Must it Be?

Must it always be the flesh of the innocent

To awaken us from time seduction

And bring us vividly to the grace of the present?

--from John Schuler of Kildaire, Illinois, read by Curator and Poet Holly Bass on NPR's Tell Me More, April 18, 2013.

Yesterday while police in Boston were closing in on the Boston marathon bombing suspects, my husband and I were digging holes for shrubs.  We did not read or watch the news.  We were not ready.  Violence is so indigestible. 

Violence is a familiar companion in life, and inevitable, like disappointment and illness.  We know this truth but we resist it, sometimes to the point of denial.  We don't have to go to the holocaust for proof of deliberate denial of human horrors.  We can pull from our own personal histories.  The man beating a woman in the alley beneath an apartment window.  The neighbor slamming his three year old against a garage wall.  The student assaulting a teacher in her classroom with a knife at 6AM.   The rapist climbing over the balcony and into the apartment on a bright spring morning.

"This can't be happening. Go back to sleep," I thought, when I heard the woman screaming and the trash cans crashing.  And I did.  I went back to sleep.  In the morning, they were gone but the alley was littered with trash.

"I should call the police.  That father is abusing his son, " I said.  My listener advised, "Don't get involved.  You don't know for sure."  I did eventually call the police but waited far too long.

The teacher felt safe. The school doors were locked.  She was well-liked.  The morning was young.  Her assailant appeared suddenly.  She fended him off with her bare hands, grabbing the knife blade and screaming for help.  Schools are quiet places at 6AM; help came slowly.  She would never be able to forget the incident.  She tried to resume her teaching career, to overcome her fears, but it was impossible:  Scars covered her hands and arms.  I convinced myself I was safe; it didn't happen to me; it wouldn't happen to me.  Then one day a female student attacked me and tried to get me to react while I backed out of a door way.  I called for help.  No one came.  The student called her mother and grandmother and accused me of choking her.  "This couldn't be happening to me," I thought.  But it did.

The young woman was alone in her apartment.  The dogwoods were blooming outside her second story bedroom window, the luscious creamy blossoms an invitation to a glorious day that never happened for her, not for days or months afterwards.  Although she lived on a busy downtown city street where sirens were as common as chirping birds in the morning, she had never considered it unsafe to open the balcony sliding glass doors for fresh air.  "It wouldn't happen to her."   But it did.

I once spent a year studying genocide.  I looked for clues into how human beings, needful of love and affection and capable of charity, could with deliberate determination march people into excavated ditches and mow them down in mass. Evil apparently resides dormant in all of us and can burst from us when confronted with the right stress ingredients -- chemically, biologically, psychologically, culturally.  Humans are capable of irrational craziness.   In spite of compelling evidence from history and life, I resist this truth -- even though I myself have done some nutty things when under stress, nothing unredeemable, mind you, but certainly momentarily irrational.

From reading Elie Wiesel's Night, Romeo Daillaire's Shake Hands with the Devil, Immaculee Ilibagiza's Led by Faith, and Samantha Power's A Problem from Hell, I gained this much:  we have the power within us to react to violence with amazing courage and creative resistance.  Our spirits have the resilience of both passive and active survival and reconstruction.  Wiesel could not prevent the holocaust but he could narrate its truth and how love survived although drenched with hate.  Daillaire could not prevent Rwandan genocide but he could resist the pulling of United Nations forces from Rwanda.  Ilibagiza survived for a year in a locked bathroom under the protection of a courageous man while machete wielding boy soldiers terrorized her ethnic group and searched for her. Powers drew upon her experience as a correspondent to show how individuals risked careers and lives to get the United States government to act against human rights abuses. 

I'd like to think all of us act with courage for peace daily, in ways we take entirely for granted.  We don't yell at one another.  We accept our failings and forgive one another.  We feed one another.  We share. We take turns at stop signs.  We work for improvement in ourselves, our families, and our community.  

