next day, and had not yet begun– Take it bird by bird, Buddy–
—Bake them cake by cake Heath–
He even said he’d deliver them between dinner and Zoom Christmas Eve services. (We watched a Zoom pageant from Holy Trinity in Juneau at 5:30 with grandchildren playing Mary and Joseph, and Zoomed Carols and Compline at 8:00 with our church in Haines)– And in between, I baked three cakes. And they were, if I do say so myself, the best ones I’ve ever made. (Must be all the Covid-anxiety-isolation-calming Great British Baking Shows.) Also, earlier, while I was walking the dogs in the snow, Greg Podsikl delivered a big tray of cookies, and before that my friend Stephanie dropped off a bundle of kindling she’d split for us and tied up with a bow. After Chip and Papa Bob had gone to sleep, I helped Santa with their stockings, and then read my favorite Christmas book.
