A home in winter

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I am not much use with my hands. I have bent them to work in an office on computers. They are weak, sore, pitiful. I hold a needle to a quilt a short while, the fabric and batting gathered and bunched in my left hand, the needle a steel splinter of my once-magic wand arm in my right; then my hands collapse, in pain or icy numbness, in the calico on my lap. The most basic tools have no moneyback guarantee.

But once, after the supremacy of Sunday morning church and dinner, these hands of mine built a home. I was five. I had three construction assistants in the yard between the house and the church — ages nine, eleven and thirteen; male; also inexperienced builders. It had snowed; the snow was deep. Then it snowed some more. It was January, the snows piled like ancient stone-dust cities of the Holy Land pilgrimage our parents showed us in slides. Then it rained on our cotton and wool hooded snow suits and on the snow; the rain froze. The black metal clasps of my red rubber galoshes froze shut. If we were very delicate, we could walk atop the crusted snow. With straight-edge machete fingertips, from the large age thirteen size to the small five, we punched out big rectangular snow bricks. Deep, deep I still feel the way of precision, my fingertips in wool mittens slicing snow stones from the whole quarry yard for layering in the masonry of igloos. No one taught us this. When the walls were an inch higher than the thirteen-year-old, my brothers placed the plywood ceiling and finished the exterior with a roof of ice-and-snow slate. We packed white mortar in each gap; smoothed with pearl-iced mitten-index fingers: a ten by ten closet or a small bedroom where the four of us could lie side by side hidden in mystery in the expanse between our father's parsonage and the church. We slept quietly in our civilized and insulated imaginations. We could live there, and survive. So warm; so home. So temporary.

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Everything but the . . .

It is where she has filled the cool cavities of 18-pound Thanksgiving turkeys with stuffing in her fists. It is where she bathed her babies, their soapy skin so slick she was terrified they'd slip and gouge their heads on the faucet, yet they cooed at her unafraid, blinking and sputtering when she rinsed their heads with cups of clear warm water. Cabbage heads and cauliflower heads were washed here too, and fingers of carrot scrubbed with a stiff white brush. Teapots and soup pots filled. Flower stems clipped before layering them and their velvety heads in water-filled vessels. Here in soapy water she broke her favorite glass rotating her hand inside, and she watched the perfectly sliced V between her knuckles blossom and point at her heart candy apple red, then blood red, then wick into the fine rivulets of her skin. With a turn of the faucet handle, cold water instantly streamed to cleanse the cut, as it had streamed, washed, rinsed, and filled dozens of times a day, every day, for decades.

Indoor plumbing has brought water into this farmhouse kitchen for 80 years. She is one of only two thirds of the world's women who can turn a faucet and receive a rush of water right into sinks in their homes. The rest are lucky if they can gather clean water from a pump a mile away and carry it in red plastic jugs on their heads back home, spending hours a day on just this simple collection. Some only pray for adequate access to clean water. Some = over a billion.

You can read about global water issues at the Global Issues site, like how because of CocaCola's production that depleted water resources in Plachimada, India, local farmers had to dig 450 feet and still couldn't access water.

thanks go round and round

Thanksgiving Day morning Aunt Ruth needed apples peeled and sliced for pie. So Uncle Don brought out the handy dandy apple-corer-peeler thingy that he just bought and was dying to use.

Chadd and his sister Kaeley watched and helped. Chadd, who is a student of science had to figure out how the corer mechanism worked. Just exactly which blade did what, and how?

Piles of apple peels for the chickens.

Each apple produced one smooth spiral of peel and one smooth spiral of apple flesh, which was then sliced in half in one knife stroke for the pie.

We'll do it again next year.

home

What is home?

Is it a structure? Is home the building you live in now, or one you lived in at another time in your life?

Is it what you put into the structure, in the individual rooms? Does being surrounded by lovingly worn objects passed down to you from your parents or grandparents give you a sense of stability? Maybe something your father gave your mother in a moment of celebration, or gifts or art children made with small hands and gave you as they were growing up. Or maybe special books you've thumbed time and again, wearing the edges to threads?

Is home a place? The way the light bounces off water, or how it is filtered through leaves in a certain landscape? Does waking up to mountains on the horizon, or hearing a car pull onto your gravel driveway make you feel at home? Do you prefer a cityscape with crowds, lights and street noises?

Is home family, or certain loved ones? (Ohh, I see we need a new family picture with Brian included. This one was taken in 2005 by my nephew Mark - Ginnie's son - on the frozen lake. That's our family cottage to the left of Peter's head in the photo, up on the hill. That place really feels like home to me, because of all the family memories. Also, it is the closest we have to a homestead since my parents passed away, and our big extended family still gathers there twice a year.)

And how do you know it's home? Is it a feeling of warmth in a place that puts you at ease with yourself more than anywhere else?

I have never felt more at home than here at the farm, where we have lived less than five years. Our children also seem to feel a sense of home here unlike any of the eleven (that's 11, yes, 10 + 1) houses they've lived in, even though Lesley never lived here and Peter only lived here a few months in college. To answer my questions, I feel at home anywhere with my loving husband, and that grows stronger when the kids are home. I feel at home here at the farm because of the outdoor space - the way the trees are situated, the way the house windows face the land and old buildings, how the land slopes down to the meadow and woods, and the way the rustling poplar leaves in a strong wind are audible all the way to the house porch. I also feel at home with the heirlooms I grew up with, and seeing my children's art on the walls and Lesley's fabric projects draped on furniture.

If all this were taken from me, and I had to live with a minimum, I would hope for:

• a pen, a pad of paper, books on a wooden table, a comfortable chair, something beautiful to look at (art, photograph, fabric, a piece of pottery), something old that belonged to someone I love/d, and a view to the outdoors

I'd love to hear what makes you feel a sense of home.