When the Boston marathon bombing happened, we could not digest its senseless horror.  So we worked in our yard to plant a tree and six shrubs.  Herb dug for ten minutes while I rested in a chair; then I dug while he rested.  One hole, webbed with three inch roots from a removed red bud tree, had to be twenty inches deep and wide.  We used a bishops spade, an adz, a post hole digger, and a chain saw.  Ivy and rocks interfered, and fatigue.  But we got it done.

This morning we were finally prepared to digest the ongoing news of the aftermath of the Boston bombings.  The manhunt is on, one suspect dead, the other on the run.  The net closes tighter and tighter.  The vision is horrifying, police in protective gear with assault weapons drawn, neighbors hiding indoors.  Fear reigns, creepy and all-consuming, like a raging fever.

This afternoon Herb and I will dig up some shrubs and replant them.  It's one of the things we can do until the fever subsides. And it takes us "vividly to the grace of the present."

Resources

http://www.npr.org/2013/04/18/177765547/tell-me-more-wants-your-poetry

Psalm 30

Romans 8:38-39

Please Forgive Me

“ When you refuse to apologize, it actually makes you feel more empowered. That power and control seems to translate into greater feelings of self-worth.
- Tyler G. Okimoto, researcher at the University of Queensland
From http://www.npr.org/2013/04/01/175714511/why-not-apologizing-makes-you-feel-better

Friends and I have been discussing the above quote and NPR feature on apologizing. The resulting discussion prompted me to write about apologies and forgiveness. I invite you to read the linked article and respond on my blog, on my Facebook Page, or in an email.

..........

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold”
― William Carlos Williams


In the spring of the first year of my second marriage, I failed to pay our light bill. The consequences are unforgettable. The utility company cut off our electricity and stuck a notice to our front door. Herb came home from work at 3 o'clock to find the garage door wouldn't open, the computer wouldn't power up, and the bathroom light wouldn't switch on. Since he had come in the back door, he missed the notice on the front door. Thinking a transformer had blown, he called the utility company.

While Herb was discovering we didn't have any electricity and then driving to the utility company to pay the bill, I was leading a curriculum workshop for 70 faculty members at Warren East High School in the school cafeteria. Floor to ceiling glass covered one cafeteria wall. Around 5 o'clock someone told me Herb was outside in the hallway. I saw him through the glass. He was pacing back and forth and slapping a piece of paper against his thigh. He was mad as hell!

For two months, at school and home, I'd been buried in paper. I'd taken on too many responsibilities, had moved professional priorities ahead of domestic ones, and neglected our finances. The light bills got lost in the shuffle.

I apologized, but the apology felt inadequate. The cliche "I felt like a worm" is apt. A silence descended upon our happy home. I avoided his eyes and spent the evening sorting through every stack of paper in my study. I feared another bill might have slipped my attention. Besides, I needed something to do while I nursed my guilt.

In this case my apology needed to be linked to solutions. I wanted to feel forgiven, but I also needed to fix the problem. Herb began sorting the mail for us and filing the bills, a job he's done perfectly for twenty-one years. I eventually resigned from my curriculum duties and reduced my professional load. When online bill paying became available, I quickly signed on.

What if I had said, "I'll fix it," but never apologized? According to Tyler Okomoto my self -esteem would have been enhanced by thinking, "I'm NOT sorry," and further enhanced by not saying, "I'm sorry."

I used to tell my children, "Don't apologize; fix the problem." I believed that apologies without solutions were wasted rhetoric.

If their grades dropped, I expected a nose to the grindstone solution. If one of them missed a curfew, I expected a show of sacrifice: every evening at home for a week. Penitence was more important than apologies.

Today, if my husband loses his temper with me, I expect him to apologize, but he's a fixer. "I'll take care of it," he says. And he does.

One of my dear friends, now gone, always said to me, "Forgiveness was forgetting." She convinced me by her actions and words that whatever wrong had passed between us was completely forgotten. I can't begin to tell you how comforting her approach was to me, the master of ruminating remorse.

