Silver Beach

By Carrie Jacobson

This, then, is winter in Virginia.

It is gray. Dark. Rainy. Raw.

But it is not snowy.

It is not icy.

I am not shoveling.

I am not skidding.

I am not warming up the car for half an hour, and then leaving home an hour early, seeking routes that have no hills. I am not scraping windshields, losing gloves, finding frozen sodas on the floor, worrying about ice-melter and the back steps and the dogs’ paws.

For decades, I loved winter, and I loved the snow. I loved the way white outlined everything, cleaned it all, purified it. I loved the howling blast of a blizzard and the deep quiet of a gentle snow. I loved the sharp air of winter, how the coldest days would freeze the inside of your nose, and bring tears to your eyes. I loved the brilliance of the sun on the snow, and the way it caught the moonlight, making night look like some kind of shadowed day.

I loved skiing, and hiking in the snow and, later, painting it.

But for all that, I don’t miss it. Winter has been painless, here on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. It has been gentle, and soft, and gray.

And if I want real winter, I know where to find it.

Here's my painting in the landscape

Field of Flowers

By Carrie Jacobson

Some of you might not know how I started painting, so here’s the story:

It was the fall of 2006, I was 50, and we were living in Cuddebackville. I was working at the Times Herald-Record, as the Sunday editor, and one of a four-person group that ran the newsroom.

My mother had died in July, and in October, I was still a total wreck. Truly devastated. When I look back, I really don’t know how I managed to go to work, go home, talk to people.

I was driving to work one day when I was struck by the idea that I should make a painting of our dogs to give to my husband for Christmas.

I’d never painted. As a girl, I’d drawn houses and horses. I’d doodled all my life. I’d made pottery, I’d done a lot of writing, but that was it. And so, if I’d have been my normal self, the self that easily said “I can’t,” I wouldn’t have listened to the voice with that crazy idea. I’d have dismissed the notion, or maybe I’d have hired someone to do it.

Instead, I bought a canvas (it was 24×48 – huge! But we had six dogs, so I figured I needed a big canvas). I bought white paint, black paint, brown paint and blue paint, since one dog has blue eyes. I bought a big brush and a small brush, and I set out to make a painting.

From the moment I began, I loved it. And that first painting was fabulous. It was as if I’d been painting my whole life – I just hadn’t picked up a brush.

I took a drawing class from Shawn Dell Joyce, and I took a beginning oil painting class from Gene Bove. These are two of the folks who founded the Wallkill River School, which is now in Montgomery.

I joined the Wallkill River School plein-air group. And I painted. I painted and painted and painted and painted. At every opportunity, I painted. I looked at my paintings, stared at them, tried to figure out what worked and what didn’t. I pestered painters and artists and friends and family members to look at my paintings and critique them. When I painted with the WRS plein-air group, I asked endless questions – and those wonderful people answered them all.

In January of 2007, as some of you probably remember, a heart attack killed my boss and dear friend Mike Levine, the editor of the Times Herald-Record. In April, the paper eliminated the job I’d thought I would have for the rest of my life.

These events, the death of my mother and Mike, and then the loss of my job, and all in the course of 10 months, this string of blows could have broken me.

I have come to believe that painting was given to me as a way to cope, and I have been grateful every day since.

Here’s that first painting:

Six Dogs

Snow Geese Taking Flight

By Carrie Jacobson

Here is my prayer for the new year:

Let me wake every day in gratitude and with faith. Let me find courage to overwhelm my fear, and vision to overcome my blindness. Let me forgive myself and others. Let me choose generosity, take risks, and act with the power and the glory of love.

Happy New Year to you all!

Roy

By Carrie Jacobson

Darkness creeps in early on these short, thin days, wrapping its fingers around the thin afternoon light and trying to squeeze the joy from our souls.

How do we celebrate the birth of Christ when children are being shot and killed? How do we find the joy of the season and the blessings of family and friends when our leaders are focused on the argument instead of on the solution? How do we share our happiness when it seems to be in such short supply?

I think we just do. I think we just decide to share whatever we have, whatever we can muster. A smile is as welcome a gift as any. Laugh with me and we will feel the wonder of the season. Sing a song together and we are celebrating the birth of Christ. Touch my heart and you will multiply your own joy.

So let’s sing songs tonight. Let’s light candles in the dark, and smile at strangers and hug the people we love. The darkness can not win if we decide to triumph.

The Winter Church

By Carrie Jacobson

Last week, I met with Joe Skelly, who is, as far as I know, the world’s only prosperity coach.

