November casts its long shadows

November, one of those in-between months, rather like winter, but not quite, no longer autumn, and very dark. In November I can sit in my chair and watch does race past my front windows, especially on frost-covered mornings, followed closely by a buck, or two, and I feel so bad for them because they will likely give birth in the late spring or early summer. Talk about not having control of one’s own body.

Oddly, seeing deer this time of year makes me think of a day last December when a dear friend and I were hanging out in London, enjoying the Christmas season and agreeing that a wee bit of whiskey was in order, so we hiked (slowly, due to my age, and back issues) to the nearest Marks and Spencer in Westminster and picked up a lovely 12-year-old whiskey in a dark green bottle with this inscription in the glass, “Valley of the Deer.” I felt at home. Now you’ll always find a green bottle on my bar.

November can be a tough month. There should be a universal law stating without doubt that no one can die in November, as death casts long shadows, well into the holidays. My mother passed away a few days ahead of Thanksgiving 34 years ago and I still have difficulty with it. For many of us, only a small envelope full of Novembers remains, something with which I am at peace, but I’m still angry that my mom didn’t have as many as she deserved.

As I write this my cat Luna is hunkered down on a 110-year-old Stickley drop-leaf table, one at just the right height for her to keep track of anything happening in front of the house. Though she isn’t allowed out there, it’s still her domain, her world, one in which she is somehow in charge, a creature from a Sara Teasdale poem, something about looking out, observing nature’s indifference to what we humans do here. Perhaps I contemplate the nature of cats too often, particularly their ability to be both aloof and loving at the same time. I envy that quality.

Next to the table in the living room where Luna hangs out, on a windowsill, is a graduated candle holder, one that holds seven electric lights. Some years back on a deep December day I was riding a train from Oslo to Bergen in Norway and the beautiful woman next to me noted out loud that pretty much every house in Norway displayed the same seven white candles in their windows. It struck me as a nod, I think, not so much to the birth of Jesus, but to the emerging light of the Christmas season in a time of much darkness. I’ve displayed one in my window at this time of year ever since.

Time drifts by and soon enough winter couples will lean into one another on the sidewalks, walking across store parking lots, maybe holding hands against the cold and against anything else that might separate them. It’s an extraordinary time of year and, for me, I know that the hand-holding will one day come to an end, as it always does, even out here where so much is perfect. In the meantime, keep reaching out, touch your shoulder to someone else’s, gently clasp a hand, put out some white lights, and have a brilliant November.

Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County. The Dubuque Telegraph Herald published a 60-page magazine of Kurt’s columns. The magazine can be purchased here