Another friend mastered the fine art of communicating with only our best selves, so much so that I rarely felt any apologies were necessary. I'd always wished she hadn't told me about her breast cancer at a restaurant. The roar of customer voices felt like a tsunami wave in my head. I felt like ice water had been poured over me. I couldn't swallow. I became dizzy and nauseous. But I never let on. I didn't want her to feel as if she needed to apologize. I learned later that she had tried to tell me her diagnosis in other settings, but I was immersed in the business of divorce and not tuned to her needs. She preempted my apology with her understanding.

However, as I've aged, I've encountered situations that cannot be easily understood or repaired. The solutions seem obscure or may require cooperation from another person. What if someone apologizes for words misspoken or for unkind or rude behavior, but the situation fails to heal? Or what if I apologize but don't feel forgiven? I am at a loss when this happens, dumbstruck. I feel responsible for the healing and frustrated when my efforts fail.

Here's where an ironic loop happens: We might feel inadequate because we had apparently failed with convincing forgiveness or apology, unlike my friend who led me to believe all was forgotten. We might fail at accepting a dear one's foibles, unlike my friend who understood and forgave my preoccupations before I was aware of any slights. We might suffer from so much guilt, we cannot free ourselves even with an apology. We might harbor hidden resentments and fears. Or we might not know the words to say and simply choke.

In loving others we want to be strong and humble, unselfish and kind, sympathetic and generous, reliable and consistent. We fail often. How much should we apologize for our preoccupations and inadequacies?

A steady stream of I'm sorry seems weird, don't you think?

And yet, I watched a simple apology between two friends that completely defused a potential argument when he said to her, "I'm sorry, I didn't understand the situation." Suddenly she felt badly for him; he was so earnest.

She also does a believable job of apologizing. She's self-deprecating, witty, and sincere. In apologizing to me, she's caused me to want to comfort and reassure her. I can't bear for her to be sad or to feel guilty.

We have lots of help on the topic of apologizing. A google search on Barnes and Noble's website produced over 3,000 titles with the word apology in them, including various versions of Plato's Apology, Mitt Romney's No Apology: Believe in America, Tony Danza's I'd like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had, and Gary Chapman's and Jennifer Thomas' The Five Languages of Apology: How to Experience Healing in All Your Relationships.

The topic is ancient and ever fresh.


“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”
― Plato, The Republic

Matthew 6:12: "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."

“To err is human, to forgive, divine.”
― Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, All Men are Brothers

"People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”
― Mother Teresa

1 Corinthians 13:4-8: "Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away."

“True forgiveness is when you can say, "Thank you for that experience.”
― Oprah Winfrey

“Never forget the nine most important words of any family-
I love you.
You are beautiful.
Please forgive me.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr. From Life's little Instruction Book


If you stayed with this post and reached these last lines, you've reached the essential core beneath all of my thoughts:

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

― C.S. Lewis

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Revisited

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is visiting this week. Think small dog, not music. Wolfgang, a little white fluffy Havana Silk, is currently curled up on a leather ottoman just inches from me. He is taking his midday nap, having worn himself out walking in the yard, barking at the cable repairman, and objecting to the tree trimmer.

Last night Wolfgang's owners, a daughter, her husband, and two children, texted us to see how Wolfgang was adjusting to their absence. "Was he moping?"

At that moment, their precious puppy was curled up on an afghan on the sofa and looking thoroughly relaxed. He had had a busy day, following us around in the yard, watching squirrels, and barking at birds. The laundry had provided additional entertainment: socks, socks, and more socks. I learned to hide my reading glasses and put waste baskets up on counters. When he evaluated favorably the club chairs in the living room, we had a come-to-Jesus meeting.

"He definitely misses you," I said. Little fibs are okay for the right reasons.

For over thirty years, we have resisted dog ownership, not that we don't appreciate dogs.

I adore well trained dogs. Puppies cuddle and act silly. Dogs listen to inane chatter as if it mattered and love to take neighborhood walks, activities my husband escapes at the first hint. Dogs are improved door bells: they announce friend and foe as soon as they come near the property, a perfect solution for weak knocks and broken doorbells.

