Saved from the Ashes

February 10, 2016 Wildtrumpetvine

Some months ago I awoke in the night from what is, as of yet, the most horrific dream of my life. Nothing really happened in the dream, so I won’t bore you with details. My husband is quick to remind me that nothing is more tedious than listening to another person’s dreams. I saw an image, a murky, indescribable image, that somehow engendered an overwhelming and bone-deep sensation of foreboding and dread. I was paralyzed with fear, but the feeling went far beyond fright. The vision was one of doom, of being trapped for all eternity in a state of absolute and utter hopelessness.

The effects of the dream persisted. I couldn’t shake the sense of helplessness and loss. There was no question of returning to sleep anytime soon. I looked at my little dog, curled peacefully in his bed just a few feet away. He appeared blissfully oblivious to the terror that swirled around me like a storm cloud. Because of his gentleness and sweet demeanor, he has become for me a symbol of all that’s good and right in the world. Yet his presence lacked any power to comfort me that night. I wandered silently from room to room, but could find no sense of peace. No human touch, no human words would help, I knew. The fear went too deep. The sense of isolation was too complete.

Eventually it struck me that the essence of my nightmare vision was that of complete abandonment by God. And then I saw that hope surely remained. The comforting words of the Twenty-third Psalm came to me like a gift:

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

In my dream, I had seen the hopelessness of a life of Ash Wednesday ashes. Without God’s love, we are doomed to the ashes, to the dust and the darkness.

We turn away from God. We turn away repeatedly. But God never turns away from us. He does not abandon his children.

Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

–Romans 10:13

That night I was too rattled to pray my own prayers. But the words of the Lord’s prayer were within my grasp. I knew I was not abandoned to the darkness.

That night I thanked God for his grace. Since then, having glimpsed the desolation of hopeless gloom, I almost always remember to thank him every day. On this Ash Wednesday, I thank him again.

For additional thoughts on Ash Wednesday, see these earlier posts: What’s with the Ashes?; Ashes to Ashes; and Those Gray Smudges.

Nature

White Snow, Blue Sky

February 4, 2016 Wildtrumpetvine

Nearly two weeks after the blizzard, despite a recent warm-up and yesterday’s rain, sizable areas of snow remain. The day is gray and dreary, like most of the persistent snow patches. At this point, it’s hard to remember how beautiful the world looked on that Sunday morning after the storm, the fresh snow gleaming under a brilliant blue sky. Some photos, taken that day, serve as reminders.

Blizzard III 048

Community, Family, Nature

Before the Blizzard, A Treacherous Drive

February 4, 2016 Wildtrumpetvine

In my last post I wrote about what was, for my family, quite a lovely blizzard. But a sudden snow two days before the storm had less than lovely effects.

All focus was on the massive, looming storm. Forecasters noted, as an afterthought, the possibility of snow showers, perhaps a “dusting,” on Wednesday evening before the blizzard. It was presented as insignificant, a non-event. There seemed to be no reason to reschedule the planned Church Council meeting. But by 6:30 that frigid evening, snow was falling in fat flakes and accumulating quickly. My daughter observed, with some concern, that cars negotiating the sharp turn in front of our house were creeping along. When traffic slows down here in Northern Virginia, we take notice.

But I wasn’t going to overreact. I was no longer a novice at snow driving. I still tend to avoid it if possible, but I’ve had some practice and years of good advice from my Rochester-bred husband. When I left for the meeting, I was surprised to find myself behind a line of cars moving at a snail’s pace. Surely they were being overly cautious, I thought. But before long, even at that slow crawl, I felt my car beginning to slide. It was evident that the roads hadn’t been pretreated; there was not a trace of salt or sand. The trip was just short of a nail biter. All through the meeting I kept an anxious eye on the falling snow. How much worse could the roads get? It probably wouldn’t be that bad, I kept telling myself.

Just before 9, I texted my family from the slippery snow-covered church parking lot. I would start for home, but I could tell it was going to be no easy ride. It was only three miles, but over old country roads that were notoriously narrow, steep and twisting. H and D both responded immediately. From H: he could come get me if I’d rather not attempt the drive. The roads were slick; they were bad on his drive home at 7. From D: the street in front of our house was a sheet of ice covered by powdery snow. Oh my. I’d start out anyway, and see how far I got. I was glad I’d worn my snow boots, dressed warmly and put a blanket in the car.

Usually, I find that the worry over an anticipated event is far worse than the actual event. In this case, the real thing was at least ten times as bad. That drive home is best described as absolutely treacherous. It was a combination of gridlock and out-of-control thrill ride. Traffic inched along hesitantly, stopped periodically, then inched along again. Maintaining momentum uphill was tricky. It was difficult to adhere to one of H’s most frequently repeated snow tips: increase your speed as you approach a hill. If you take it too slowly, you’ll get stuck! Not sliding sideways downhill was nearly impossible, no matter how slow the speed. Several times I considered leaving my car on a side street and starting to walk.

