An Oregon winter is quite different from those miserably cold winters of my childhood. As I was growing up in Hunstanton, Norfolk on the West Coast of England, I particularly remember the biting winds that blew in from the North Sea, turning the very marrow in your bones to ice, and I can still feel the frozen hands and feet. We didn’t have available the snowsuits and padded clothing of our American childhood friends. I remember the pain and itching of chilblains on the fingers; and how they would throb when placed in lukewarm water to thaw them out, making us howl with pain. Though winters here are not even a pale shadow of the tropical ones we encountered during the twelve years we lived “down South,” they are generally mild and very changeable. I love the storms that rage in from the Pacific, trees bowing before them, limbs whipping around in afrenzy.  Such a cozy feeling of being wrapped in a cocoon, as warm and dry inside, I watch the rain pounding and pummeling, changing direction with each twist and turn of the storm, as if flung from a whirling watering can.

Here I am able to pick roses from the garden on Christmas day, rain spotted and a little weather beaten, but roses no less. They came into the house as buds, but opened to a deep salmon pink, tinged with tips of yellow cream and were lovely in a curving 7-glass vial and pewter centerpiece, a present from a dear friend. The winter sunlight streaming through the water in the vials brings rays of joy into the kitchen.  

 The calendar is fat once again, and it’s time to put away all the Christmas paraphernalia. I love old lace tablecloths. I don’t go overboard in the decorating department, just a table top here and a desktop there, but luminescent cobalt blue glassware is absolutely regal, set against the creamy softness of lace, and accented by antique blue and white china.

Now is a time to snuggle up read and re-read my Gladys Taber books, a beautiful writer whose memories of Stillmeadow Farm in Connecticut brings home a way of life that in these changing times seems long gone. She shared her absolute love of life, the changing of the seasons, and opened her home and hearth to one and all. No one was a stranger, only a friend she had yet to meet. Here, the weather flip flops, sunny dry afternoons become torrential rains by evening. We go to bed to the sounds of blustery storms, and wake to hunt for treasures in the flotsam on the beaches. Brisk walks along the glistening sand, whirling seagulls chattering overhead, and the tang of salty air clears both mind and soul. Brisk ocean winds quickly blow away your cares.