The Return of Tine

Tine, who hasn't been spotted in the village for the longest time, was seen proceeding cautiously along the edge of the sidewalk leading up Mountain Road this afternoon. It was icy, and Tine believed she gained better purchase in the leafy, snowy crud at the side of the walkway.

"Purchase -- now that's a word Rubob would use," Tine thought.

Rubob was inexplicably absent on this walk of Tine's -- or explicably if you had a view into Tine's mind.

It was the Grinch, actually, who saw her on Mountain Road.

"He's probably on the lookout for like-minded souls," Tine thought.



It wasn't the sort of day that anyone would enjoy sitting outside on the porch, except perhaps the Grinch.

"I hope I'm not mistaken for a Who because I'm so small," Tine thought, but the Grinch permitted her to pass.



"He reminds me a bit of Rubob," Tine thought. "Talk about like-minded characters."

She was making her way busily up to the Hill-Stead, to see the grounds after last night's ice storm.

"Yes, I need to see the ice," she said to Rubob, anticipating disagreements, even though he wasn't there. "At the Hill-Stead. You can't disagree, because you're not here. Now go away!"

Tine was rewarded with the view below, and Rubob might have been, too, had he not been so disagreeable.



"Tine, I would have loved to have taken a walk with you," Rubob might have said -- in fact, most definitely would have said.

"It's too late for that now. You should have thought of that earlier," Tine replied.

"Look what you've missed: a misty prospect," Tine thought.



"I think I'll have a seat," she thought. "Only the Grinch and I will be out on our porches today, enjoying a thoroughly gray day."



"It's not so bad out here alone," Tine thought. "What did Wainwright say? 'Walking alone is poetry; walking in a group only prose."

Tine had been reading "Wainwright: The Biography," and in some ways he was with her on her walk today.

"It's not unlike the Cambrian fells here," Tine thought, "though I don't imagine there are many red barns there."



The sky over the Hill-Stead seemed undecided over whether to lighten or darken.



"I feel that way myself sometimes," Tine thought, reflecting on the walk she was enjoying alone today.

She got up from her rocking chair and proceeded down the hill toward High Street. From the street, she looked back up toward old Mrs. Riddle's estate.



"Rather nice," Tine thought. "I'm sure Mrs. Riddle enjoyed a brisk winter walk alone from time to time."

Across the street, Tine admired a house that Rubob might have liked -- or maybe not, since it was another "historic descrecration," as he would have said -- an extensive renovation of the old brown house that had once stood there.



"All the same, it's very agreeable," Tine thought, "and the front door is a more pleasing shade of green than the Grinch."

Rubob would pronounce the door "blue," Tine thought, because his brown transition lenses made him color-blind, though he refused to acknowledge this.

"I think a darker shade of blue would be better," he would say. "Or maybe with less gray in it."

"The gray is in the day, Rubob -- not in the door," Tine would reply. "Everything is gray today. And the door is certainly not a shade of blue," she humphed.



Tine turned back onto High Street, where icy branches overhung the walkway.

"I can hardly get to where I'm going, what with all this ice," Tine thought. The crystalline branches shattered as she made her way through them. She spotted the Grinch again across the street and felt his icy fingers reaching in to take hold of her heart. "Your heart's a dead tomato splot, with moldy purple spots."

"I haven't been in the most charitable of moods today, have I?" Tine thought. "It's that Rubob: Nothing could melt that old miser's heart. I'm giving him back a bit of his own."

Tine fumed as she bustled along -- fumed cheerily as she thought of Rubob. "He'll be having a hot chocklit while I'm out here negotiating this perilous ice. 'Negotiating' -- there's another one of your expressions."

Tine crossed High Street, looking both ways for 'vehicles' -- Rubob's word for "cars." "Vehicles" is more precise, Rubob said. And speaking of vehicles, Tine recalled that he had, in fact, once pulled her back from a speeding SUV near here. She often neglected to look before she left the curb. "I'll make sure I look out for vehicles this afternoon," Tine thought, "while you're safely at home with your newspaper and your hot chocolate. That'll teach you: I won't get run over after all. I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself. And to be more precise, you never have a hot chocolate; you prefer a lukewarm chocolate." With that distracting thought, Tine just missed being run over by a speeding mid-size vehicle.

Ice was part of every scene today, Tine remarked to herself as she passed "Congo," the Congregational Church.



She stopped to admire the Timothy Pitkin house, beautiful in all seasons, as she turned toward home.

"I don't know that I like yellow houses," Rubob would say, "but it seems to work for that house. Perhaps white would be better, don't you think?"

"No, I don't think," Tine would have said testily -- perhaps even icily.



She next lingered over a bush of frozen red berries. "Well, I'll be," she thought.



"It's like a poem somehow," Tine thought -- "a wintry poem."

A little farther along, she looked up through the field in the old Bull Lot, thinking, "A little of Farmington, a lot of Vermont," as Rubob would often say on this stretch of their walks, borrowing a line from the von Trapps.



As Tine made her way up her driveway, a rooster appeared to be enjoying his perch amidst all the icy tree limbs.



"A fine view you have today," Tine thought. "We proudly rule over our solitary, icy roosts this afternoon, don't we?"



"East and West will pinch the heart," Tine thought. "Now what the heck is that from?"

"The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky, --
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That cannot keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat -- the sky
Will cave in on him by and by."

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay, God's World

"With a mix of poetry and ice, all in all, a rather pleasant walk," Tine thought.