Herb, on the other hand, being a practical man, has a ready list of negative dog traits. All dogs begin as needy puppies. Puppies wet carpet and chew furniture legs. A puppy cries in the night, so you must sleep with your arm dangling over the mattress and your hand on the little guy when the ticking clock in the heating pad fails to calm him. And all cute puppies grow up to become dogs.

A dog listens with selective ears: it won't come when called; then you must chase it down. While chasing Fido, we are likely to trip over a hole in the yard, twist a knee, and end up in surgery.

A dog doesn't travel well. Although at our age, we must stop and relieve ourselves every two hours, we don't have to be leashed and led to an approved area. When we arrive at our destination, we don't have to apologize for having arrived as humans who need feeding and bodily function breaks at regular intervals, plus opportunities to voice our joys and fears; whereas to bring our precious pet, we would need to market its positive traits: its predictable and easy feeding habits -- two bowls for the duration, one for water and one for dried food -- and its polite housebroken behaviors -- a steady stare at a green space in the back yard and pleading eyes. We would also need to extol our dog's congenial, social skills, in spite of the fact that our dog would likely jump up to lick our hostess's face or sniff inappropriately.

Since dogs bark indiscriminately at the trash man, the neighbor's three year old grandson, and dear friends, not to mention all cats, squirrels, birds, and other dogs, I'm uncertain how to spin this behavior. How about, Wolfgang is talkative like me? I've been known to wake Herb up in the middle of the night for lesser reasons than "The house is on fire!" or "Someone is rattling the back door!" We all speak indiscriminately: Herb frequently interrupts my business to say, "Look! a white squirrel!" or "A red breasted, purpled beaked, triple tailed woodpecker in the Oak!"

Here's his clincher: Dog's die. You fall in love with them. They follow you everywhere, keep you company when no one else will, and tolerate what people won't: being left at home in a cage for hours and berated for something they didn't do. And then they die after only ten or twelve years. Over our lifetime, to always have a dog would mean we would have to fall in love and grieve more than six times, counting from age ten.

Wolfgang doesn't know about all these objections to his species. He's perfectly content to follow Herb outside at six every morning and later to chew on Herb's cap and my socks. He sits to beg for treats and climbs into my lap when I'm reading. When I play classical music, he smiles. At night he crawls into his crate and falls sound asleep. (The crate is in our bedroom where I put it when he whimpered about feeling lonely his first night.)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart will be going home soon. His family will sweep in, embrace him, coo over him, and leave us to adjust to his absence. We will regain the leather ottoman and two square feet of walking space in the bedroom. I will return to walking myself and silencing my thoughts. I wonder if Herb will miss tossing his white cap at "Hey Dog," his name for Wolfgang, and sitting with Hey Dog's head on his thigh. Without Wolfgang's barking, the house might seem too quiet for awhile. Still we don't have to be concerned about falling in love and then grieving an absence. Or do we?

And the Winner Is...

One morning preoccupation here is bird watching.  With spring nudging forward and winter grasping at its last days, Herb filled the bird feeder and cleaned the wren houses.   Birds sweep across our yard from tree to shrub and fight for position on the feeder.  Grackles bully robins;  robins bully sparrows; sparrows bully wrens.  Our year-long, non-migrating Cardinals, snug in the Arborvitae and Cedars, cope by ignoring most all the migrating birds, with the exception of the finches.

At this time of year, grackles predominate, although if we sit still, we might spy a towhee or a woodpecker.  Even though marble-sized hail pelted the ground this afternoon and weather stations forecast snow for tomorrow, the grackles are gathering and squabbling over sticks, strips of vines, and dried grass stems.

This morning a grackle shot across the deck with a long stream of ornamental grass in its beak.  On this enterprising bird's tail were two other grackles in a high speed chase of aerial tag.  Presumably, now that the first bird had discovered the twenty-four inch stem of grass and lifted it skyward where it trailed gracefully behind the speeding bird, the other birds sought to gain an advantage.

Was I watching a game of tag, of good-natured theft? Or outright bird bullying, as in, may the spoils go to the victor?