At one narrow turn in the road, we were stopped for such a long time that I got out and picked my way along the side to see what was going on. The car ahead of me was poised at the top of a steep, twisting hill. The driver said she was waiting for traffic to clear, since her car handled badly in snow. Two vehicles had been lodged at odd angles farther down the hill and were just getting disentangled. Once back in my car, I watched as the driver ahead began her descent. She immediately skidded sideways, but was able to maneuver back on the right track without too much difficulty. Suddenly, she was gone. She’d made it down the hill and up the next. It was my turn. My antilock brakes, fortunately, were in good shape. Somehow I managed to avoid drifting into a ditch or a stranded car, of which there were many. Thankfully, the car behind me gave me plenty of time to take the hill on my own.

When I pulled into the driveway, my heart racing, H was outside waiting. He’d been half-expecting my call for help.

I was among the lucky ones. My drive, though frightening, didn’t take very long, and I arrived safely, my car intact. Many drivers in the area were stranded for hours. The beltway was an ice-bound parking lot. Hundreds of traffic accidents were reported. City and county governments made profuse apologies. They repeatedly promised far better road prep for the coming storm.

Lessons were learned, it would seem. Well before the first blizzard flake fell, roads were treated, and plows were at the ready. Once the snow began in earnest, the roads were relatively quiet. Most drivers heeded the message of Wednesday night and left work in plenty of time, or never left home that morning. I’ve learned a lesson: If snowflakes are falling on untreated local roads, I won’t be at the meeting. Let’s just cancel that meeting.

This was the snow that caused all the problems.

It doesn’t look menacing, does it?

Community, Family, Nature, Parenthood

Assessing the Storm

February 1, 2016 Wildtrumpetvine

An unaccustomed sight appeared throughout Northern Virginia today: school buses. Due to the blizzard and what should have been an inconsequential “dusting” that preceded it, schools were closed for seven days. During the final two weeks of January, with the snow, the MLK holiday and a teacher workday, school was in session for one day only. During times such as this, I’m especially thankful that I like my daughter. And while it makes me sound cold and unloving, I’m glad she’s not younger. How pleasant it is that my constant accompaniment for her every snow venture is no longer required.

Our family’s winter storm experience was, all in all, quite enjoyable. As blizzards go, it was a good one, at least for us. I know there were others who weren’t nearly so lucky. It was forecasted accurately and well in advance, allowing plenty of prep time. The snow began right on schedule, at 1 PM on a Friday. I was back home after a second shopping trip for those “just in case” provisions. School had been canceled, allowing my daughter plenty of time to meet friends for an early lunch. She was anticipating not seeing non-neighborhood buddies for a while. Even my husband arrived home from the office well before the snow started to accumulate.

The snow fell according to plan, persistently and without a break, until the following evening. This wasn’t a showy storm. The flakes were small but steady. Saturday brought some wind, but no howling gales. And most important: our area never lost power. We had heat, light, hot water and all those interior comforts that are especially cherished when the weather outside is icy.

My husband was ready with the snow blower he’d bought just after the Blizzard of 2010. He was told he’d probably never need something that big down here in Virginia. He wanted it anyway. Growing up in Rochester, he dreamed of owning a powerful, sleek snow blower the way some kids dream of owning a Maserati.

In this case, it was a dream worth realizing. The big blower came in very handy.

H cleared our long driveway. He opened up walkable paths between our house and those of our neighbors on each side. (If you’ve ever tried body-plowing through twenty-eight inches of snow, you know it’s not easy.) He then cleared our neighbors’ long driveways.

He opened up a path on a side street that was untouched by plows for several days. He continued up and down that street until he’d cleared a lane wide enough for a car to pass through. This photo, taken by my daughter, shows how the sharply cut snow sections resemble two huge layers of angel food cake.

Here he is, returning from a full day of snow blowing, the afternoon sun’s rays falling on him like a benediction. You could say that all this work could have been accomplished by shoveling. That might be theoretically true, but it would have required far more helping hands and strong backs than were available. Plus many, many additional hours. His work was all the more valuable because it would be several more days before the streets into our neighborhood would be approached by snow plows.

With every gathering storm, I’ve always been grateful that I can ride it out with a snow management and removal expert by my side. This was certainly true during the Blizzard of 2016. A good boy from Rochester is indeed a good thing.

Community, Family, Nature, Parenthood

Once Again, Truly Big Snow

January 28, 2016 Wildtrumpetvine

The last snowflakes of the Blizzard of 2016 (aka Winter Storm Jonas) fell five days ago, on Saturday evening. According to careful measurements by my husband and daughter, we got about twenty-eight inches. Most of the snow remains very much with us, in far less attractive configurations than the graceful, pristine drifts in which it fell.