Daphne

By Carrie Jacobson

It was warm enough today, and bug-free enough, that we left the back door open so the dogs could go in and out at will, for the first time in their lives.

Clearly, it was liberation for them, and they spent hours running in and out – just because they could. Then Smokey sat in the sun in the open doorway, while Jojo lay in the sun in the yard, and we all soaked it up like the miracle it was.

Earlier in the day, when the door had still been closed, I’d heard the dogs doing something, again and again, making some metal on metal noise. I looked out of the open door of the boat-garage studio where I was painting, and though I couldn’t see what they were doing, I thought it might have something to do with the gates, and a potential escape, so I took them inside.

When I came back out, I heard the noise again, and realized where it was coming from – the rusty 40-foot-tall antenna that the previous owner installed, and which towers frighteningly over our house. It’s footed in a block of cement, and probably is stable, but still, it looks terrible, and if it ever toppled, would cause all sorts of trouble.

The noise, I realized, was caused by a bird, probably a crow, tossing pecans down inside the antenna, probably in an effort to break them.

Or maybe, just maybe, he did it just because he could.

Afternoon Storm in the Keys

By Carrie Jacobson
What is it that drives us to continue, through storms, through rough seas, through struggles with fear and failure and doubts about the future?

For me, some days, it is as simple as the color of the sky at dawn. It is the first yellow leaves of autumn, the quiet of snow falling at night, the smell of dust in the early moments of a summer rainstorm.

It is the feeling of a dog snuggled close by my side, the spicy tang of marigolds, the scent of coffee brewing in a sunny kitchen.

Some days, what gets me through is a song I play again and again, or a quote I stumble over quite by chance, or the words of a friend, spoken in love or in comfort.

It is the thought of home, the memory of my mother, the sense of wonder and glory that I feel every single morning. What gets me through is love and faith and the knowledge that this day, this single dawning day, this day is the day that we have.

Friday Sunrise

By Carrie Jacobson

On Election Day, I passed a church with a letterboard sign in front that read: Vote – It’s Your Duty.

I’ve been thinking about that for a while now.

I don’t believe that voting is our duty. I believe it’s our right. I believe that if we choose not to vote, we are wasting an opportunity – but it is our choice.

I think there’s a world of difference between having a duty to vote and having the right to vote. In fact, I think that the truth of America is what separates the two.

I love to vote. Yes, I am a sap, and I have been known to cry in the voting booth. It means a lot to me, voting. I am part of We, the People. I am part of this great populace that is hoping to make and see and be part of a better union, a better United States.

Today, on the main street of Wachapreague, Va., our new hometown, flags are flying from the lampposts. It gave me shivers to see that, and it made me happy again to be an American.

Flags on Main Street, Wachapreague

Storm Before the Storm

By Carrie Jacobson

With every blast of wind, every buffeting bluster, with the storm twisting the landscape, stirring up the autumn grass, with every moment of approach and every iota of intensity, my most primal being measures fight or flight, and comes more and more alive.

In New York, where we lived on the bank of a river that flooded, raging and dangerous, fear overtook me, and the only respite – after the first, terrifying, catastrophic losses – came in flight.

Here, so far, staying seems safe, with my fighting soul in full glory.

If the time comes to leave, I will know. We both will. We will recognize the overwhelming wave of fear, and get out before it crashes on our storm-swept shore. But for now, it is exciting, exhilarating, enlivening.

In storms like this, I meet my deepest self, and take the measure of my heart.

***

Want to see Wachapreague, VA, (our Eastern Shore town) Monday morning at high tide? Click here!

Dawn, Tuesday

By Carrie Jacobson

Here in Wachapreague, the sun comes up in a sky as clear as any I’ve ever seen, and fills the land with colors that sing and light that shines true and clear through air with no haze, no smog, no pollution. Whatever it touches springs to life with a sort of bright glory that I’ve only ever seen in the land around Wisdom, Montana.

I can’t count the opportunities that have passed me by. The doors that have closed behind me, never to open. The roads I didn’t take, the chances I failed to see.

As life goes on, these line up behind me, a trail of failures and misses and could-have — even, maybe, should-have — beens.

And yet, it seems, the right things have happened. All that has happened has brought Peter and me here, to a place where we are happy, a place where opportunity seems as wide as the sky and as bright as Tuesday’s rising sun.

Yes, I hear the echoes of those doors slamming shut, and yes, from time to time, I feel regret. But today, I turn ahead, and walk forward, and try, forever, not to look back.