A Winter of Content

 It is a basic human fault to complain about the weather. Most of the time it is too hot, too cold, etc. etc. blah blah blah. 

In Minnesota our Lord bestow a special blessing that I am increasingly thankful for. Very cold days. This morning it was -13 as I ran an errand to a neighboring town. 

On these days human activity slows down. When I had a job, the buses ran a little slower on these days. Fewer people came into the office. The phone rang less. Thus, work I needed to do got done. 

Today, I do not have a job. I use this time to get things done that are both important and unimportant. Get lost in a book. Tighten that screw, splice that wire, dust that difficult spot, file that receipt. Read the Bible. Sit in a Church and adore the Presence. Write a letter to my aunt.  

Solace. Quiet. 

In six months it will be one hundred degrees warmer. There will be more people moving around. There will be requests that I join them in consuming food. Humans will gather in celebration of certain plants, such as the " (insert county name here) (insert vegetable name here) Festival".  Farmers will have their markets. New young drivers will experiment with speed. 

The level of solace and quiet in my life will decrease as the days grow longer. Not for better or worse, just different. 

These days of cold are days I treasure, when I can do simple things like write down these thoughts of gratitude. 

Things you forget about snow in Summer

 We just had the first major snow of the season. Schools were let out early, or cancelled altogether. When we first moved here in 2003, schools rarely closed for snow. Now they do so with a regularity similar to the schools of St. Louis, where we moved from. We are becoming a less snow-tough people, but that is a topic for another time.

As I shoveled the porch and front steps I thought of the things I had not called to mind since last winter. 

How different the weight of snow can be from one storm to the next. You can tell without picking up a shovel, just by stepping on it. At times it is like shoveling feathers, other times like shoveling lasagna. 

What wind does. Five inches of snow usually means 18 inches in the vortex by the shed and an inch in parts of the front yard. 

What sun does. The fact a sunny day can melt snow and ice when the air temp is in the teens, is one of those pleasant little surprises of nature. 

The beauty of hoarfrost, diamond dust and snowdogs. 

The camaraderie of neighbors as we dig out. We wake up on a Saturday morning all facing the same problem, getting this stuff off the driveway, navigating the snowbanks left by the city plows.  

That squirrels may attempt to seek shelter somewhere in my house. A nook, a crease, a forgotten opening. The scratching sound in a wall is never good news, and was heard around 11pm last night for the first time in a few years. 

The beauty of this land when it is only two colors, White and shades of brown. 

 

Lost and Found in winter jackets

 Each October or November I don my collection of winter jackets for the first time in six months or so. In the packets are reminders of winters past, projects, and days. 

A pack of matches from a long defunct Savings and Loan. It has followed me since the mid 80's. 

A pokemon card that was a bookmark last year. 

A pair of work gloves. 

A pen from the Ford dealer in the next town. 

A lighter. 

They smell like the closet they came from, except for one that bears traces of an outdoor fire. 

I like the pockets of old jackets. Sort of an old man's Christmas stocking. 

The boat is in storage, the dock and lift are in the yard

 I know the best fishing is usually in the fall but I just cannot keep the boat setup much past Labour Day. Once we get to mid-September I am ready to pack it all in for the season. I have moved on, summer is over and it is time to get started on the whole long list of chores that must be done before the first snow flakes fall. 

I'm missing something, I know. There is a special time here in Minnesota to be out of doors and I am ditching it. Yes I am. Autumn is a trickster. It deceives. It looks like it will linger, yet rarely does. I don't think it actually exists. 

I have heard people who are natives say that they love the four seasons of this country. They cannot count. Knoxville has four seasons. St. Louis has four seasons. Baltimore has four seasons. Minnesota has two. Summer and Winter. There are three phases to winter. Cool Winter, followed by Deep Winter, followed by Soggy Winter. Summer has three phases as well. Soggy summer, Big Summer and Harvest Summer. Harvest Summer and Cool Winter overlap by about a week. Same for Soggy Winter and Soggy Summer, which only the lengthening of days allows one to distinguish between them. 

My boat is in storage in Scott County. Here is my boat lift and dock. Until May (Soggy Summer).

Ice Out and Ice In on our Minnesota lake

This week was ice out time. If you don't live this far north it is something that wouldn't enter your thinking about the seasons. It's a big deal. There is a good feeling that comes from seeing open water after four or so months of cold. It doesn't mean the end of snow, or the frost on the windshield. It just means the end of ice on the lake. 

It came a little earlier than average, which is around April 9th. That is typical, it jumps around a lot from one year to the next. One day the lake is mainly covered in ice, the next day the ice is gone. The reverse happens in that fall. Our lake is not huge, around 250 acres or so. If you live on a really big one, the process is a little less straightforward. More fits and starts, one bay is open, another is not, depending on sunlight, wind and the like. 

March 25th was the ice-out for this year. In the last ten years the earliest was March 15, the latest was May 1. Dec 1 was the ice-in date last fall, ranging between November 12 and December 19 since 2012. 

