Christmas Week. The holiday descends like the gray and windy clouds outside, everyone seems serious, checking off their lists, making plans, talking about the weather forecast for Christmas Eve – 60 degrees they say, shaking their heads, can you believe it? Here, in my country town, we are confused, they’ve taken away the weather to talk about and worry about and complain about. It’s something we all have to talk about when we meet, we are thrown off.

Everyone worries, as always, about the fragile economy here, the auto body shops with no winter accidents to repair, the plow men in their big trucks with nothing to plow, the big Vermont ski resorts nearby waiting to put people to work.

The rural economy has been forgotten by politicians and economists, our economy runs on a dime – snow, car accidents on ice, the Rite-Aid, some diners, cafes and restaurants. One thing off throws everything off.  Maria and I are re-thinking Christmas, we are not doing the tree, the lights, the lists of gifts this year, still… I am driving everyone mad, I think, writing about Christmas and Jesus Christ, of all things.

Nobody much knows what I am talking about but it is giving me some meaning for the holiday. We go to the book store to get some gift certificates. It is just a reflex for us, we can put much of Christmas aside, but not this. This is such a familiar place for me in December, this bookstore, I usually spend each month signing copies of my new book to send out, This year, no book.  I am behaving like a normal writer and taking more time.  It matters, I realize, that I don’t have a book out. Another piece – 1,000 books thrown off, for the bookstore, for the Post Office.  Another person not hired for the  season to help take orders and ship. I am sorry, I feel guilty, not doing my part for the bookstore, for the town.

Everything matters here. It is sad to see Bridget’s Pharmacy closed and empty, the pharmacy was always stuffed with local crafts and jellies and goo-gaws for Christmas. Last year, when the neighboring building tottered and customers couldn’t enter the store,we all waited in lines next door to send Martha scurrying for our Christmas presents in the other room. She had to wear a helmet.

Next year, I tell Connie, I’ll have a book out next year. She hasn’t mentioned it, but I know it is on her mind. It is the first time in nearly three decades that I don’t have a book out in the Fall, perhaps this has helped to unsettle my Christmas. The weather is off, my life is off. Why does everyone look so serious?

Still, the store is full, Connie Brooks looks happy,  Red knows the drill, he goes from customer to customer, avoiding those who don’t care to see him, stopping for those who do. A head on a shoulder, a paw on an arm. People love Red, they hug him and pet  him and keep on browsing. I can contribute this year.

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Uncharacteristically for us, we have nothing planned. We sleep late, Maria gets up and feeds the animals. I’m supposed to stay in bed, but she shouts that there is snow on the ground, and I jump up, put a bathrobe on, grab my camera and run outside. The dogs are out circling the sheep, the donkeys and pony at the feeder, Maria shoveling manure out of the barn. We love to do this for each other, leave one in bed while the other rushes out to feed the animals. On a farm, nobody rests, really, until the animals are fed.

We get up and go to the Round House. It is quiet. An old man is reading the newspaper in a corner, a tableau that seems dated, I realize I rarely see newspapers in the care, people are reading their phones and tablets. Scott Carrino is watching two men who come into his cafe carrying Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in huge paper cups. He is too sweet to say anything, but he looks at me and winks, shakes his head. Why, he wonders, would people bring a cup of someone else’s coffee into his cafe? But it happens all the time. Maybe throw them out, I suggest, just joking. You’d have to stab Scott with a fork to get thrown out of there.

I order a vegetable omelet and potatoes, Maria has pancakes and eggs and a poppy seed muffin. Scott comes over to sit with us, as he always does if he isn’t busy. He looks exhausted, as he always does on weekend, he is often alone on the kitchen then.  We walk about Christmas, Daoism, the Solstice. He loves what he does, but is on his feet cooking all day.  By Sunday, he is a wreck. I worry about him sometimes, but he is happy, doing what he wants to be doing. You can love people, I’ve learned, but don’t try to save people. That is up to them.

I feel lighter finally learning that and believing it. Last night, on the phone, he asked me if ours will be one of those friendships that ultimately ends in lethargy or conflict. I don’t think so, I say, we know just about everything about each other that there is to know. It always feels good to see him and talk to him. I think we love each other.

Our day was busy, but quiet, drifty, unplanned. We just went from one thing to another.

