When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even

Madrona in the snow: Looking from Center Island toward Decatur Island during my morning walk.

OH, WE’RE HAVIN’ A HEAT WAVE, a tropical heat wave… Well, it got up to 25 degrees Fahrenheit today on Center Island. After a couple of days this week when the red stuff in the outdoor thermometer didn’t budge above 15, that’s saying something. Not much, but something.

Christmas arrived in the San Juans along with a blast of Siberian cold, snow and wind that hasn’t quite ended.

With all that in the forecast last week, daughter Lillian and I canceled our long-planned Christmas rendezvous with friends at the Washington coast. Instead, Lil and her friend Bianca, a former college roommate with whom she remains close, joined me at the Nuthatch for a quiet and cozy celebration with plenty of good food, mulled wine, games, puzzles and favorite old movies. We went caroling at the island farm (“Good King Wenceslas” was our forte) and had a snowball fight on the airfield.

Lillian, left, and friend Bianca on a snowy Feast of Stephen, also known as December 26.

We didn’t wake up to a white Christmas, but by evening the flakes were falling fast, allowing us to enjoy the magic of dimming lights inside the cabin and turning on outside lights above the front wall of windows to experience a mesmerizing eyeful of what I call “Snow Theater.”

Thoughtful friends and family remembered me with many cards and gifts. It was a good Christmas, but as many surmised, it wasn’t easy without my sweet wife and Lillian’s dear mum. Christmas was Barbara’s favorite time of year. We did our best to honor the standard she set and replicate the joy she brought to it. Of course it wasn’t the same, but it was the best way to show our love.

Tracks in the snow told who’d been there before me, whether two-legged or four.

Monday I braved snowy highways to return Lillian and Bianca to Seattle. I returned via water taxi to my island on Tuesday to learn that many neighbors had frozen pipes. (Mine are OK.)

This morning dawned quiet and sunny. Winds were light, the air remained frigid and the snow wasn’t melting. A perfect morning to bundle up for an invigorating tramp around the island with my camera. It was fun to try to read prints in the snow. Was that a deer crossing the road? A fox treading the path behind my knoll?

The continuing cold has helped quash a planned visit by friends for the New Year’s holiday. So Galley Cat and I will be partying alone as we welcome 2022. For me, the year to come holds the adventure of a 10-week voyage with some other chums on a 37-foot powerboat up the Inside Passage to Alaska, and the hope that we might all be able to resume safe travels to faraway places, one of my joys in life. For Galley, there’s probably hope for more runs up the knoll. Maybe better-quality kitty tuna. Her needs are simple. I think we can work on that.

Whatever your wishes, here’s hoping.

Optimistically baking my way through a challenging day

Babies at the altar: Brian and Barbara with Father Patrick Carroll on December 15, 1979.

AT THE SAME HOUR as I write this, 42 years ago today Barbara and I and a flock of family and friends trooped into St. Joseph’s Church on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. Outside, snow fell lightly. Inside, by an altar decorated with red poinsettias, my sweetheart and I said our wedding vows.

We’d been best friends for years by that point. Lovers for a while. At the time, I didn’t think twice about the “till death do us part” clause in what we said before that assemblage. But here we are.

I assumed today would be one of my more difficult days of 2021, but when I awakened this morning, rather than desolation I felt optimistic about quietly commemorating December 15, 1979, a date that’s engraved in gold on the inside of the wedding ring that I can’t imagine taking off.

Yes, it’s just me and the cat here in our island cabin today. It’s not what I’d choose. But I greeted this morning with a feeling of gratitude more than grief. I will always cherish the good luck that brought me and Barbara together. Divorce statistics demonstrate how many people struggle to find their soulmate. Many never do.

Our friendship and marriage brought so many good things to both of our lives, the best being our delightful daughter, Lillian.

One of my favorite latter-day photos of us, touring Scotland’s Edinburgh Castle in 2017.

I got out of bed this morning with the intent of doing some Christmas baking, something new for me. That was Barbara’s department, because she enjoyed it and was so good at it.

But it wouldn’t be Christmas without Yule Cake, a recipe we’ve kept for years in a binder of my mother’s favorite recipes. This recipe is in Mom’s own swirling handwriting, with a note at the top, “I’ve made several of these every Christmas for nearly 50 years.” Who knows when she wrote that. Eleanor Mary Elizabeth Cantwell died at age 88 in 2006. Barbara maintained the Yule Cake tradition since then. And now it’s up to me.

