THE DARK OF WINTER

Holidays were the brightly colored accents that lit up their everyday life, and the changes of season gave added variety and marked the passage of time. Jenny loved each holiday and wanted it to go on and on. She anticipated the seasonal changes as much as she did the holidays and savored the weather extremes as if they were the dramatic moments in a story or a play.

First, of course, came New Year’s. She enjoyed hearing people talk about turning over a new leaf and making New Year’s resolutions. The old, fly specked calendar would be thrown away and a fresh one hung in its place on a nail on the painted wainscotted wall. Mother would sing “Auld Lang Syne.” and Daddy would join in. Jenny didn’t understand exactly what it meant, but she liked its sweet sad song and knew that it went with New Year’s. The Barnes family didn’t give or attend watch parties, and bedtime would be the same as always. Jenny knew that old Father Time would sneak out at midnight and that the diapered baby New Year would creep in just like Santa Claus and she would awaken to a New Year the next morning.

It was the time of year for potato soup at supper, hot cocoa for breakfast and pop corn on a cold Sunday afternoon. Daddy would sometime pop it and as he jiggled the cast iron skillet atop the the kitchen range it gave off a delicious smell. She thought the milk that partially froze in the big kettles in the pantry was the best kind of milk in the world. Snow drifts would be piled six feet high along the stretches of orange snow fence west of the school, and when it grew still colder, they froze so hard that she and Margaret could walk right on top of them on the way home from school. When it became too cold in the drafty kitchen, Daddy would make a fire in the heating stove in the dining room. This meant checker and domino and Old Maid and Authors games around the big kerosene lamp which had been moved to the dining room table. The evenings were long and quiet and there was family closeness. Sometimes Margaret would even play dolls with her. She played comedy roles and was such a great actress that Jenny would explode into peals of laugher.

Kansas had become a state on January 29, 1861, and on Kansas Day there would be sunflowers and meadow larks to color at school, the same kind of sunflowers that grew everywhere in
early autumn, and the meadow lark was the same kind of bird that sang its clear melodious song from fence posts and roadsides in spring. All school children learned the Kansas motto, “Ad astra per aspera,” which appeared on the Kansas seal and Jenny liked the sound of the Latin phrase. It meant, “To the stars through difficulty,” and signified the hard times Kansas had been through before becoming a state. They heard about “Bleeding Kansas,” “The Sack of Lawrence,” wild-eyed bearded John Brown, an avid abolitionist, who helped Kansas enter the Union as a free state rather than a slave state. She felt proud to be a Kansan. She tried to imagine what life was like in 1861. Perhaps there had been an Indian village in the very spot where she lived. Sometimes they found arrow and spear heads in the fields or in the limestone cliffs in the pasture. Buffalo had grazed in the pasture where their cattle now grazed. There was a buffalo skull embedded in the bank in a gully and Margaret would bring pieces of the bones and teeth home,when she brought in the cattle for milking on summer evenings.

Ground Hog’s Day on February second, may not have been such an important holiday, but it seemed to come just at the right time. Jenny hoped she might see the ground hog looking for his shadow some day, but he was nowhere to be seen. Grown ups speculated about it and there were pictures of ground hogs in the newspaper. It seemed that he always saw his shadow and there were always six more weeks of winter, but maybe some year he wouldn’t see his shadow at all. Would currant and plum bushes bloom in February? Could you roll down your long stockings at the end of February and go barefoot in March? It might happen.

On February 12, Lincoln’s birthday, the teacher would tack a picture of Abe’s wonderful craggy face to the celitex wall. He was Jenny’s favorite president. She never tired of hearing stories of his life, his humble birth in a log cabin in the wilderness, his years as a country school teacher, and a young lawyer, his debates with Stephen Douglas, his presidency, the civil war, and the story of his tragic assassination. She liked learning the beautiful inspirational Gettysburg address.

Ah, Valentine’s Day! Jenny made valentines all year around and she had learned to cut symmetrical hearts by folding and cutting scrap[ paper before she even started to school. At school there would be red construction paper, sometimes a bit of ribbon or lace or red yarn or paper doily. When Jenny was six, a seventh grade girl made a beautiful pull-out valentine just for her. When you opened it, a fancy heart on a pleated strip of paper popped out. The teacher would decorate a box with red or pink and white crepe paper and valentines would be dropped into the slot for a valentine exchange. On Valentine’s afternoon there would be a party. Sometimes there would be party games, cookies, maybe a few candy hearts, but best of all, the beautiful valentines. Jenny and Margaret would read the valentine verses over and over when they got home and the pretty valentines were much prized. Sometimes there would be valentines in the mail from cousins.

February twenty second was Washington’s birthday. Jenny didn’t think he was as interesting as Lincoln, but she liked the pictures of cherry trees and cherries and hatchets they were allowed to trace and color from the teacher’s magazine. She also liked the cherry pie that Mother made at home. She wondered why so many famous people were born in February. Would a February birthday mean that you had a better chance of becoming famous?

Leap Year was a special day too, because it was so scarce, coming only every four years as the other three years had only twenty eight days in February. She learned that presidential elections were held in November of Leap Year and that during Leap Year, it was all right for womqn to ask a man to marry her.