Slow Melt

Last Friday’s morning walk was more of a skate over the four inches of ice-crusted snow that remained from the Big Storm a couple weeks ago. My boots barely left a imprint, despite the spiked cleats I’d strapped over the soles to give me some traction insurance against a trip to the ER (for all my maternal Dutch heritage, Hans Brinker I ain’t). I was temporarily taller, walking across this mini tundra, and it was unsettling to come upon familiar trees along the path, their smaller branches now at perfect eye-poking height (especially a sweet little apple tree at the northern mouth of the meadow. I greet her each time I pass by, patting her trunk and whispering words of encouragement). I minded my head and honed my ducking skills as the walk unfolded into an amateur remake of The Matrix. I arrived back at the house intact and fall-free, not a bruise anywhere. A helpful ending to a packed week.

Vacation was simply lovely, my first long one since last June. Oh, I’d take the odd Friday off here and there, but nothing like this stretch of eight workdays with a couple of weekends in between. I was the embodiment of unbridled enthusiasm. Save for a brief bout of Sunday night wistfulness and anticipatory land-and-home separation anxiety, I remained in an emotionally steady place of even-tempered gratefulness as Monday’s morning routine crept closer. Not everyone has a job to go back to, much less one with meaning, purpose and hilarious teammates. I landed in a re-accreditation survey my second day back in the office (Joint Commission, for those of you who know this level of scrutiny) with a review of my department’s operations that afternoon. We passed with flying colors and praise for our success in retaining the majority of our volunteer workforce during the pandemic, and the organization received a preliminary overall rating of 96%.

It was a quiet victory though. In the span of two weeks (while I was on vacation), two of our beloved and veteran volunteers passed away somewhat suddenly, leaving distinct and gaping holes in the tapestry of our team. It was—and still is—surreal to return to the office and see the pile of mail Zane would have couriered to our nearby inpatient unit…the volunteer workroom schedule with Fran’s name on the block of time she filled every other week. Slogging through emails, double-checking our Joint Commission binder for evidence of compliance, handling the daily stream of new volunteer applicants…all distractions for a time until a moment of silence would catch one of us sitting down, just staring unfocused but unable to look away from the empty place at the table. When you’re gone from the workplace for that stretch of time, you expect a few things to be different, but it’s hard to say goodbye to someone when the ground is frozen and you weren’t prepared for the farewell. When did I see Zane last? What did Fran and I talk about the last time I saw her? For both of them, I have the comforting reassurance that laughter was involved. I shall hold onto that.

Since that Big Storm dumped over six inches on our chilly corner of central Ohio, temperatures have swung between melting and freezing, leaving our driveway a splendidly treacherous ice rink that’s shrinking daily in barely noticeable increments. Main roads are clear, thank heavens, but stories of impassable sidewalks and driveways continue to pepper our between-meetings conversations at work. I think grief is like that sometimes. We move between extremes in a context of contrasts, searching for that leveled-off place that appears now and then. There’s still work to do, relationships to nurture and walks to take; we navigate the terrain as best we can, relying on our shared memories to provide some much-needed traction as our feet traverse the icy patches. Tumble we will, and perhaps even sprain something, but we’ll get back up and point our hearts toward the next season on deck. Fran and Zane did that, in the small slice of their lives I was privileged to share.

When I make the bed in the morning’s darkness after Patrick has left the house, I watch out the upstairs window to see that he crosses the bridge without sliding off into the half-frozen waters below, and I keep watching as he navigates the hill before his taillights disappear into the rest of his commute.

Somewhere, in the meadow, is a tree, dreaming of summer’s apples.

A Fool in Winter

Ice is falling from the sky, little shards and pellets of car-glazing misery that I’ll have to contend with eventually. Much as we love the unobstructed view from the porch as it gently rolls to a stop at the entrance to the old old goat barn, I’d be willing to give that up right now to see the hulking side of a well-constructed garage.

