Grouse and Grumble

It’s my sister Susan’s birthday and so cold in the cabin already (I say already because it’s not yet even October—okay, it’s only shy by a day, but still…) that I want to go in! Can’t quite yet because the sun’s casting this really cool golden square of light on the back of the cabin’s wall, and besides that, it’s moved already, so that it’s not shining in my eyes and, with the heater pointed at my neck, and sitting on the chair beside me as if we’re not just friends but lovers, I can survive an hour. I actually love my life. Love it. I love sitting here in the cold; in the morning; by my heater. Sometimes I love grousing about it.

It snowed once on Susan’s birthday. It was probably in the early 1960’s because I remember it as a mad rush to find boots before school. Usually we get our first dusting of snow mid-October. When the snow comes early you grouse you about it. Then you remember it with a kind of glee.

I’ve got to quit feeling that I complain. I grouse. I grouse about this life I love. That’s another expression of my dad’s, one that, as far as I know is pretty unfrequented these days. It actually means to complain or grumble. Grumble’s good too. Grouse and grumble have a silliness about them, a lightness. Much better than complain.

As Dad got older, the grousing fell away. But one Christmas, about nine years ago, I noticed it, and all the words that my mom (who when I was 17 divorced my dad), used to use for him, came back to me. “Bullheaded” and “ornery” were her words. He had this way of setting his jaw that I’ve inherited. You set your jaw and your lips disappear. Even if you don’t say a word, all a person has to do is look at you and they know you’re feeling bullheaded and that you probably won’t be cheered up. Sometimes Christmas and all the hoopla can do that to a person. Sometimes it’s about something else.

I remember that Christmas fondly, I really do, and how we (my siblings and I) carried on around it – as if – yeap, that’s Dad too, a side of him we’d forgotten but that’s still there, and remembering it was kind of pleasant in a weird way, the going back to childhood memories, having those old words spring up again: bullheaded, ornery, grouse.