Crazy Stable

This weekend for Catholics brought Gaudete Sunday, a break in the rather somber mood of expectation that characterizes Advent to rejoice in the coming Good News. (The word comes from the old Introit prayer in Latin, Gaudete in Domine semper, "Rejoice in the Lord always.") Vestments switch from penitential purple to rose (not "pink," our priests insist), and the Scriptures invoke the coming of Something Wonderful.

And, with the hair-raising lack of subtlety that characterizes my intersection of life and spirit, the weekend provided cause for rejoicing. It is not Christmastime until I smell the trees...and the trees to smell are the ones at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket. We've been buying ours from these folks for years; they cost (much) more than street-vendor trees, but they were cut last week, and by Epiphany they're still fragrant and springy in our bone-dry living room. (The street-lot trees, I have read, may be harvested months in advance, which is why they turn to toast by New Year's or sooner.) This year, we settled on a Canaan fir; I always toy with the idea of a white pine, but those long, soft needles seem ill-suited to displaying the Crazy Stable's array of weird and wonderful ornaments. The gentlemen above was very patient as I applied my numerous scientific criteria for tree selection (overall shape, upper-branch strength, trunk straightness and symmetry, angel-topper pinnacle suitability).

Oh, and I also saw my friend the Scottish deerhound, a show-stopping dog who is sort of the canine equivalent of a Tolkien "Ent." His owner says the giant breed is so gentle that no one has ever heard of their biting anyone. (Except maybe a Scottish deer.)

Then there was good news regarding my mother. Not about her health—she died in 1999. But yesterday was her birthday, and in looking through a batch of my late uncle's archive of unsorted family photographs, I found two pictures of Mommy looking happy at Christmas. Given how camera-shy my mother was—and how many pictures show her looking tense or gloomy—this amounted to a miracle and, I feel certain, a message.

This was Christmas Day, 1955; she was 42 and still childless except for Mitten (a.k.a. "Putty-Tat"), an overindulged Silver Persian who is clearly not thrilled about the whole fireman-hat thing. I think it was a good thing for Mitten that I came along two years later to channel my mother's dress-up impulses into years of handmade clothes and ingenious Hallowe'en costumes! The rather wild-eyed shadowy figure behind my mother's head is my grandmother, making the photo an uncanny bit of prophesy as well.

Skip ahead four decades, and Mommy is still cuddling something fuzzy for Christmas—here, the stuffed dog "Fluffy" that she gave to Child (and that still occupies Child's foot-of-bed fuzzy hall of fame, and that Must Never Be Washed and so is now grey as the deerhound). This is the Mommy I have trouble remembering—the one who reminds me of Dame Judi Dench in "As Time Goes By," sharp-witted and soft-hearted, elegant and silly, at ease quoting Shakespeare or Monty Python. Sometimes I forget that the original Mommy ever came out to play after her fall and decline in late life, but thanks to my uncle's ready camera, there is proof.

Oh, and then there was the Miracle of the "Plant Room." In this tiny attic room, I pot up seedlings and store Christmas ornaments; I've been avoiding it because it's a mess of potting mix and summer-garden intentions gone awry, but had to face it to get out the Christmas stuff. And in cleaning up the dessicated remains of various pots, all destined for the compost heap, I found last winter's long-abandoned paperwhite narcissus, which had bloomed and withered and been tossed, with no water, in a corner for 11 months.

They are coming back up. On Gaudete Sunday. When we read the following verse from Isaiah 35:

The desert and the parched land will exult;
the steppe will rejoice and bloom.
They will bloom with abundant flowers,
and rejoice with joyful song.

Things like this happen to me because God knows I am too dim, obtuse, and distracted to get it any other way. As for Mommy, here's what Isaiah says next. Happy Gaudete Sunday.

Those whom the LORD has ransomed will return
and enter Zion singing,
crowned with everlasting joy;
they will meet with joy and gladness,
sorrow and mourning will flee.

