February staycation

I like to think of it as a fair trade-off, and I savored it fully all day yesterday.

True, for the first eight days of the school vacation week it seemed as if everyone we knew had left town and was either riding up a ski lift or sliding down a water slide while we stayed home and kept Carlisle from getting musty, but yesterday the tables were turned: everyone else was arriving home to empty refrigerators and piles of dirty laundry while the four of us were wrapping up a very peaceful and serene staycation.

And in fact, I didn’t really envy the travelers, except maybe just for the glory of getting to say they’d gone away for the week. But we had such an enjoyable time at home that I didn’t feel like we were missing out. I had some opportunities to go walking in the woods, and even got the kids to come with me a couple of times. Tim went up to Portland with my parents for an overnight. Both of the kids had sleepovers with friends. We went to a museum one day and a movie another day; other activities included Tim getting a haircut and Holly picking out some new clothes. The four of us curled up to watch a Shrek DVD one weekend afternoon. We baked cookies and made Rick a birthday cake.

Not that I ever get all the way through my list, even during vacation. I had planned all week to find the bedside lamps and some framed family photos that are still in storage in the basement; that never happened. More importantly, I had promised myself that I would spend some time cleaning up Holly’s room, which truly does look like the proverbial cyclone hit it. That did happen, but it was literally in the final half-hour of the vacation, after Holly’s shower and before her 9:00 lights-out deadline last night.

It’s okay, though. School vacations are a limited commodity. Even this past week, I was talking to a friend about vacation week when I realized both her kids are now in college and the public school vacation schedule doesn’t mean anything to her anymore. I’ll be at that point myself before I know it. And chances are, when that time comes, Holly’s room will still look like a cyclone hit it; that’s a characteristic of hers that I’m not counting on seeing change. For now, I’m just relishing the memory of such a peaceful stay-at-home week. And unlike all my sunburned, ski-weary friends, I don’t even have any unpacking to do.

Amaryllis, unfolding

When it arrived, I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

Strangely, there were no instructions attached. Just a medium-sized square cardboard box in our mailbox a week before Christmas.

It was a bulb, I could tell that much, in a festive if frangible gold-colored gilt flowerpot. And with it in the box was a dark chocolate torte, as well as a packing slip and a computer-generated card saying the gift was from my two Colorado aunts. I wondered whether that particular combination packaged together – a bulb in a gold flowerpot and a chocolate torte – was a regular catalog item or if my aunts had chosen to combine the two. Either way, it was a generous Christmas present.

I know a lot more about chocolate tortes than bulbs. And as it happened, we were having guests midweek. So I refrigerated the tightly wrapped cake for a few days and then sliced it into thin wedges and served it on our holiday dessert plates with a spoonful of whipped cream. Our guests loved it; I admitted regretfully that I hadn’t made it.

I told myself I’d do a little bit of online searching to find out how to take care of the bulb, which the packing slip informed me was an amaryllis. I’m not very skilled with plants under the best of circumstances, and bulbs, with their onion-y appearance and tendrils barely emerging from the dirt, are even more mysterious than ordinary house plants. I put it on the windowsill and gave it a small amount of water, after asking both my mother and my aunt how to care for it and having both of them tell me, “You’re either supposed to water bulbs or not water them, but I can never remember which.”

Though it was right on the kitchen windowsill facing toward the sunny back yard, I didn’t think much about the bulb. I gave it a little water every few days, with no idea as to whether I was hurting it or helping it. I neglected my resolution to do some online research and find out how to take care of it.

And then in late January, the stem started to grow: a strong, pale green stalk extending straight up from the peculiar orb in the dirt. A bud formed on the end. And this morning, I noticed the bud was starting to open a tiny bit, revealing dark pink petals within.

The sight of this bud so very slowly flowering reminds me of when my children were born. First, the incredulity that anything was actually gestating at all, physical evidence to the contrary not withstanding. In the hospital while in labor for the first time, I saw the bassinet that the nurse had placed in the room and had a pang of surprise that she was so confident a baby was actually going to occupy that tiny crib by the time we were done. But sure enough, a baby did arrive soon enough, in both cases, and throughout the years ever since, I’ve been watching with wonder and curiosity as the bud slowly opens and the brilliantly colored petals of my children’s personalities emerge.

And of course then, as with the bulb, they arrived without printed instructions. I had to do my own research, and ask for advice, and figure it out by trial and error.

In a few days, we’ll have a fully flowering amaryllis on the windowsill, and it will remind me of mid-December and the arrival of a bulb that I really wasn’t sure how to take care of. Wondrous beings emerge from the plainest of containers. From this dull and oddly shaped brown bulb came a beautiful flower. Opening fully as it will just in time for Valentine’s Day, it will be our first hint of spring.