Yesterday morning, my neighbor created a mini-scavenger hunt for my two grand-children.  She hid a box of Girl-Scout cookies in the hollow of a tree on her property then called to tell me to tell them to look for a surprise at the base of a large tree.  Off they went, running and shouting. "Wait for me!" and "Me first!"

Soon they returned. "Which tree?"

"A  big one!" I said.

"But all the trees are big!"

"Really?!  I guess you'll have to look under all of them."

Later they came limping in the back door, she in tears, and he, the big brother, lecturing her about consequences.  They had found the box of cookies.  One box of cookies requires cooperation when two children are involved.  Apparently, she had asked to carry the cookies and said she would give them right back, then didn't.  He  decided to take them back, but she resisted.  Down she went onto the driveway!  And now she was in tears, and he was defending his position.

I took possession of the cookies, squelched the argument, and sent them outside to play.  Their lingering aggression played out in a game of tag. They chased each other unmercifully until they were laughing.  When they came inside, they wrote a thank you note to the neighbor, walked the note to the base of the tree, and called her to tell her to look for a surprise in a big tree.  I confess I played a mediator's role, but they were agreeable clients, once eating the cookies depended upon a workable  peace treaty.

As an elder adult, I'd like to believe I'm above seeking advantage and playing theft or harassment games.  But....I could identify with the birds and the children.

When Herb heads upstairs to the office to our shared computer, I feel an urge to race ahead and beat him to the chair.  I'm not sure we could peacefully share one vehicle.  He'd be hanging around in Lowe's when I wanted to go to Talbot's.  We shared one TV for a year until I gave up and bought another one so I could escape marathon football and basketball broadcasts.

Would I be the bird with the stem of grass racing ahead of her trackers?  I'd sure try.  I'd want to be the one to discover that graceful material and fly it to a fork in a shrub.  I've given up grabbing things away from others, but haven't weaned myself from plotting an advantage.  Nor have I reached the "letting go" stage that I required of my grand-children.  After all, I did purchase a second TV when I couldn't quite let go of my TV desires.  Giving the new TV to Herb for Christmas didn't exactly absolve me.

I'm still wondering which bird won the race.  As to the remaining cookies, the children's mother thought it best to leave them with us.  She didn't want to referee cookie wars.  As to spring or winter, winter wins this week.  The daffodils droop under wet snow, and the birds have disappeared into the hemlocks and cedars.  We can hear them, but we can't see them.

Blest Be the Tie that Binds

Anything can happen.  We all know this.  We can be driving peacefully down a highway and suddenly there's a skunk in the road.  

So when my half-sister called the other evening as I was rolling chicken in breadcrumbs, my first reaction was to guard myself -- because this sister rarely calls and then usually about something gone awry.  Perhaps my step-mother was ill, but if so, why did my sister sound so cheery?

"Is everything all right?" I asked.

"Oh yes, we're fine."  

Some people get right to the point, to our great relief.  But this sister does not.  And so, I put my iPhone on "speaker" and laid it on the counter.  I put the breaded chicken into the oven, trimmed brussel sprouts, and sautéed onions and peppers -- all while she led me to the family storage pod in Northern California, sorted through furniture, disposed of heirlooms, and carted off memorabilia.  

"And guess what?  You won't believe what we found!  Boxes of, guess what!?"

"What?"  I was, by now, sweeping the floor. Dinner guests would be knocking at our door in ten minutes.  

"Dad's ties!  Three boxes of them!  Isn't that wonderful!?  Do you want some of them?"

Ah ah!  Finally to the point.  Dad's ties.  Dad's ties from, ostensibly, 1938 to 1984, from when he began working until he retired. Forty-two years of ties, worn everyday except Saturday.  Boxes of vintage ties: hand printed silk ties from the forties, thin geometrics from the fifties, wide paisleys and plaids from the sixties, disco ties from the seventies, flowers and reps from the eighties.  

Suddenly his ties scrolled in my head:  one with a tropical scene of flamingoes on azure,  one with ducks flying across a rust background, and one with tiny horseshoes aligned diagonally on black.  I remembered black ties with tiny red dots and blue ties with thin silver stripes. 