Off work all last week and no plans to head down the driveway to anywhere (‘cept the post office to mail copies of the new book to kind readers), news of the approaching historic winter storm landed with a soft flummmp even as I imagined the work of clearing windshields with naught but a 6” scraper and my own determined elbow grease (the viscosity of which would no doubt be thickened by the predicted -10 windchill). Just knowing I wouldn’t be making the daily commute to work kept my already steady blood pressure at soothingly normal levels. We filled some gallon jugs with water for flushing the toilet in case the power went out, checked the fuel in the kerosene heater and finished up two loads of laundry. I even made a couple batches of granola for Saturday’s indoor market so we wouldn’t be caught short on the new cranberry orange pecan flavor making its debut. I was the poster child for disaster preparedness.

I’m also a hopeless romantic when it comes to seeing the trees dressed in a thin coat of sheer crystal, their branches clacking softly against each other as the wind pushes through them. If we really do get the seven inches of snow they’re forecasting after the sleet has had its say (sometime between late Thursday afternoon and Friday evening), I’ll be a happy soul, lost in the white drifts that will most likely seal the backdoor shut until April. I don’t mind walking the extra steps around the house to empty the kitchen compost buckets. With the birdfeeders on the way, I can linger outside refilling them and watch from the front deck as the sparrows and mourning doves jockey for position on the one that looks like a vintage porch swing.

So mid-morning on Thursday, with ice falling from the skies, I suited up in enough layers to keep me warm yet still allow me to move my arms, grasped the foam-covered handle of that humble 6” scraping tool and got to work on the truck and the smaller Hyundai Kona. With the heaters going full blast in each of them, I was able to clear the side windows and windshields in less than twenty minutes. I felt purposeful and sturdy while jackhammering my arms and wrists against the stubborn accumulation of ice (I’d be regretting that in the morning, I can tell you. Raise a glass to Advil) but filled with the satisfaction that I was making Friday’s snow-brushing chore that much easier.

Too bad the sleet didn’t have the same timeline or agenda.

Within three hours, both vehicles were encrusted again, and my muscles made it clear there would be no round two against the elements. I consoled myself that at least the new layer of ice wouldn’t be as thick as it could have been. Plus, the birds were happy and the compost buckets empty. Hey—a win is a win.

Against a backdrop of greys and browns standing patiently in the thickness of white at their feet, I surrendered to the power of a winter storm, accepted defeat most graciously and headed inside where Patrick (also off work thanks to his employer’s good judgment) had set up one of the folding market tables in the living room. On the warmer side of winter’s stunning snow-covered vistas, we put our hands to art, making beads from thin strips of magazine pages, rolling some of them in paint and setting them to dry on toothpicks stuck into a block of styrofoam as white as the snow on the front porch.

What I Will and Won't Do

Dear fellow humans,

I will not add to your suffering today.

I will not be the last straw, the final weight that breaks and buries you in despair.

I will not take pleasure in your moments of weakness, your own self-reckoning that happens to catch my eye.

I will not laugh at your expense, nor ridicule you for fumbles made in front of others.

I will not assume that what makes me happy is what you also need, and hand that over blindly without asking. Or listening.

I will not pluck threads of your life out of a context shaped by your experiences and then make final pronouncements about your character, your intentions, the shape of your soul.

I will not be the reason you give up on humanity, paint us all with the broad thick brush of selfish intolerance until it’s only matter of time that you join in, resigned to a dismal collective fate.

I will not decide that you are simply a failed version of me.

I will not abandon you when you aren’t the person you’re striving to be.

I will give you the expansive embrace of grace in the tiny slivers of your life that mingle with mine for mere seconds while we’re in line at the bank or waiting in traffic. In any healthcare setting, I will presume you have much on your mind and perhaps are not at your best in that moment.

I will look for all the ways you’re trying your hardest, and notice where it’s working.

I will give you privacy, the benefit of the doubt, and presume good intention rather than draw conclusions you can do nothing about.

I will allow your story to be unfinished, and not try to write the next chapter or the ending.

I will look beneath your frustration and anger, in case grief is lingering there, trying to find its way out into the fresher air of healing.

I will give you room to figure things out, even if you struggle and thrash around a bit, instead of stepping in because your moment of growth is making me uncomfortable.

I will listen even after you’ve stopped talking.

I will let all of you be bigger than the fleeting or miniscule bits that come into my line of sight.

I will want you to have what you need most and be happy for you when it arrives.

I won’t give up on you. Or me. Or all of us.

I promise.

Along for the Ride

Patrick is taking us someplace today, but he won’t say where.