Last winter brought frequent snows to Northern Virginia, as my ten snow day posts of 2015 attest. (See here and here.) But we haven’t had a truly stupendous snow event in five years. In December 2009 and February 2010 we were treated to nearly back-to-back blizzards. My daughter has been wishing for a similarly substantial storm ever since. She likes her snow measured in feet. She delights in tossing out the expected routines of daily life for all-consuming, all-day snow play and management. To her credit, she pitches in with the digging out. And the inconveniences that massive snows may bring: they’re simply part of the adventure. What she recalls most distinctly about our loss of electricity during the 2010 storm was using the grill to melt butter for birthday cake icing.

Here she is, barely visible atop a snow mountain at the Reston Town Center after the February 2010 storm.

And, after the more recent storm, atop a snow pile in the parking lot of a local shopping center. I guess she’ll always love to climb snow piles.

On a snow mound at our house during the Blizzard of 2010.

And two days ago, with Kiko on a similar mound in the same place, after the latest storm. Big Snow, happy kid.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Holiday, Parenthood

Extreme Gift Wrapping, Christmas 2015

January 14, 2016 Wildtrumpetvine

It’s well past Christmas, I realize, but I’m running behind in this new year, just as I was in the old year. It’s consistent, then, that my last Christmas post, an annual update on extreme gift wrapping, appears two weeks into January.

Thanks to my husband and daughter, it’s hard to predict what might appear around the tree in the days leading up to Christmas: a family of enormous cylinders, a tall skinny pyramid, a child-sized obelisk, a gift tower ten feet high. Not all packages appear under the tree; some have been suspended from the ceiling. Certainly one of the most original and unexpected presentations was the pentagon and five pyramids that came together to form a star on Christmas morning. My husband, searching for ideas for this year’s wrapping scheme, found that when he Googled “Extreme Gift Wrapping,” the first image that popped up was that very star he’d made in 2012. He and my daughter have set the bar high. We’re prepared to be wowed. (For previous years, see here, here, and here.)

Getting to “wow” becomes all the more unlikely when one expects it. Subtler strategies must evolve. When the first gift from my husband to my daughter appeared a few days before Christmas, it was an ordinary square box, wrapped in plaid paper. On one side there was a wedge-shaped section of silver paper. Simple. Not showy. If you didn’t know better you might think he’d run out of paper.

My daughter countered with a more emphatic gesture: she transformed a gift to her father into a gold and white-patterned Droid. Her Star Wars tribute, she called it.

My husband was impressed and intrigued. (Kiko, not so much. He showed mild interest when H made it move.)

Eight more gifts for our daughter appeared during the next several days. Each one was wrapped in the same size square box. Most, but not all, had an apparently random section of shiny silver paper on one side. On Christmas Eve, the gifts were piled seemingly haphazardly around the tree.

On Christmas morning, the square packages for our daughter were stacked, as if by Santa, so that the silver paper formed the letter J, her first initial. (When I refer to her as “D,” it stands for “daughter.”)

The “J Wall” as I think of it, lacks the visual impact of the star. Indeed, that star is hard to surpass. But it’s clever. If you think about it philosophically, you could say it reshuffles chaos into order, into meaning. Sort of the way the divine magic of Christmas can inject order and meaning into our lives, if we let it.

And if you simply consider how the J Wall looks, you’d probably say it serves as a very pleasing complement to the Droid, a charming creation on its own.

Hats off, again, to H & D for keeping the ball in play during their ongoing volley of extreme gift wrapping! What, I wonder, will they do next year? (Glad I’m only a spectator in the game.)

Faith and Spirituality, Holiday

Merry Christmas, 2015!

December 25, 2015 Wildtrumpetvine

This Christmas. . .

Maybe you’ll welcome visitors from afar. . .

or a furry friend or two. . .

Maybe you’ll cuddle a new baby or make new friends (perhaps a carpenter, a fireman, a king, or a shepherd). . .

Whatever you do, may an angel watch over you.

And may your day be filled with great love and joy!

Merry Christmas!

Community, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Holiday

Christmas Eve 2015: Magic in the Live Nativity

December 24, 2015 Wildtrumpetvine

039 Christmas Eve is here again. Much like last year, the day is wet, cloudy, and unseasonably warm. It’s time again for the live nativity at our church. The baby Jesus, of course, is the real star of the show, but he’s small. The camel, however, is quite large, and he tends to be the traffic-stopper. Last year, our camel was not Samson, who was busy elsewhere, but his colleague Zeke. Zeke enjoyed kneeling in the mud, and he therefore appeared in many selfies.

