Flannel and Wood Smoke

A few weeks ago, we had a record early ice storm.  Limbs were down everywhere, little things but also some bigger than the truck.  A lot of it was as fat as my leg so this was potential firewood.  Jack, Bell, and I spent a weekend getting the yard cleaned up.  Jack ran the chain saw, and Bell and I drug off the debris.  We worked for two solid days and only got half the yard finished.  By that time, it was clear that I had overdone it with my shoulder even though I was trying to mostly use my other arm.  I got banished to the house for the remaining days.  Jack has since then burned several of the brush piles, with me standing like a kid at the side poking it. We have two more to go.  He also cleared out the debris under the trees between us and the lake, but we still have work at the old house and in the pasture between the houses. Let me be clear. This ice storm was not fun.  We were without power for two weeks.  It destroyed some of our trees.  The whole thing created a tremendous amount of work and stress and still is causing issues. However, I had fun working outside with Jack.  Now that I am at school, I don’t get to do things with him as much as I did during the summer when we worked together at the lake. I also felt a bit like the Wilson girl I remember.  This was just like a fall or winter trip to Bluejacket. I felt young.  I felt like Grandpa’s girl again.

For most of my life, going to my grandparents during holidays  meant picking pecans, shelling pecans, butchering a steer or hog, and cutting fire wood.  If the trip involved pecans or fire wood, it almost certainly involved fire.  As we would gather pecans, we would also clear out fallen limbs beneath the trees and burn them off.  Wood cutting days were similar.  The men would sometimes fell a tree or cut up one that had fallen on its own.  Adults ran the saws and kids helped with the wood splitter and loading the wood in the truck. The little guy who couldn’t pick up heavy things might get to sit on the tractor and work the hydraulic levers for the splitter.   There were lots of small chunks too little for the wood stove that would go in a bonfire.  Sometimes an adult planned ahead and brought marshmallows for the kids. If we were working at the house, there was surely a cup of coffee near by for Grandpa.  He would drink a little coffee and poke at the fire. Dale Wilson loved a good fire, whether it was under a tree on the creek bank or in his wood stove.  I am sure it was all technically work and the adults were probably worn out, but as kids, it was a fun day out, even if it was biting cold and we were bundled up to our eye brows.  Even as an adult, when I went up with Jack for a weekend, we would often do wood.  By then Grandpa definitely needed the help keeping that wood pile close to the house and full.

This morning I made a rare second cup of coffee and am out enjoying the sunshine on the porch.  There’s no fire, but I’d build one if the chiminea weren’t wet. I wore Grandpa’s big flannel jacket to ward off the morning chill.   Grandma gave it to me after he was gone because I had bought it for him.  I only wear it when I am being lazy because it’s too big to actually work in.  It’s just right, though, for a morning pause.  I can just see Grandpa wearing it, with a cup of coffee in his hand sitting in front of the wood stove.   I’ve been Jack’s girl forever now, but with a little coffee, flannel, and wood smoke . . . Then I’m Grandpa’s girl. 

Going Home

 

I was born in Miami and lived there and in Bluejacket when I was very small before my parents packed us up to go to college.  When they graduated, they bought a house in Velma - that’s where I really grew up.  Right after I left for college, they sold the house I grew up in and bought the farm in Loco where they live now.  I lived on that farm for a few short months before convincing Dear Jack to marry me,  but it it’s never really felt like home.  Obviously, home is now where ever Jack and Bell are, but when I think of a place that is home, it is my grandparents’ farm in Bluejacket.  

Even though my parents moved us away from there when I was tiny, every summer and every holiday and most spring breaks were spent there until after Isabella was born.  I even lived there for a year in college. It’s just home.  It’s the dated but expensive real wood paneling in the dining room.  It’s the green shag carpet in the guest bedroom.  It’s the overheated kitchen and the same dining room table where we ate every holiday meal since I can remember. It’s the maple tree that started as a seedling at my great grandparents’ house across town.  It’s the hay bales I climbed and the creek I roamed and the pasture where I learned to drive and the barn where I was rolled by a cow and watched lambs being born. It is gun oil, fresh tomatoes, wood smoke,  and bread baking.   It’s sitting at the bar listening to Grandma talk, and it was riding in the truck with Grandpa to check cows or go buy tractor parts.  