Many cringe at the idea of tooth-achingly sugary Christmas fruitcake, but that’s because they’ve never had this Yule Cake. Yes, it has some sweet fruit — orange peel, cherries, raisins and dates — but it’s more a nut cake. Baked in a large loaf pan for two full hours at 300 degrees, this cake contains 1 1/2 cups each of whole Brazil nuts and whole walnuts. With only 3/4 cup flour, moistened by three beaten eggs, there’s barely enough cake to hold all those nuts together. But sliced into small squares, nothing goes better with a cup of hot coffee on a cold winter morning. Later in the day, a bit of stinky Stilton cheese and a snifter of port are Yule Cake’s perfect complements.

The oven timer is about to ring. We’ll see if it worked. It’s my celebration of the Cantwell women on this cold middle day of December with a sky that looks like snow. Just as it did 42 years ago.

Out of the oven, my first attempt at Yule Cake looks pretty good. Let’s hope it’s edible.

Yule Cake recipe

1 1/2 cups Brazil nut meats, whole
1 1/2 cups walnut halves, unchopped
7 ounces pitted dates, whole or sliced in half
2/3 cup candied orange peel, chopped
1/2 cup whole red maraschino cherries, drained
1/2 cup whole green maraschino cherries, drained
1/2 cup seedless raisins
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar, or sugar substitute
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.

Grease the bottom and sides of a large loaf pan and line it with parchment paper. Lightly grease the paper.

Place nuts and fruit in a large mixing bowl. Measure all dry ingredients into a sifter and sift over the fruit and nuts. Mix well.

Beat eggs until light and frothy. Add vanilla. Blend into fruit and nut mixture. Batter will be stiff. Spoon mixture into pan and spread evenly.

Bake at 300 F. for 1 3/4 to 2 hours (105 to 120 minutes). Cool on rack for 10 minutes before removing from pan and paper.

Hint: If shelling your own Brazil nuts, freeze them first for easier cracking. Easier: Trader Joe’s sells shelled Brazil nuts.

I can’t write ‘Tis the Season.’ Rose O’Donnell would kill me.

The giant wreath, made from fir boughs fallen in recent windstorms, went up on front of the Nuthatch today.

THAT SAID, I MADE MY WREATH TODAY, the five-foot circle of fir boughs that traditionally hangs across the Nuthatch’s front wall of windows on these darkest days of the year.

So I’ve declared it officially Christmastime. And Hanukkah. Solstice season. Or whatever jolliness you choose to celebrate in the gloom of winter.

Rose O’Donnell was the hard-boiled chief of the features copy desk, my boss when I first went to work at The Seattle Times, and if a lowly copy editor such as myself in those days used the all-time cliché headline “‘Tis the Season” on a holiday-related story, you risked having your pay docked, your pets turned out into the street, and your stocking filled with coal. Or at least having a pica pole thrown at you.

I raise a mug of eggnog to Rose’s meticulous standards, and announce without further fanfare that my wreath is up, along with the swag by the front door.

Just a week ago Lillian and I were celebrating Thanksgiving at a little camping cabin at Camano Island State Park, where we gobbled some really good burgers (garnished with sage, blue cheese, caramelized onions and mushrooms, mmmm) fried up on our camp stove. We decided this year that we should do something different for the holidays, because without Barbara nothing would be the same anyway. Our Thanksgiving venture was quietly delightful.

On a hike along the bluff at Camano Island State Park on Thanksgiving, Lillian points to the beach. Just in case you hadn’t noticed it.

For Christmas, Lillian and I are going away again, to cottages on the Washington coast with friends. I’m not having a Christmas tree at the Nuthatch; that was my sweetie’s favorite effort of the year, elaborately decorating a fragrant fir in our living room. She would bake up a storm, and pile the gifts high. I can’t do it on my own, not this year.

But my daughter and I have good Yuletide plans, and other treasured friends are coming to my cabin for a masked soiree on New Year’s Eve. It’s undeniably a tough holiday season, but I’m doing my best to keep spirits up. And remembering my sweetheart, who so loved Christmas.

Hold dear ones close and stay warm this winter, my friends.