This same time, years previous: full house, scandinavian sweet buns, the quotidian (1.11.16), the quotidian (1.12.15), the quotidian (1.13.14), roll and twist, sticky toffee pudding, rum raisin shortbread, earthquake cake.

While our younger daughter was in Puerto Rico over the holidays, there were lots of little, and some not-so-little, earthquakes. She told me that some nights everyone slept in the living room together (and just the other night I learned that our friends had lectured her: If our English suddenly stops working and we’re running, FOLLOW US, instructions which made me double over with laughter). None of it seemed to bother my daughter, though, so I didn’t worry. Besides, it wasn’t like I could do anything.

But the night before she was to arrive home, I jolted awake, adrenaline pumping. My first thought was that there’d been a big quake and she was hurt. I lay there, panicking, wondering if I should wake my husband so he could check his phone. I didn’t, though, and eventually the panic subsided and sleep overtook. (I later learned she had felt an earthquake that night, but it’d been several hours earlier and, again, she hadn’t been much fazed.) So maybe I was a little worried after all?

It wasn’t until a few days after she’d returned home that they got hit by the first serious quake, the next day followed by The Big One. That morning when I came downstairs, my husband filled me in on the news (he’d taken the early-morning calls and texts): Six-point-something, tsunami warning, evacuation, island-wide power outages—

Abruptly I started crying, and my husband, confused, stopped his bad-news litany. “Well, I didn’t expect that reaction,” he said, and I half-wailed, half-shouted, “This upsets me!”

But truth is, my response startled me, too. I’m usually pretty even-keel and pragmatic and the facts were: our friends were fine, the tsunami warning was canceled, the devastation wasn’t nearly as bad as it could’ve been, or as it was in Hurricane Maria. But when friends are terrified, facts have less power to calm. The fact fact is, the island has been through so much, and now this.

For the last few weeks, the island’s collective stress — both physically and emotionally — had been building, taking a huge toll everyone, and now, even though scientists say that this was The Big One and everything should settle down, there are still dozens of tremors, making it hard to sleep and keeping them in a constant, elevated state of anxiety. They send us pictures of their mattresses all lined up outside, and emails filling us in on the details of a life displaced.

But as they gradually catch up on sleep (or at least get some), their energy, and their sense of humor, returns. One morning’s email was titled “Refugees Day 2,” and Chiro posted a video of his makeshift earthquake meter: a gallon jar of water atop a concrete pillar, eerily sloshing away.

A couple nights ago, I marinated thin slices of cube steak in Chiro’s pincho sauce. We had rice and refried beans, avocado and lime. Our local Puerto Rican friends braved the snowy roads (safe to us; deadly scary to them) to come eat with us and drink hot chocolate and tell us more details of the news from home.

This next week, MDS sends down a couple people to assess the damage and plan a response.

And so it goes.

This same time, years previous: boys in beds, homemade lard, our little dustbunnies, sourdough crackers, one year and one day, the quotidian (1.9.12), salted dulce de leche ice cream with candied peanuts, hog butchering!, baked hash brown potatoes.

For weeks, we searched high and low for lights to go above the new island. They needed to be cheap and sturdy, provide clean light (I was sick of the yellow-green glow from our old hanging lamp), and probably made from something aluminum-ish, to go with the fridge and stove. I scoured the internet, poked my head into stores, discussed options with my husband, and asked around. Nothing.

And then one day I’d decided I’d had enough of the whole thing and off we went to town, me and my husband. We went to all the stores and looked at all the lamps. And then, in Bed, Bath, and Beyond, my husband jokingly picked up a metal dog dish and flipped it upside down. “I could make one,” he said.

“Yeah right,” I said. “That’s not nearly deep enough. The bulb would stick out.”

A minute later he resurfaced brandishing a colander. “How about this?”

And then, my brain slowly shifting gears, I spied some metal mixing bowls. “Or these?” Suddenly the options seemed endless.

We bought both a colander and a metal mixing bowl and, back home, we decided we liked the colander best — with directional lighting, there’d be no bright glare daggering our eyeballs through the colander holes — and my husband mockwired it. It seemed okay, so he went ahead and cut a hole in the bottom. If it didn’t work out, we’d only wasted fifteen bucks.

He sanded down the shiny stainless steel on the inside to reduce glare. We debated cutting off the handles, but then decided against it — if you’re going to use colanders as hanging lights, you might as well go all the way. (Our younger daughter suggested I dry my homemade pasta from the handles.)

Once we were sure we liked it, he bought a second one, wired them both, and that was it — our island had lights!

I’m still not entirely satisfied — the light feels a little too bright, and it doesn’t quite reach to cover all of the island’s surface (we might have to install a dimmer switch or experiment with different kinds of bulbs) — but for now it’s plenty good enough.

Besides, the fact that we’re using colanders as lights delights me to no end.

What a hoot!

This same time, years previous: the Baer Family Gathering of 2019, today, the quotidian (1.9.17), how we kicked off 2016, what it means, date nut bread, between two worlds, buckwheat apple pancakes, candied peanuts.