Skip to main content

Blizzard Memories- Pressurizing and Preserving Families


Blizzards- the real deal, complete with snow, wind and cold- makes me homesick.  A mild one is blowing through today and I'm homesick.  Homesick for sisters and boys.

 The smell of karosene lanterns
Hay and straw and warm barns
Candles
Beans cooking
Wood burning
Hot chocolate and coffee
Wind through the pine trees
Stomping feet
Laughing kids
Debate over checkers and politics
Reading Little House on the Prairie "The Long Winter"
Feel of quilts and scarves and the heaviness of layers
Quiet
Dangerously harsh stillness

An annual blizzard marching through our ranch and area was expected.  Partnering with electricity and water outages, it would lock us in our own little world.

Caleb was a new baby when we were living on the ranch and hit with the "Once in 100 year blizzard."  My husband and Dad were living on tractors to feed cold cows and calves between breaking ice and scooping off the roof of an inundated building.

The boys would run to the door when David came in to help him peel out of layers....and check out the ice formed on his beard.  

Dressed in snow suits as they ducked under the "door," which were blankets nailed on door frames to keep the heat in one room.  For little boys, it was a grand adventure.  

For the men in my life, it was  excruciating.  My job was to make it an adventure, to keep water in jugs and food cooked and the house warm.

A blizzard pressurizes the ranching and farming families.  They can create constant, unbelievable stress, while at the same time seasoning and preserving families and traditions.  

All that is unimportant is blown away in the wind and swept across the plains.

 The peripheal scraped clear with the wind.

 The surface and the temporary ripped violently away to reveal the real and the authentic.

 Those who did not plan well...watched cows starve and their family rescued.  Short cuts displayed.  

What was hidden came to the surface.  Minds and relationships that had suffered years of neglect and abuse...cracked.

 Churches met in homes.  Crisis counselors employed.  Hearts completely displayed.

 And still......  

 Hearts are tied tightly together, as baling twine wraps around a large bale of hay.  Together and preserved.  

While the memories are bittersweet... they draw my focus back to what truly matters.  

Life. Love. Relationship. Basic human needs.

 Allowing a day of rest for my body, mind and my soul and being wrapped in the swirling wind and snow.   

Abiding.  Preserving.

Quilts, coffee and a great book...and family.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

1940 Canned Apple Butter: Family Root Cellar

I loved exploration as a child.  From opening the door and going down the stairs to get something from my Grandma's root cellar or exploring old homesteads while checking cows.  I credit my Mom with teaching us to appreciate those things that represented the people who had gone before us. When I moved with my husband and boys to a house on the family ranch-I began exploring immediately.  This was the house my Aunt and Uncle lived in during my childhood.  My Grandparents had lived there and many other families dating back to 1900 when it was built.   With two little boys in tow, I made my way to the root cellar and found a treasure cove.  Old text books belonging to the original family who had been a teacher, the original medicine cupboard, tools, trash and memorabilia.   I felt like an archeologist sifting through layers of debris representing generations and culture.  And I was.  I hauled truckloads of trash to the dump (some...
4 comments
Read more

Diabetes-Opened to Disease OR Open to Connecting to my Strengths

I've tried living in denial for two years after the big D diagnoses was handed over.  Honestly, I just don't want to talk about it.  Outwardly seemly calm and disconnected from it.  Inwardly terrified. As a plant that is stressed is open to disease, injury and death so to our bodies are.  I opened myself up to this.  Stress, lack of sleep, bad nutrition, overweight and lack of exercise.  For some reason I believed that if I ran fast enough and worked hard enough, I would outrun my family genes.  The tiny room in the back of my brain locked with a key has kept the fear of this disease at bay even though I could hear its screaming when life quieted down. My Aunt died piece by piece to this disease.  First a heart attack and quadruple by-pass.  Then a toe.  Next a foot.  Legs came next along with more heart attacks.  Kidneys shutting down.  She died very young. When I was little, my Aunt Ally gave herself s...
4 comments
Read more

Green Space and Green Houses...(Long Sigh)

Finally...I went to the greenhouse!  One of my favorite places to go.  Magical places where plants reach out to me as I walk down the aisles!  It is almost as if they are jumping right into my arms!  Touching various textures of velvet, hairy, smooth and delicate.  Sensory buffet of smells from the sweet, sharp and the musty smell of potting soil mixing together in amazing harmony! With my bounty of found treasure I carry my package with great care to the car and then to my shed.  Tomorrow, I tell myself.  Tomorrow I will plant them.....but then I see that empty pot.  O.k. just one.  I'll just plant one tonight. The vines have covered my livestock panels creating a beautiful green wall over the dilapidated fence.  My butterfly bush, Russian sage and other plants are knee high.  Day lillies and hostas are competing for attention.  A respite in my yard. But it is not just me.  Our brains are wired to need g...
2 comments
Read more