Wintry wonderings

It snowed last night, but it is supposed to disappear by tomorrow. It was almost 60 degrees on Monday. I have finished my shopping, started wrapping, and have to only assemble the last of my handmade gifts for my mother's boyfriend. When we were children on the farm every year under the grape arbor we would recreate the nativity, complete with the donkey. My older brother and sister were Mary and Joseph and I was the baby Jesus until my brother Patrick arrived. Then I became the angel. When we were young we lived a life of subsistence farming, and my father worked for state youth corrections. It was endless days of chores, taking care of the animals, canning or gardening or slaughtering the meat we would eat over the winter. Somehow, in retrospect I loved that time so much more. My mother baked fresh bread and pies almost daily, and we always sat down to a family dinner. It all ended when my father got a raise that doubled his salary. Even though the work was hard, and our parents worked us to the bone, it was an honest way of life. You knew that your labor kept the family going, and although as a child there was little time for play, when it was gone there was an emptiness. We were connected, a unit all working together for a purpose. After that, we separated, and though hardly anything far from dysfunctional at any given time, when those times were gone we separated so much further. I can't believe I miss those times sometimes, the endless hot days weeding humongous vegetable gardens, getting up at 4:00 A.M. to do our barn chores before school, and also right after school. Plucking endless chickens, ducks, geese. The very sad task of slaughtering rabbits. But the warm times of a table filled with a family unit with delicious food, and unity despite the dysfunction. Barely anyone lives like that anymore. I make our family sit down together for dinner. But it is not the same.