What? Only two of them? As a rule, when I pull into the CrazyStable driveway, there are at least 3 of these beady-eyed vermin zooming along the lattice top of our fence, sprinting across the garage roof, or (with growing boldness) popping out of the garbage can with a faceful of discarded carbohydrates. Sometimes there are 4 of them--Bagel and his clan are clearly proliferating, attracted by the unbeatable triad of shelter inside our walls, ample food in the compost and trash, and a glorious skyway in the Ent (seen at left above).

I had a "duh" moment as two of them were taking turns pillaging the garbage bags: We really need to put tight-fitting lids on those cans. Trouble is, garbage-can lids don't last very long in the city; the sanitation guys toss them about like Frisbees, the wind carries them away, cars run over them. There are tricks like punching holes in them and lashing them to the can handles, but they don't work very well. We could just leave the lids off when we put it out curbside, I suppose; I just know that I'm fed up, dammit, with providing these scavengers with their rich buffet. Did I mention that they like sipping out of milk and juice boxes? The other day, one of them deposited a gnawed-on juice pack, straw still inserted, on the front steps. The Child has observed Bagel sitting up in the Ent's branches with a chocolate milk box in his grasp.  This shot appears to show normal, cute, nut-burying activity--but don't be fooled.  

See that knowing look in his eye? What he knows is that our filling the laundry-room ceiling-holes with steel wool and aluminum foil has not deterred him in the slightest. Which means I have lost my prime baked-goods-cooling area on top of the washing machine; I've seen him stick his head out of the hole, and if I ever catch him lowering himself like a ninja to steal cookies, the resulting confrontation will be like Elmer Fudd vs. Bugs as re-imagined by Sam Peckinpah.

Speaking of baking, the lussekatter made last night (still technically Santa Lucia day!) came out gorgeous, and were tender and fluffy inside.  Yeast and I have a checkered history together, but this time all was serendipitous. Next time I'm making gingerbread squirrels so I can bite the heads off--hard.

I am so glad I remembered that today is Santa Lucia Day. Although St. Lucy (her name means "light," a nice concept in the dark depths of December) lived her short life and died a martyrlicious death on Sicily, she is most closely associated with marvelous traditions in Sweden, where they're experts at dealing with long, dark days.  Get this: Tradition calls for the eldest daughter to dress up in a white gown (purity) with a red sash (martyrdom) and a green bay-leaf crown (life, etc.) topped with lit candles, and then she and her siblings (who also dress up as whimsical things like stars) bring coffee and baked goods to their sleeping parents! Don't you love the idea of the kids downstairs lighting flames on Sis's head and carrying up a tray while their parents slumber peacefully? Truly, Sweden must be the utopia they claim!

Now, here's the, um, crowning irony: Year after year, I entreat the Child, whose head is crowned with Nordic-worthy blonde tresses, to re-enact this ritual (under my demented supervision). And she says--no! I would have killed for the opportunity to swan about the house holding a pastry tray with an inferno on my head when I was a slip of a girl...(at which point in my rant, Child will point out, "But Mom...you were incredibly weird.")

Oh well.  If I can't light my daughter's head on fire, I can at least bake lussekatter, or "Lucia cats." These are S-shaped saffron buns, like these made by a cute Swedish blogger.

Amid all the rich iconography of the day, I haven't been able to figure out the significance of either the "S" shape,  or the "cats." St. Lucy is often shown holding her eyeballs on a plate (while still having another pair in her head), and the raisins could be evocative of her allegedly gouged-out peepers--but why cats? Pure fancy, perhaps--based on the resemblance of saffron buns to twisty, golden and delicious creatures like, say, Charlie:

I will provide an update on the making of the buns if they come out half as nice as Charlie. And I will again offer to let the Child have a bash at Lucia, but I think she would prefer gory martyrdom.

Image: A Lucia Procession, by Carl Larsson (1908)

Somehow my web wanderings brought me to the arresting phrase, "We Buy Ugly Houses." That is a trademarked phrase, by the way--use it and you may be sued by the aggressive lawyers for "HomeVestors of America," a Dallas-based franchise specializing in real-estate bottom-feeding (and, one suspects, anticipating a wave of fresh carrion to devour). Here in New York, I haven't run across their annoying ads featuring a crudely computer-animated caveman (named "Ug"--get it?), but apparently in some places they are ubiquitous. What I couldn't resist, however, was a button on their site inviting me to check out "The Ugliest House of the Year."

