Category: Happiness

On 30

PoinsettiasYes, those are my painted wood farmhouse floors. Yes, that is my pink poinsettia. Yes, they were both waiting for me when I returned to the country from the city this week. The floors have been here since 1890 or so, the poinsettia, since just last week, but my how I love them both. My mama has been getting me a pink poinsettia for my birthday every year, as long as I can remember, since before I wore a fur muff and a cape (like this) and took three very special friends to Richmond for a tea party and to see The Nutcracker (this was my deepest desire as a girl turning 8 and, frankly, that STILL sounds totally awesome). Also waiting for me upon my return, a parcel from dear McKay, with a new story (hers) and moon vine seeds to plant in the spring (mine), and a big ‘ole box from Jay and Katie Rose full of JARS (!! how well they know me) and, among other affirmations, this quote:

Time and tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman of 30.”- Robert Frost

Now, I realize that there may be a bit of a mid-century jibe lurking here, one about lying about your age, but that literally didn’t occur to me until just now… rather, I read it as something powerful, as if, at 30, a woman has a certain hard-earned-sense and now-finally-trusted-intuition and faith-in-the-weight-of-her-own-truth to slow down from the head-long gallop of 16, the jittery glitter of 21, and the loud, mouthy, wisdom of 25 and take a deep breath, at last, and be comfortable in quiet, in time, in her own skin. 30 years of living may not magically afford us the ability to weigh what we need and want and love and craft a life of purpose and beauty out of them, but I turn 30 on Sunday, and I’ll celebrate it at Home, with wood-smoke and family, with Sweetheart and music, with friends coming down from the cities and coming in from the farther-out-country mountain hollers, and with love. And fried chicken, oysters, and champagne. So.Poinsettias2

Very Merry, Extremely Bright

DykerHeightsChristmasOn my last night before returning back to the country for my own EPIC PARTY PREPARATIONS, all of my dear ones who won’t be able to make it down south for my own Jubilee birthday all got together to have a big celebratory, adventurous Sichuan dinner in Bay Ridge. After sweet peppered ginger duck, prickly hot red-oil dumplings, salt and pepper shrimp, and (my favorite) the Chengdu softshell crab— a glistening pile of shining red chiles and clovey brown peppercorns dotted with fried softshell crab omigod— we decided to go on a little adventure. After all, we were already on 86th street, just a hop and a jump away from Dyker Heights and its fabled Christmas Light EXTRAVAGANZAS. Trumpeting Angels, Two-Storey Santas, Nutcrackers riding life-size-mechanized-rearing-stallions… all with a belly full of flavor. Everything you could possibly want from a New York Christmas whirlwind. So far so great. MechanizedNutcrackerDykerHeightsDykerHeightsChristmasLights DykerHeightsToyland

Let the great experiment begin!

CatCarToday, I’m off for New York! Loaded with delicious Potter’s Craft Cider, fancy local chocolates (shhhh!), and all the cheap southern gas my tank can hold. I’m picking up Miss Ann Marie (above, with hat) on the way and we’re going to be meeting the other road strippers (not to mention Sweetheart!) in the big city for a grand old reunion just in time for a big holiday season. This will be my first trip back since the great experiment began, and I simply can’t wait.

Christmas Nest

XmasTreesSo, in the golden hour, Mama and I drove out into the sun in search of the mythical, the soft-needle Christmas Tree, a bushy varietal of great white pine that in New York City might as well be the great white whale. Miniature Forests pop up on every street corner there, but every last one of them only offers sharp needled balsam firs. We drove into the sun out to an old nursery up Afton that, despite rumors to the contrary, apparently no longer sells pumpkins or turkeys or wreaths or trees (pointy OR soft) or any other assorted holiday ephemera but is actually now a mushroom farm. Ok. Luckily, sweetly, the young stoned mushroom farmer came out and told us that there was a place right down the road that sold trees. “I don’t know if they sell the soft ones, but they sure are nice”. We traced our steps back and around and right, lo, by the side of the road were gorgeous orderly rows of fat soft trees growing, ready to be tagged and cut.ChristmasTreeRowsThe wonderful proprietor, who lives in a big, pretty farmhouse with a circular drive right behind the trees, told us to go pick the one we wanted and he’d be down to help us cut and pack it. We walked up and down the long rows, weighing the merits of each tree like Old Hat, New Hat (too leafy, too lumpy, too beefy, too bumpy, too Charlie Browny, too pointy, too townie), until we came upon the one. The slightly skinnier, somewhat awry, quite jaunty, gloriously fluffy, and perfectly soft one. The one that had the birds nest in it. Petit à petit l’oiseau fait son nid, Feather by Feather the bird builds its nest. We’ll take it, this is the one for home.Nest

ShaBoom

 

Nipsey, we aren’t in Brooklyn anymore. The glorious whirlwind begins with this message of welcome from my dear cousin Doug. ShaBoom:

When leaving NY please have your Va passport stamped at the border as a boarder. Welcome back, I say (pftewy) welcome back hear m’dear to the Old Dominion, the Commonwealth, Northern Virginia (north of the James that is, below Richmond). You may carry your pistol now. ShaBoom

Leaving Brooklyn, Oy Vey!