We didn’t stop going for the holidays until we outgrew her house.  Once there were three of us and then there were five and then seven and then nine and then after that, it seemed that we went from nine to seventeen in the blink of an eye.  The farm just couldn’t accommodate my folks, us five kids and our spouses and children. Holidays moved to my parents house instead.  That is good and it’s still a joyful thing.  I miss going home though.  I miss the Wilson clan gatherings and I know Grandma does too.  Our hearts ache a bit.

Go ahead and judge away, but in the midst of warnings to limit our travel and stop the spread of Covid, Rachel and I went to see Grandma.  Two Thanksgivings ago, Jack and Bell and I went up for the first few days of break to see them. It was the last time I got to see Grandpa at home next to his wood stove and hear the Wilson and Coble legends until long after we all should have been in bed.  A week before our next visit was supposed to happen, he fell and broke his hip and that was the end of life as I knew it.  In a month he was gone. 

I know I could have picked up Covid on the way.  I know I could have it and not know it and could have given it to Grandma. I also know that she is getting older and weaker and there is so much risk.  There is also so much risk in not going.  We NEED our families.  Our hearts and minds need the connection of the ones we love.  She needed to tell the stories of her family tree and needed to show us her quilts and to walk with me across the yard and show me her plants.  She can talk to me on the phone, but that’s not the same.  We talked from the from the time we got there until we got in the car to come home.  So many words yet it was just a drop in the bucket for all the words we needed to say.  So yes, judge me for not doing my part to slow the spread, but I think people can suffer just as much from depression and sadness as they can Covid.  Her health is failing.  There won’t be many more trips, and it is really simple.  She needed us now. She has my cousins and that makes all the difference, but I thinks she needed us, the granddaughters too. 

I needed her as well.  I needed to soak up her words and gestures.  I needed to go home again.  It really is where I think of as home. It’s a place of magic and love that doesn’t exist anywhere else.  I weep as I type this morning.  My cousin lives with her now, and I know he will take care of the place when she is gone, but once she is gone, the light will go out and the magic will be gone.  I needed to go now and soak up the magic of home and the magic of my last grandparent before they are gone. 

Lost and Found

 

This was my find on this morning’s walk. I know, I know.  I really need to at least be running intervals instead of walking, but I have the edge of a headache and I needed some quiet prayer time.  

 The past two weeks have been a trial.  Bell is having trouble with an older student in a class, and I am at a loss of how to help her without helping too much.  I hate seeing her so sad and this situation is stealing her joy.  Throw in the never ending power outage and a lot of stress, and we got the longest stretch of discord Jack and I have had since we became friends 25 years ago.  That’s saying a lot.  We sometimes get annoyed and on rare occasions get mad, but it’s always resolved quickly.  Being out of peace with the person you most love is awful.

It turns out that when you lose power for a long time, there is a ton of stress worrying over losing everything in the fridge and freezers, keeping enough water to flush toilets, trying to keep everyone fed and clean, and keeping Rubilee warm enough and fed.  Let me tell you, homework by kerosene lantern was not fun either. Neither of us were getting enough sleep, and the stress and hassle of keeping everything and everyone functioning was nuts.  I was close to tears of relief when the power came back on day 16. However, it really did teach me a lot about the things I need to work on.  There is enormous room for my growth in patience and forbearance and holding my tongue and having a cheerful spirit. I didn’t always handle things with as much as grace as I could have, and I am blessed in that I married a forgiving man. 

The physical damage to the landscape of that ice storm has  hurt my heart as well. We spent two weekends just piling up fallen limbs and cutting the bigger pieces into firewood. We didn’t lose any trees entirely, but they are surely ravaged. Today Jack is going to start cleaning up the trees in the pasture around the house, at least the ones that are in our view of the lake. Then we will have to work on the trees at the old house. We actually got very lucky as far as damage to our trees goes.  So many people lost more than we did.  

I know trees grow back and can be replanted, but it hurts my heart to see so many damaged.  I have walked, ran, and driven past this tree a 

thousand times. It always made me smile because the branches formed a long skinny heart in the middle of the canopy. Now, those branches are broken and the heart is gone.  I was mourning this poor tree on my walk to the river earlier this week.  

This morning I walked the other direction.  There where I have so often walked was a perfect heart embedded in the road.  I don’t know if it was dropped and simply driven over until it became part of the road or if it’s been there since the road was resurfaced, dropped by some workman on a whim.  I don’t think it is just a natural heart shaped rock. However it came to be,  it made me smile. It’s not a tree, but I will take it.