Before I was ten, I knew how to tie a Half-Windsor.  When dressing for work, Daddy would hang a tie on a door knob. I would tie it; then he would inspect it and slip it around his neck under his crisply starched white collar. If he ever redid the knot, I never knew it.  

As far back as I can remember, I gave ties to Dad for Father's Day until I was a mother.  I may have chosen the tropical flamingoes when I was six-years-old.  The cowboy motif would have been from the 1950's when he bought me a sorrel mare to ride.   In the 1960's I would have chosen somber geometrics befitting his respectful status as a businessman and church leader.  By the 1970's my children helped choose ties for the men in our family, but it was a hectic time: gifts were haphazard. 

Dad retired, boxed up his ties, and moved from city life to ranch life.  After that, he usually wore plaid shirts and denim.  For years we sent him plaid shirts until we realized he had more than he could reasonably wear.

And then he died.

Sixteen years younger than I, my half-sister lives another life, 2,270 miles away.  We grew up in separate families, cemented by our father's genes and his dominating presence.  He still shows up in the most unexpected ways to command our attention.  

"Do you want some of the ties? " She asked.  

I was thinking.  What would I do with them?

"You could wear them.  I wore one of his ties after he died. It was like having him near."

Still thinking.

"You should have them. You could make a quilt or textile art piece."

Still thinking.

"This is such a great discovery.  You know, I don't even have a sample of his handwriting."

I thought, I do.  He wrote letters to my children. "Yes, send me some ties.  I'd like them.  I really would.  Thank you."

Blessed Be the Tie that Binds  --words by John Fawcett, 1782

Blessed be the tie that binds 

Our hearts in Christian love; 

The fellowship of kindred minds

Is like that to that above.

Before our Father's throne 

We pour our ardent prayers;

Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one 

Our comforts and our cares.

We share each other's woes,

Our mutual burdens bear;

And often for each other flows 

The sympathizing tear.

When we asunder part,

It gives us inward pain; 

But we shall still be joined in heart,

And hope to meet again.

This glorious hope revives 

Our courage by the way; 

While each in expectation lives, 

And longs to see the day.

From sorrow, toil and pain, 

And sin, we shall be free,

And perfect love and friendship reign 

Through all eternity.

Somewhere over the Rainbow

Auntie Em: Help us out today and find yourself a place where you won't get into any trouble! 
Dorothy: A place where there isn't any trouble. Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto? There must be. It's not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It's far, far away. Behind the moon, beyond the rain... 
[begins to sing "Over the Rainbow"] 
--from The Wizard of Oz



When my daughter and her husband leave with us their children -- a grandson age nine and a grand-daughter age six --  they entrust us with precious treasure.  I feel keenly responsible, a feeling that is visceral and adrenal.  I'm happy, but also alert.  

These two children play like frolicking puppies, teasing, chasing, and squealing.  Well behaved, they usually respond to gentle reminders because they love to please.  They are clever and confident children.

And they love ice cream.

After their piano lessons one evening as I was driving them home, I decided to stop at Kroger for milk, fruit, and ice cream. 

"We'll get the ice cream last," I said.  "We can only get one kind, so you'll have to agree on a flavor."

"Chocolate!" They sang out.

Imagine a nine and six year old in front of the ice cream section in Kroger.  An eager duet, they read aloud the flavors.  Rocky Road, Dutch Chocolate, Neapolitan, Chocolate Chip, Mint Chip, Cookies and Cream, Cherries Jubilee...

The grandson first suggested Mint Chip. "Yuck!"  said his sister. Then she rejected Rocky Road, "Nuts! You hate nuts!" She grabbed Neapolitan because it was pink and striped with chocolate.

"Not that one.  Let's get Cookies and Cream."

And so we proceeded to the Self-check out where I began scanning items.  

"Oma, she's gone!" said my grand-son.

"What? Gone!?"

"She went back to get more ice cream."  He looked horrified.  

I would need to leave the items on the scanner and go after her.  As I turned, my grandson took off ahead of me.  He's in cross country.  I'm not.  Now I had two grand-children out of sight.  

