celebration days 285The tunnel of winter had settled over our lives, ushered in by that
great official Hoodwink, the end of daylight saving time. Personally I
would vote for one more hour of light on winter evenings instead of the
sudden, extra- early blackout. Whose idea was it to jilt us this way, leaving
us in cold November with our unsaved remnants of daylight petering out
before the workday ends? In my childhood, as early as that, I remember
observing the same despair every autumn: the feeling that sunshine, sum-
mertime, and probably life itself had passed me by before I’d even fi n-
ished a halfway decent tree fort. But mine is not to question those who
command the springing forward and the falling back. I only vow each
winter to try harder to live like a potato, with its tacit understanding that
time is time, no matter what any clock might say. I get through the hiber-
nation months by hovering as close as possible to the woodstove without
actual self- immolation, and catching up on my reading, cheered at regu-
lar intervals by the excess of holidays that collect in a festive logjam at the
outflow end of our calendar.
We are a household of mixed spiritual backgrounds, and some of the
major holidays are not ours, including any that commands its faithful to
buy stuff nobody needs. But we celebrate plenty. We give away our salsas
and chutneys as gifts, and make special meals for family and friends: tur-
key and stuffi ng. Leg of lamb with mint jelly and roasted root vegetables
tossed with rosemary and olive oil. For New Year’s Day, the traditional
southern black- eyed peas and rice, for good luck. Always in the back-
ground, not waiting for a special occasion, is the businesslike whir of the
bread-machine paddles followed by the aroma of Steven’s bread- of-the-
day filling the whole house. We have our ways of making these indoor
months a more agreeable internment.
When a brand- new organic corn chip factory opened its doors twenty
miles from our house, at least one member of our family took it as a sign
that wishes do come true. But finding wheat flour for our bread contin-
ued to be our most frustrating pursuit. A historic mill five miles from our
house processes corn and other specialty flours, but not whole wheat. So
we were excited to discover a wheat- flour mill about an hour’s drive away,
a family operation we were happy to support. But the product, frankly,
wasn’t what we wanted: bromide- bleached white flour. They also sold a