Now, "ugly" in this context requires some explanation. It's not like Ug is sitting around mulling esthetics here. To HomeVestors, an "ugly" house is simply one you want to unload, fast, cheap and dirty, for any compelling reason: divorce, death, poltergeists, pestilence, crack-dealing neighbors, radon, or (most likely these days) imminent foreclosure. Given the human sorrows and even tragedies that bring customers to their door, the "Ugliest House" contest smacks of reality TV in its crudity and cruelty. Most of them are, indeed, pretty ugly in the conventional sense, and some were putrid pits of horror; but at least one of them, to me, was downright beautiful. It's in Montgomery, Alabama:

As I began to describe this house to Spouse, he said, "Is this one of your peeling-paint 'dream houses'?" We all know what he means. When we take drives in the country, I croon and yearn for these little flaking white wrecks, tucked next to vacant lots or overgrown fields, cowering behind tall weeds or mattress springs or cars up on blocks. "We've already got one just like that at home!" Spouse will fume (while greatly exaggerating the current decrepitude of the CrazyStable). But honestly--can you look at that little place, and not Photoshop in pots of geraniums on the porch, and roses covering the trellis, and a plump cat crossing the (nicely mowed) lawn? I'll even bet that bush in the forground is a lilac!

The "ugliness" of this little Southern home worthy of To Kill a Mockingbird apparently had to do with its Boo-Radley-like owner, an 87-year-old man who'd been living there for a quarter-century, holed up in just the left-hand side of the house. According to the contributor of this winning entry, "His family had persuaded him to move into a nursing home. I paid $10,500 on July 14, 2006. On July 18, I received a 'condemnation' letter from the city.  They gave me 60 days or they were going to bulldoze it. I sold it to some local investors, managed the rehab, turned it into a duplex, and it appraised for $87K."

Hardly the worst fate for the little place, I suppose (although I wonder how they fit a "duplex" into that attic). The old place wasn't demolished, and most importantly to the happy HomeVestor, he or she cashed in; the details of the rehab don't concern us here, and certainly not the details of the little old man. Profit in a pocket, Boo Radley in a "facility"--ugliness solved.

I guess in today's market, as the bubble bursts and the vultures circle overhead [woot! woot! Mixed Metaphor Alert!], that there's no room for sentiment about Ugly Houses. Memory, loss, ephemera, redemption--all the things that draw me to sad, sagging piles of shingles and lumber--have no place in the Market. But Ugly Houses will always have a place in my heart, because we bought one--a noxious wreck being unloaded "quick and dirty" after a father's death by a restless and money-hungry son. Twenty-one years ago, the mere sight of the CrazyStable would've set Ug's chops to watering. In the HomeVestors fairy tale, the seller pockets some bucks (not many, according to my research) and moves on. In our fairy tale, unfolding in geologic time, our love and hard work and cash transform the ugly brute into a warm and shining thing, a haven for family and friends and cats, garden-wreathed and perfumed with the smell of home cooking.

Here's looking at you, kid.

CrazyStable circa 1986; Aunt Louie prepares to walk the plank. (N.B.  She liked the house anyway.)

Old-house owners of the world, there's a must-read in today's New York Times, whether you're a New Yorker or not: The lead-paint liability medicine show is gearing up to come to a town near you. If you work for a paint company, this should make you very sad, but if you (like any old-house owner) have lead paint slumbering safely in your intact woodwork, you also need to prick up your ears.  

I won't recap the dazzling breadth and daring of this evil scheme--let the Times' gutsy business columnist Joe Nocera do that. But suffice it to say that this is the lead-paint picture that the fat-cat liability lawyers would have you believe:

and this is the reality.

Images: Top: Death of Little Nell; Bottom: Boss Tweed, by Thomas Nast