By the time, I rounded the corner of the freezer section, they were coming toward me, she with three cartons of ice cream in her arms, and he with a disgusted look on his face.

"She won't put them back," he said.

We returned the extra ice cream.  I scolded her for running off, which also meant I had to remind her of safe behavior.  My mind flashed to child snatchers lurking in grocery stores at eight o'clock at night just waiting for a curly headed, pink cheeked six-year-old distracted by shelves and shelves of yummy ice cream.

A confident creature, she looked innocently at me and said, "What else can I do?" as in, I came back, what else do you want?

"I want you to stick to me even when we get home!  I'll tell you when you can go. Is that clear?"

On the way home, I could hear her soft sniffles in the back seat of the car. 

Grand-parenting is all deja vu.  

Suddenly I was six years old in Macy's in San Francisco shopping with my mother.  The department store had elevators and five or six floors.  I became distracted by all the bling in the jewelry section.  One minute my mother was there, the next she wasn't.  At first, I wasn't afraid. She had to be nearby.  I would find her.  The more I looked, the more lost I became, until hot tears ran down my cheeks.

A sales lady knelt down and asked me my name.  I knew not to talk to strangers.  Terrified now, I sobbed uncontrollably.  In the office, where she led me, people tried to console me and learn my name, or my mother's name.  They finally gave up and announced over the store intercom, "Would the mother of a lost child please come to the office."

A few minutes later, two mothers showed up.

I too lost a daughter once--in Disney World for half a day.  She went out one door of a restroom, I the other.  After hours of frantic searching, I finally found her sitting at a bus stop.  "You take the bus, so I knew you would find me."  She was seven years old.  I had never known such terror and relief was possible.

Let's not discuss, please, my hiking adventure in the Rockies at age 68, when I veered from a main trail, lost my bearings at 11,000 feet, and had to be guided out by a rescue squad before dark set in and bears ate me.

All things considered, I decided the other night I might need a little check-up regarding my own whereabouts.  "Herb, do I sometimes wander off?"  

"All the time, Love, all the time.  You'll be right here beside me, and I won't have a clue where you've gone."

Blizzard Lore

A blizzard hovered for two days over the plains.  It arrived on Thursday February 21, 2013, in West Omaha at Englewood Drive exactly twelve minutes later than the ETA reported on the weather channel.   The airport shut down. Schools and universities closed. Employees stayed home.  The family slept in.

One by one the family awoke and looked out onto a white landscape.  The dried hydrangea blooms had turned into drooping balls of frozen cotton.  The spruce trees looked like ice wizards. Fence posts rose like sentinels from two foot drifts. 

Outside it was five degrees; inside 68.  They lit the gas fireplace and made pancakes.  They wrapped up in afghans and declared a pajama morning.  The teenagers' fingers flew through text messages and online games.  The dad hooked into teleconferences and caught up with his email.    The mom designed an iPad training session for teachers.

The dogs forged through the snow cover first, the puppy, dressed in a sweater, leaping like a rabbit, and the black lab plowing her way to the fence border.  Soon the neighborhood came alive with snow blowers.  Before evening the snow plows had cleared the streets.

The water supply didn't freeze.  The pantry remained stocked. The closets contained multiple layers of wool and polartec.  A line of furry snow boots stood by the back door; a pile of mittens waited in a basket.

In the infamous blizzard of 1888, sometimes called the Schoolhouse Blizzard, temperatures plummeted forty degrees after an unseasonably warm January 11th. Arctic air swooshed down into the northern plains from Canada. On January 12th many children were either trapped in schools without heat or perished as they struggled  against the wind and blinding snow to reach their homes.  238 children died.

Although I grew up in the San Francisco bay area in the 1940's and 50's in a temperate zone, I knew about blizzard lore.  My dad liked to retell the story of the blizzard of 1888 in Nebraska, told to him by his mother, most likely to keep him from hunting in dangerous weather.  In the 1880's two ancestral families had homesteaded west of Nebraska City.  When the blizzard struck, they settled in to wait out the storm.  The men tied a rope between the house and the barn, so they could safely tend to their livestock.  When their provisions grew low, the men, who were brothers, set out into the storm on their horses for Nebraska City.  The women begged them not to go.  I imagined silent children watching their mothers tending the fire and listening for the husbands' return.  After the storm abated, the wives discovered the two brothers frozen between the house and the barn.  The provisions were in the barn with the horses.

