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.  

Returning. Maybe.

 I haven’t written here is so very long, the winter of 2017 to be precise.  It seems that for the bulk of the past four years, the things that have weighed on my mind and that I needed to put down on paper have involved others. Rather than betray their privacy, I’ve written on good old fashioned paper, but mostly I’ve not written at all.  I think I need to.  I need to relearn the art of writing, the peace that it can bring.  Yesterday, I sat on the porch and started writing again as I watched the sun come up over the lake. Maybe this will be a real return to writing. 

I find myself in such a weird place this fall.  In ways, I am more content than I can ever remember being.  We were playing D and D last night.  Jack’s character is in a deep dark dungeon and was asleep, so he was lying in the floor trying hard to get in a real nap.  I was trying to come up with a cunning plan to rescue him without also ending up in said dungeon. B. was the DM and puppet master of the whole craziness.  I looked at her, all confident and laughing as I made a spectacularly bad roll of dice, and I marveled that I am the parent of such a creature.   I looked at Jack half asleep on the floor and marveled that I was the wife of this handsome man (even if I have made his hair fall out and given him wrinkles around his eyes). I needed to soak up that moment.  I feel the same way every morning when he kisses me goodbye or I hug B before she heads off to class. It’s even there when I sit on the porch and watch the pasture and lake as the day begins or ends.  It’s this feeling of “this is what life is supposed to be.”  It is supposed to be grand passion,  but it’s also supposed to fire in the chiminea at dusk and playing games with your kid and pruning tomatoes in the fall. 

Things have been a bit rough the past few weeks.  Last week Willie the dog was hit by a car.    Bell is very upset with us and thinks he could have been saved.  He couldn’t have been.  I will just leave it at that, but Bell is young and sheltered in ways.  I will say that I grieved him all week.  I think I am also edgy because Mom’s diagnosis has terrified me.  I KNOW we serve an awesome and merciful Father.  I KNOW he is control. At the same time, I have really struggled.  I spend too much time in head thinking about loss - we were given so much when Dad got hurt, but there was a  loss. The following fall we had to go through Jack’s dad dying and hospice at home and all that entails.  The next year was a repeat except with my grandfather.  Last winter things weren’t so sad, but there were smaller, new causes of concern.  I am trying really hard to remember to praise and be thankful and faithful and not let fear or sadness win. They still sneak up on me.  It’s not just mom and knowing about chemo and surgery and all those things she will face. I have done this every change of season for a long time, just more so in the past four years.  It is hard not to wish for those perfect falls when life was simple. 

It’s a weird place - being so content and really deeply happy but also not. I am not sure I have found a rhythm.  Maybe writing can be a little cathartic for me.  I should be grading papers this morning but think I won’t.  We will listen to a church service.  I am toying with some fiction writing.  I started something back in the slow part of the summer and then abandoned it.  I want to pick it back up again but it’s scary - I am a writer of essays, not fiction.  Maybe I will jump into that again today. Later, we are going down to mom and dads.  My fabulous sister-in-law has arranged a family portrait to be done this afternoon.  Mom has wanted a new one for a few years; it just keeps not happening, but we are making it happen today. 

 I know there will be some tears today - I feel fragile.  I also know there is joy to be had and embraced so that is what I will try to choose today. Do that with me.  Choose something to be joyful in today and give thanks for His blessings and grace.

What I Wish I Could Write

At the end of a long week of waiting,  of hospice, of not knowing but knowing, my father-in-law died last week and my mother-in-law asked me to write the obituary.  Really, what she wanted was for me to type something that she had written.  That was fine - I think most obituaries are written in silly, stilted language and I wouldn't have written at all what Jack's very traditional mother would have wanted.  As it is, she got a neatly typed digital version of exactly what she wrote by hand (with a very few choppy sentences combined).  It was traditional and appropriate and perfectly fine.

When I think of obituaries, I shudder.  Such odd phrases abound, things like "wife ____ of the home" . . . where would she be if not of the home?  Do husbands keep their wives under rocks?  Stashed away in some remote place just to be trotted out in times of need?  Or maybe it means that she is still at home and not in a nursing facility.  In that case, the phrase is forgiven.  I hope someone has the sense to not write that I am "of the home" when Jack dies.  Phrases like "she loved spending time with family" or "he enjoyed hunting" just seem to gloss over what must have been such a full life.  "He was dedicated family man" is so hollow in comparison to the man that must have read bed time stories and helped his child catch tadpoles.  I suppose I just shudder to think of a whole life summed up in a few lines.