A 45-minute walk in the deep woods, it is windy and cold, winter showing it’s teeth before it runs and hides again. The dogs race up and down the paths, the woods quiet and still. We walk arm-in-arm, the ground is slippery, I’ve order better shoes for the winter from L.L. Bean, but they haven’t come yet. I slip and slide on the wet leaves on the step hills.

We go to the M.V. Consignment Store on Main Street, Maria wants to buy some earrings she liked. I want to buy them for her, but she refuses. She spends the $15 herself. It is rare for Maria to buy anything for herself, she must love these. She never buys anything the first time she sees it, she mulls it like a secret agent uncovering a plot.

Then, to a thrift store down the road to deposit some of the many gifts people send us that we have no room for or don’t use. I used to return them all the gifts people sent me, or put some in the barn.  People used to send large gifts – paintings, vases, boxes of food, clothing. I kept asking people not to do it, or took them to the post office to return.

Maria thought that was rude and keeps what we can use, and can’t bear to throw out what we can’t. So she gives things to charity, or the proceeds of things to the poor. It’s a happy solution. People are generous to send us things, I have come to see, we accept what we can. But there are only two of us and thousands of you. That’s the reality of it. Every day, I get a letter with $5 or $10 or $20 inside. Most of them come to our P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. Everyone one of these messages is a shot in the arm of love and support, they all life me up.

Fate stands with her front paws on the front console, her rear legs on the back seat. Red stretches out and sleeps, he does not move. Once in awhile, Fate leans over to chew on my nose, but mostly, she just navigates.

Sometimes there are a few dollar bills all folded up with lovely messages:  get a cup of coffee, they say, we are grateful,  keep on doing what you are doing. I call it Encouragement Money, it is sweet to get those letters. I keep some of it, give some of it to the poor. We sometimes get coffee with it, or treats for the animals. Giving to the poor is on my mind, the right thing for me and Christmas.

After the thrift store, we go to the hardware store for suet for the new bird feeder Maria installed outside of my study window. No birds yet, Maria counsels patience. She has patience, I don’t have any. I told her the feeder was a disaster, she laughed at me.

Then to the town recycling center, a funky and idiosyncratic place. We deposit our one can of garbage and our cardboard from all he Amazon boxes, mostly – books, dog supplies, shipping envelopes for Maria. Bob rushes out to grab the can, something he has done ever since he heard I had heart surgery a year ago. I can handle my own cans, I say, but he just brushes me off and hauls them unless I get to it first or he is distracted.  He is just as willful as I am. He went through his own bankruptcy, we are brothers of a kind. My own brother doesn’t even know about my  bankruptcy, Bob at the town dump gives me pep talks about moving on. Life is curious.

Time to feed the animals.

Chloe gets aggressive with the carrots for the donkey, I tap her on the nose, Maria gets upset and says just talk to her, but there are lots of the old ways in me still, I don’t like large animals plunging at me, it has hurt me too many times. It was just a tap, I say, and she sighs. Chloe comes up and sticks her nose in my pocket. I ask her nicely to get away.

We settle into the darkness. A fire going in the stove. Fresh salmon for dinner, I’ll start cooking soon. I’m reading Patti Smith’s new book, M Train, loving it, mesmerized. Maria is deep into Isabel Allende, I took Fate out for an afternoon run and herding session she is uncharacteristically quiet, sleeping by my feet, Red asleep behind my chair. Fate loves  her new orthopedic bed.

We are easy together, Maria and I. We are still sparring a bit about Star Wars, and whether she is coming to see it with me. I tell her I don’t care if she comes, but I think she feels badly about my doing to the movies alone.  And she keeps telling me she won’t like it, so we have decided that we will shut up about it and both go, and we will either like it or not. This isn’t about the movie, I keep telling her, it is about us, something in us. We aren’t quite connecting, we will figure it out, we always do.

We are done for the night. In the dark days, we fold into our chairs in the living room, we settle into a reading stupor. We have just never watched TV, we canceled our TV cable. Maria is excited about the Winter Solstice, much more than Christmas. It is on Monday, she is planning a celebration. Tomorrow, we are getting up early to head for Blue Star Equiculture. We haven’t seen our friend Pam in a while, we are also eager to see the big horses. Lulu is still limping, her abscess not yet broken. Ken Norman, our farrier will come Sunday afternoon, Deb Foster will be here to meet him. Hope it breaks, hate to see her limping.