 

We’re doing it! First thing tomorrow. Sweetheart used to drive a big rig (yes, it’s true) so he’s piloting the truck, I’m steering The Thon. I can picture the way now: the bad merge down by the waterfront onto the BQE, loping down south through Brooklyn, over the Narrows, after the short bit of nothing Jersey, when Pennsylvania actually becomes beautiful, we bust a left at Appalachia, in some WPA wonder the road is new, the mountains old, the sun will be setting, then it’s Second Star to the right and straight on ’til morning. Send us your best karmic wishes to sing us sweet and simple all the way back home.

Mama, Mama many worlds I’ve come since I first left home.

This House

 

I have something I’ve been meaning to tell you. But then Sandy came along, and the election, and, well, I had some other things I really wanted to say. So. The BIG NEWS. After much discussion, Sweetheart and I are moving into this house. An old farm house with creaky floors and painted ceilings, exposed beams and milk glass fixtures on a decent passel of land that slopes down to a windy, woodsy creek. Because we need space and air and the warmth of a wood fire and a big silence around us where it’s just us but also the joyous noise of a room just for music (!) and a kitchen full of family and a view of the mountains and enough land for a sustaining garden and bees to start and chickens to follow and maybe a goat when it’s really time to settle down and all of the sweet and simple things that shouldn’t just be for vacation. BUT never fear, beloved Brooklyn, because we are ornery and require decent chinese food, because even though she’s been battered around a bit (and she’s battered us around a bit), we aren’t through with New York yet. So, we are also moving from our current apartment into one right up the street, keeping a place in our hearts and our neighborhood, a Brooklyn brownstone floor through right above this guy:BIG NEWS, right? Wanderlust vs. Homesickness, City Mouse vs. Country Mouse, Brownstone vs. Farmhouse, we just couldn’t decide yet. So, we’re going to try for both. Posts here will be fewer and farther between during our big move(s)—which also includes finding a home for unscathed furniture for the flooded Rockaway house, just for fun— but you can follow our adventures over on Instagram  (@featherbyfeather) in the meantime. In love and nesting.

Storm King

Mark di SuveroOh Adventure! Last weekend we got a wild hair, piled into Francine (Miss Jocie’s mobile… all good cars have names), and made our adventurers way to Storm King Art Center. Five women strong, scarves, leathers, the flush of possibility, (and we picked up Mike, king of beers and collars, on the side of the road), a wrecking crew to make our way. Just an hour north of the city, Storm King is an outdoor sculpture park situated on 500 acres of impeccably swooping jealous-Olmstead wild-meets-barely-tamed earth, dotted with monolithic sculptures. In a word, it is awesome. This time it also happened to be peak leaf season, PEEPINGPEAKING, and everything was suffused with the kind of beauty that you can’t stop talking about, the sheer hush and truth of where you are, who you’re with, how the air feels, how the golden-hour light looks, and the how-if-everything-hadn’t-happened-just-so we wouldn’t be here, but it DID so REVEL IN IT makes you utterly, totally full-hearted and giddy. Storm King is open through November, so get thee there, this weekend, do it. And after you do, order six pulled pork sandwiches and a parcel of tallboys, to go, from Barnstormer’s BBQ. At least that’s what we did. Here, some of the beauty:

A-pizza!

It’s been a pretty big week for pizza (when is it not a big week for pizza?): we went to Grimaldi’s new location in an unspoken celebration of Ann Marie’s return to the East Coast, and today I’m leaving to meet my Mama to take a pizza making class as part of her ongoing JUBILEE celebration. We’ll stay with our town mouse friends, have much wine and lots of food, and generally make merry in the best of ways. On a related note, did you know that a standard baking stone is, like, $30? I’ve been under the illusion that they’re hundreds of dollars and that’s why I don’t have one. GET THEE TO A CHEF SUPPLY STORE! In love and pizza, have a wonderful weekend.

 

Grimaldi’s image from here.