I also never get a sense of who that person really was.  I think if an obituary is going to be written and say more than I died, then I want it to be honest.  I want people to pause, to consider, and then to say, "Why yes, that was Sarah for sure."  Thinking about what I would have said about Harold would not have given us a very proper (for public consumption at least) write up in the local paper, but I have been thinking about it none the less.  It goes something like this . . .

Harold Rucker was crotchety, but he had lived long enough to earn that right, his political views reflecting his age.  Harold was narrow minded when it came to any race or religion or political affiliation other than his own, and his comments to others sometimes made me want to crawl under the floor and hide.  He was prickly.  Just plain prickly for a man that I never heard curse.  As crotchety as he could be, if he liked you, he was loyal and generous to a fault.

Despite this prickly nature, he knew everyone under the sun.  He was gregarious and never met a stranger wherever he went.  At home, he never failed to tell me I looked nice (if I actually did) or act pleased to see me on my daily visits.  He would act like he hadn't seen in me weeks and was sorely missing my company when really we had argued about politics just the day before.  Harold Rucker could dole out scathing criticism of everyone from the president to his own children, but he also could be lavish in praise.  He loved a good cookie or pie - I once heard a several minute rhapsody over the snickerdoodles a friend made for him.  He admired hard work probably more than anything else - he loved to tell about how hard Mary Jahn works and how hard his uncle the tailor worked. He despised anyone being lazy or mooching off the system, but he also had some compassion for people who deserved it, especially kids who didn't have parents to help them.

 In the last years I got to know him, what Harold seemed to enjoy most was a good drink and telling a good story.  It didn't matter if it happened eighty years ago, Harold could tell a story like it happened yesterday.  He was so firmly rooted in his past on the farm where his father grew tomatoes and his mother canned peaches; his narratives relived a lot of his days on the farm.  One of his favorite stories to tell was about the time he went to Paris for a few days and bought a car because it was cheaper than a taxi leaving it unlocked and running at the airport when he left.  He told tales about flying to Russia and his children and grandchildren - I think he was equally proud of all of them (the flying and the family).  Stories about Tony and his escapades as a child and teenager were frequently retold along with accounts of what felt like every bakery job he ever did.

Harold was a teaser - if you couldn't take it, you weren't going to get along well at all.  Brook could take it and dish it back, so they got along famously.  Other people could get their feelings hurt because he didn't handle people gently.  You just learned to fight back.  Harold didn't really respect people who didn't have common sense - either he didn't pay attention to them or his teasing could get almost mean. I think we got along because I let him be cranky when he was ill,  but I could stand up for myself at the same time.

Harold was dismissive of his intelligence, but he had a brilliant mind.  He retold every bad joke he ever heard, could recite poems from his youth that were pages long, and could repair or re-engineer nearly anything.  Even when he was old and sick, his children would still ask him how to go about solving mechanical problems.  I hope Isabella's inheritance is his analytical engineer's brain and his generosity.

I hated to see him sick and hurting.  I fretted when wasn't himself. And now, well now, I will miss him.

One Year

Today is September 19th.  It isn't lost on me that one year ago today, one year ago right now, we were waiting in a room at OU Medical, waiting while dad was in surgery, waiting to be told that life as we knew it would be over.  We were offered the services of a chaplain.  We were told to make calls.  We did make some calls, but we declined to pray with the chaplain because we had something better.  We had the prayers of the Saints, some holding our hands right there, some praying from afar. Through the mercy and greatness of God, the faithfulness of my parents and the body, the prayers of the Saints we were given a miracle, and I don't think a day has passed that I don't remember that.

The terrible thing did not come to pass, but life as we knew it was gone because now we were aware of our fragility. Now we had been reminded how temporal life is. I had no idea how for granted I took it that my family would always be there, that we were safe.  Before, I had the luxury of ignoring a ringing phone or the beep of a cell phone.  Now, I never turn it off entirely.  I did not know how fragile we were, how dependent on each other we would become.  I might be needed.  I might need one of them.  So the phone stays on.  I also had forgotten how much I loved to just be with them.  Just to sit next to my brothers or my sister.  Just to sit and know we all have the same beginning, the same foundation, the same stories, the same remember whens. So even in the darkest days of the past year, there was joy.  We found joy in each other and  joy in the Lord as we were reminded of his blessings.  We found laughter.  We made sure to work harder at loving in the moment and not assume the tomorrows would come.