My father grew up on a tenant farm in southeastern Nebraska.  One harsh winter during the Great Depression, he and his brother struck out across frigid fields to hunt for rabbits and squirrels to supplement home canned tomatoes, the only food remaining that January.  When the sky turned dark and the wind whisked across the empty fields, my grandmother must have felt blizzard lore course through her veins. 

My husband was born into the Great Depression on a farm in the Flint Hills of Kansas where weather ruled life's rhythms.  Winter could be arduous. He slept with his brothers in an unheated room.  When food ran low, they ate steamed wheat and gravy. Water froze in the kitchen bucket.  In winter the boys dressed beside a stove in the kitchen. 

In Kentucky when snow fell, my children would beg to go sledding.  I remember one winter night when, after papering stairway walls, we went sledding with friends until midnight.  Laughter and brightly colored parkas sparkled in the icy air.  Our noses tingled, and snow caked our mittens .  Afterwards we warmed ourselves by a wood fire and drank hot chocolate. It was 1981, nearly one hundred years from the blizzards of 1888.

We are now five generations distant from the Schoolhouse Blizzard.  Weather scientists track storms to the minute. We are not precariously housed.  Most of us live within a short drive to groceries. We can work online.  Our most dramatic event is a household  teasing about which cookies to bake, oatmeal raisin or chocolate chip. 

This morning the mom of this Omaha family noticed that her bread pans were lying outside next to an unfinished snow fort.  In the night the family puppy had discovered a bag of chocolate candy hidden under an afghan. Pieces of gold foil littered the rug. A sock here, a towel over there, jackets on the floor, magazines askew -- the scene is definitely relaxed.

Last night we went sledding in the moonlight. I clung to my grandson as we careened down a steep sled run and over a mogul. The dogs chased us.  At the bottom of the hill, my daughter laughed, "Mom, you okay?!" The Big Dipper sparkled in the clear sky above.  It was thrilling.

Fact is, we are only inconvenienced when the airport closes, and relieved if we cannot go to work or to school. 

References:

The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin

HarperCollins, Oct 13, 2009 - History - 336 pages
Thousands of impoverished Northern European immigrants were promised that the prairie offered "land, freedom, and hope." The disastrous blizzard of 1888 revealed that their free homestead was not a paradise but a hard, unforgiving place governed by natural forces they neither understood nor controlled, and America’s heartland would never be the same.


The Blizzard Voices by Ted Kooser, Tom Pohrt (illustrator)

Bison Books, September 1, 2006 - poetry -  64 pages
This book is a collection of poems recording the devastation unleashed on the Great Plains by the blizzard of January 12, 1888. The Blizzard Voices is based on the actual reminiscences of the survivors as recorded in documents from the time and written reminiscences from years later. Here are the haunting voices of the men and women who were teaching school, working the land, and tending the house when the storm arrived and changed their lives forever.


Eighteen eighty-eight, a Thursday,
the twelfth of January:
It had been warm all morning,
with a soft, southerly breeze,
melting the snowdrifts back
from the roads.  There were bobwhite
and prairie chickens out
pecking for grit in the wheel-ruts.
0n lines between shacks and soddies,
women were airing their bedding--
bright quilts that flapped and billowed,
ticks sodden as thunderheads.
In the schoolyards, children
were rolling the wet, gray snow
into men, into fortresses,
laughing and splashing about,
in their shirtsleeves.  Their teachers
stood in the doorways and watched.

Odd weather for January;
a low line of clouds in the north;
too warm, too easy.  And the air
filled with electricity;
an iron poker held up
close to a stovepipe would spark,
and a comb drawn through the hair
would crackle. One woman said
she'd had to use a stick of wood
 to open her oven door.

Excerpted from Ted Kooser's The Blizzard Voices