So frames my experience of the last twenty-nine years by his side.

He did divulge some details about what to wear (I believe he used the phrase “bundle up”) and I’d like to give my fairly new winter hiking boots some new terrain to cover, so I’m on board. It’s just that wry smile across his lips that gives me pause. I also noticed the winter weather advisory on the app during my morning post-stroll scroll, with that sweet little snowflake icon and “90%” next to it. We’ll see how this goes.

I’m no stranger to such traveling circumstances. As the fourth of five children, I had no say in where we went as a family in one of the many station wagons Dad bought in our lifetime. Families back then weren’t democracies and being near the birth order caboose in our clan, it was a given that I’d share the wagon end of the car with my youngest sister, Jane. We were small enough to fit in the space that remained after the way back (as we called it) was packed with both of our long rectangular coolers, sleeping bags, everyone’s pillows and anything else that could lay flat on top of the pile, including Dad’s fishing rods. If he took a corner too sharply, stuff slid off on top of us and there’d be much hollering and shoving things back up there as best we could while Dad still kept it at a smooth 55 mph. It didn’t help that I was heavily prone to car sickness in those days (and really, if I’m honest, up to the present). Jane was a trooper, I’ll say that.

I remember one trip to Toledo where, from the way back, Jane regaled us all with her six-year-old rendition of “Lydia, the Tattooed Lady”, picked up from one of The Muppet Show episodes she’d watched earlier that week. She belted out the lyrics with enough histrionics to win a full scholarship to Juliard and I couldn’t speak for laughter-soaked tears streaming down my face. It was contagious enough to get us all through what would have been a more tense traffic jam near the turnpike, and to this day, when I noodle around with the words in the privacy of my head, I burst out laughing when I get to the line, “When her muscles start relaxin’/Up the hill comes Andrew Jackson”. I try not to do this in the middle of management meetings at work.

(Weather update: snow is falling sideways in a stiff wind, the front deck has a thin layer getting thicker by the minute. Patrick’s still asleep; he never did say when we’d be leaving.)

In those formative years, I saw slices of the world through the back of a station wagon window, the road slipping beneath the tires and familiar landmarks blurring into other people’s back yards, cows that never moved and farms whose hulking red barns held enough secrets to set off any young one’s imagination. On one income, my parents somehow pulled together the resources to give us all a rich archive of summer memories spent at Marble Lake in Quincy, Michigan. One year, we ventured away from the cottage to tour the Kellogg’s factory in Battle Creek, each of us leaving sporting a paper Tony the Tiger hat and clutching our very own souvenir eight-pack of those single-serving boxes with the perforated fronts so you could pop them open, pour on the milk and eat right from the container. I saved the Frosted Flakes for last.

For most of my youth and young adult life, those bouts of carsickness were troubling enough to keep me from yearning for the open road until well after I’d obtained my own driver’s license at age 22. Sitting in that command seat behind the wheel, I felt a lot less queasy and eventually, the years and miles piled up until I graduated to air travel in the late ‘80’s (Dramamine on board), my first flight chaperoning a group of high school students to Spain during spring break. Three and a half months later, I’d head to Nicaragua with a Witness for Peace delegation to document the war, bumping through the jungle in a bus with a windshield cracked by bullets. As we made our way north from Managua to the Honduran border, I fixed my hungry gaze on the lush landscape and lost count of how many shades of green there were, wondering what violent secrets were hidden beneath the thick leaves on the branches. In the distance of my memory, I could hear Jane singing the last chorus of “Lydia”. How did I get here?

It’s a good question to ask now and then, dear readers, to take a moment and look over our shoulders at the miles behind us. Destinations known or unknown, we’ve been places, seen things and carried home treasured bits of the places our feet touched, different and perhaps better for the experience. Whether we got there under our own steam or someone mysteriously crooked their finger at us and we obeyed, we took the risk, left behind the familiar and trusted we’d arrive somewhere, surprised, delighted or at least educated.

Weather update: Patrick’s awake. After taking a look out the living room window at the blur of white coming down fast and blowing in all directions, he’s postponed today’s adventure. “It’ll still be there”, he said, smiling wryly.

Twenty-nine years later, I still trust him. Rightly so.