There have been hard things in the last year for all of us in all areas of our lives. Even as dad got better, life kept happening and it wasn't a smooth ride. But it has also been a year of great mercy and joy and grace.  We have been given so much.  I look at what where we have been and where we are going. Tuck and Lexi just had an anniversary.  Jack and I have our 15th in a week and a half. This weekend Harley and Ian will marry and begin the next branch of this family that my parents have worked so hard to nurture.  I look at houses being built, literal and familial. I look at spiritual journeys.  Jobs lost and found.  Miles run. Harvests made. Children taught. Loss and blessing.  So very much for one year.

This one year has been a year of tears - I cry at everything now.  I have wept in fear and grief and despair.  I have wept as encouragement and solace came.  I have weput in relief and thanksgiving. In a few days, we will cry tears of joy and gladness with Harley and Ian.  For now, I want to simply put this year away and look forward to a new year of us.

Life in General

How can it have been four months since I have posted here?  During the day, I get sucked into work and life and plan out posts in my mind but never seem to commit them to the page.

Where do I start? The rant in my head all morning has been to ask the woman on Facebook who wants our school to start an after school program for her kids until she gets off work if she voted for tax increase to give teachers a raise.  Or maybe I will ask her if she wants us to feed her kid supper and teach him to brush his teeth while we grade papers and sponsor a club all at the same time? (I might need another cup of coffee.) I won't though because I don't get into ugly things on social media and I do get it.  I really do.  What do working parents do who have little kids?  It's a problem and there simply isn't a good solution.  I am really blessed that my mom was Bell's safety net and I didn't face those problems. I am just not convinced that it is the school's job to fill yet another gap though I don't know who will if not the school.

Do I start by telling you that living with my entire family for a week (2 parents, their 5 kids each with a significant other, 5 grandkids) in one big house with 30ish more for dinner every night made me love my family but bite my tongue . . . a lot and still probably not often enough?  We just got home from the big Wilson family reunion at a Grand Lake and it was an experience, almost all good.  We rented a huge house in the same area that the cousins were staying so our house and Cousin Wes's place  became a hub for eating, drinking, laughing, swimming and tubing and just general Wilson craziness for Wilsons from North Carolina and Florida to Hawaii, from southern Oklahoma to Denver.   I already miss them. I miss getting to have four sisters instead of one.  I miss my late night talks with Cousin Mo.  I never even got a good visit with Cousin Ryan.  I grew up with so many good memories at the lake with family and am so thankful that we are continuing the tradition.  It was different though - my siblings and I haven't had that much forced togetherness in twenty years.  A few toes may have been trod upon.

Then there is the wedding!  My youngest brother is marrying the sweetest girl next month.  I am so excited for them and to have another girl whom I really like in the mix.  That means the rest of us get to host a shower in two weeks.  I honestly have never hosted anything before - not really my thing, but I so want this to be special and pretty for Harley and Ian.  Rach and I have been plotting and planning food and decor.

It's summer so that means running, gardening,  and preserving.  My own running has been good - sometimes I manage a long one but I always at least manage intervals.  We tried to do couch to 5k with Bell but it got too hot to run at dusk and she is not a morning person.  In other words, a big flop.  The garden is so-so.  We tried some new things, new varieties, and even some hydroponics.  That is a whole post in itself.  Perhaps the highlight here is that Bell wanted to learn how to make jam this year and I had wild plums that needed dealt with.   I was her age when I first helped mom make wild plum jam so this created a satisfying circle of life for me.  I didn't care about "homemaker" type things until I was in college, but maybe I can plant the same seeds in my daughter that my mom planted in
me.  I want her to know the satisfaction in growing things and making something wonderful from them.

In 17 days, life as I know it now will end and I will be sucked back into school.  At times, I bitterly
dread it, but I am also excited to try some new things, see how far I can stretch young minds, see my own friends.  I have been revamping my AP curriculum and am really hopeful that I will hit on the magic mix for my students.  That is actually on my agenda today - I went to bed last night and my mind raced with ideas I still needed to tweak and develop.  I want to get those things on paper before I lose them.

For now, I am going to finish the Saturday bonus cup of coffee and get caught up with Elephant Soap and Cindy.