A Frosty Rose

"Did you know VARDO means Rose?" Sally queried Sam as the snow flakes seemed to grow bigger, fattened by some wintery yeast goblin. "Hmmm...cool," Sam's low-key reply didn't hide the glint behind his glasses. Rose is Sam's mother's name and when he thinks of her there are always sweet remembrances of the days Sam spent with her long after the clan of nearly a dozen Talls had left the Wisconsin home place. Sally let her mind wander the road of serendipity, thinking about the golden home Sam was building them. A frosty golden rose now, roof covered in a tarp to keep the weather from brutalizing her uncompleted cap, there tiny home on wheels rested as Winter encased the continent. There were so many things left to be done to make the golden rose home. Time ticked, and still a door and a roof were yet to close up the front wall and cover the dome curved roof. I suppose the lesson for our friends Sam and Sal is you can't rush the bloom of a rose.

A year ago the comfort of home was as distant and unlikely as sails on tall ships were to the first people of this continent. A glimpse backward was enough for Sal, just a glimpse, no lingering rewind was necessary. Stripped of the permanence of post and pier construction, their year of nightly moves scraped away all but is essential. The simplified life she and her man Sam create here builds on all the best seasons of being at home together. There was always something Sam was building or repairing and in the kitchen Sal was making some sort of soup. On this night when the shortest day beckoned more light to come Winter Solstice soups steamed and filled every corner of home. It was always a time to celebrate ... rituals of gathering and making meals with friends. Tonight the ritual soup making continued. Round baby turnips from the Kent Valley not far from the frosty Rose, thick bits of ginger all the way from Peru where instead of Winter, Summer allows vegetables to ripen and slivers of shitake mushrooms flavor a heady chicken broth. Unlike their years of cooking soups in a kitchen contained within walls of their cozy homes, this Winter Solstice soup bubbles outside where the temperature is barely above twenty degrees.

They have danced and tromped in snow a foot high, and even after Sam headed in to warm himself, Sal went to the snow gathered on the make-shift porch on their golden frosty Rose. With one finger she traced curvy shapes into the snow. "Just so you know we are loving the way you are growing," she bid her home in the making good night, and good solstice. Of course, she had etched a snowy Rose ... a talisman of good fortune.