Kiko had the privilege of meeting Zeke, since the camel leaned down for a hello sniff. The year before, Samson stood so tall and aloof that Kiko never seemed to notice him.

We also welcomed this little ox and burro, as well as a sheep and a goat. I’m hoping we’ll see the whole gang again today.

If you have the opportunity to experience a live nativity in your area, I advise you not to miss it. The shepherds and kings may be rag-tag; the baby Jesus may be a doll; Mary and Joseph may be played by a teenaged brother and sister. With luck, there will be a few real animals. I hope you get to meet a camel, an elegant and surprisingly sweet regal creature.

Give the humble tableau a chance, and perhaps, unexpectedly, your heart will be touched. The make-shift nativity could speak to you of a God who turns the world upside down, who sent his own Son to live among us, in the mud and grit, to suffer and die, just as we must do, to wipe away our sin and invite us into the heavenly fold. There is a chance that you might be overwhelmed by a sense of majesty. Stranger things have happened, after all, on Christmas.

May you rejoice in the off-key songs of the tinsel-haloed angels with their awkward cardboard wings. May you feel the power of the light in the darkness, the divine, holy light that will never be extinguished. No matter what. No matter what. Amen.

For a previous Christmas Eve post, with more about that light in the darkness, see here.

Family, Holiday

Unsilvered WWII-Era Ornaments on a Kentucky Cedar

December 23, 2015 Wildtrumpetvine

My parents used to have several examples of unsilvered ornaments dating from the war years. This red ball is the only one that now survives unbroken. No metal was used in its production; its cap is cardboard, its hanger, paper string. The interior lacks a coating of silver nitrate solution that had been standard practice before the war. Until the end of the 1930s, any glass ornaments adorning American Christmas trees were hand-blown in Germany and imported. It was evident that the outbreak of World War II would put a stop to this supply. During this time, the Corning Glass Company began producing clear glass globe ornaments, using a machine intended to make light bulbs. By 1939, these mass-produced American Christmas balls were available across the country in Woolworth stores.

Like the one pictured above, they were typically made of brightly colored glass and decorated with stripes of opaque, lighter colored paint. Due to the absence of the silver solution, the ornaments are less sparkly than those produced pre- and post-war.

This was predominately the type of ornament that hung on the little shrub-like cedar in my grandparents’ house in Kentucky in the 1950s. My grandfather and uncle usually cut down a tree from somewhere on the farm. By today’s standards of height, shape and beauty, it would not be considered a fine specimen. But to my family at the time, it looked exactly the way a Christmas tree should look. It was an ideal tree: a homegrown, local, Kentucky cedar. Certainly no one could say it didn’t have the perfect Christmas tree smell.

In the photo above, taken sometime after my parents’ marriage in 1955, are, from left: Uncle Bill on the sofa, Daddy, Mama, my mother’s eldest brother Leland, my grandmother, and my grandfather.

Above, Aunt Dessie, Leland’s wife, is in the center, with her husband partially visible behind. Mama must have taken this photo.

When I imagine Christmas in Kentucky in the years shortly before my birth, I see these smiling faces and hear their laughter. I smell that festive cedar smell, and I wonder why anyone would ever choose a tall thin Christmas tree.

Family, Holiday

Uncle Edwin’s Silver Stocking

December 23, 2015 Wildtrumpetvine

Our family places particular value on the well-seasoned, the tried and true, so it’s not surprising that some of our favorite Christmas ornaments are those that have been with us the longest. The one that most resonates for Mama is this little cardboard foil-covered stocking. It’s likely the oldest of all our decorations. She remembers when her brother Edwin, six years her elder, and only ten or eleven at the time, rode his bike to town and bought it. All the family decorations were so old, he said; it was time for a few new ones. The year may have been 1939 or 40. The foil on the stocking, the shiny gold beads on the chain, and the metal on the attached shiny red ball suggest it dates prior to 1943. By that year, the war effort had commandeered nearly all metal for military needs. (Mama added the silver and gold star much later, to replace a lost and long forgotten adornment.)

Christmas ornaments, of course, are much more than baubles. Those we most cherish are talismans that conjure our younger, happier, better selves, perhaps in homeplaces now transformed beyond recognition. They speak to us of beloved family and friends as we’d like them to be.

So it is that the little silver stocking brings back Edwin as a boy. At the time, he was my mother’s favorite person in the world. Wise and witty, with an appreciation for the absurd and the odd, he could inject fun into any situation. Mama and Edwin saw the world through the same eyes, and she adored him. He made everything better. That’s the Edwin Mama remembers with such joy, the Edwin she sees when she hangs his foil-covered stocking on the tree.

A blog about motherhood, marriage and life: the joys and frustrations, beauty and absurdity, blessings and pain. It's about looking back, looking ahead, and walking the dog.