The state government keeps track of this information. I am one of the hundreds of citizen volunteers who watch the ice and submit the numbers. I've been watching the ice for the past week, binoculars in hand from the warmth of my den. Whew. My work is done. Until November. 

Tulips in October

 It is late October and the air is crisp as the temperature jumps around the low 30s and high 20s. Last week we had around 6 inches of snow, which is unusual for this part of the state so soon. Two weeks ago I planted around 200 spring tulips and wondered whether I was early, as we were still on the warm side of autumn. 

These bulbs are seeds of a Spring to come. They will lie dormant from October through March. Dormant is not a good word, perhaps disguised is better. In the ground of October, they anticipate the cold of December and the thawing of February and March. While the grass is brown and snow covers the soil, down in the earth the cold temps launch a change inside the bulb. Never mind the botanical details. But a change that will cause a stem and flower to push out of the earth in April and May. For now they get no attention from me. No care, no water, no fertilizer. Only neglect and hardship. From this comes growth. Hmmm, a metaphor for something.

In planting tulips I am looking ahead...around the corner, behind the curtain, over the hill, down the street of time, to another spring. Past the laughs of Thanksgiving. Beyond the Gloria of Christmas and the Miracle of the Annunciation, they will be here to celebrate the Hosanna of Easter. 

Tulips are for time travelers. If you envy them in the spring because there are none in your yard, go back in time six months. Go to Home Depot. Buy bulbs. Plant them. 

If you are annoyed by the work involved in the fall, digging 200 holes, it must be because your body is getting old and is stuck in the present day. Your mind has moved on and is seeing beauty in things that will happen in the year to come. Things you are almost certain of. 

Come Winter!! 

Deep Winter

I love winter. We say that a lot in Minnesota. Perhaps we do. Perhaps not.

We are reaching the point of the really hard days of the season we love. Highs around zero. Lows somewhere down on the minus scale. It is mid-February and the sun is much higher in the sky than at Christmas, though that fact has not yet made a difference in our temperatures. That will come.

This is the waiting time.

This period of winter is like many times of our lives. Waiting for something. For first grade. For a new bike. For a drivers license. For marriage. For a new job. Waiting for a sign. Some signal that what you wish for will come to be.

I am a hospice volunteer and just spent 15 months visiting a patient with a terminal illness, who became a friend. Waiting to die. I stopped by twice a week to chat, about his family, sports, occasionally his faith. He had the type of illness that shows no real symptoms to others until the very end. As predicted, that was how it played out. On Monday he was happy and alert. On Thursday he was much weaker and knew his last few days were upon him. On Saturday his body was dead.

I have tried to put myself in his place and imagine this period of waiting. For some it is a period of fear and dread. For my friend it was a time to enjoy with family and friends, to ponder his life in its triumphs and regrets, to read, to sleep, to meet a new nurse, to welcome a priest bearing the blessed eucharist. One day folded into the next, one season to the next. Now he is where there are no seasons, and no waiting, only joy and love in its purest of pure forms.

I look around my house for a sign of spring. The snow is piling up. The ice on the lake is thicker than last week. No birds in the air or squirrels in the trees. But the sun is higher in the sky today than yesterday. For a while that will suffice.

Fall in a flash and the winter onset

In Minnesota we love the fall. Too bad it doesn't last very long. What most folks call autumn starts here in late August, when you first see a leaf or two begin to change and you wake up one morning to temps in the mid-50s instead of 60's.

It was 45 when I woke this morning and the weatherman says we may fall to the high 30s over the weekend.

Other fall things going on....

The boat is off the lake. This weekend it goes into storage until April.

The dock and boat lift are off the lake and are pulled up on the shore. That happened yesterday.

The last hummingbird was spotted last weekend. The smart ones left earlier. The feeders have been washed and are stored until May.

Leaves are falling with every breeze.

Tomato plants are in the trash and the cages are stored under the deck.

Chokeberries have been picked and frozen for some winter recipe

Apple harvest is in full swing and we'll be making apple butter this weekend or next.

We have placed our best on when we first see snow. November 3rd is my date.

The box of Christmas lights are in the garage, ready for their early November hanging.

Mailed the check today to my snow plow guy for his continued service.

That may have been the last big solo drive of my life

December 20, 2015

Left Waco, TX at 4am. Arrived in Victoria, MN at 830pm. If you don't stop at all, Google Maps says its a 16 hr drive. So I guess I wasted about 30 mins stopping for gas and driving less than expected in road construction areas.

Not a bad drive, just a grind. Getting through Fort Worth is always challenging. Texas border to Oklahoma City is somewhat scenic. Oklahoma City to Wichita is flat and fast. North of Wichita is the Flint Hills area, a most beautiful area of the country that most people have never heard of. Knute Rockne died near there and is commemorated very tastefully at a rest stop near his plane crash.

After leaving the Flint Hills the beauty turns into millions of acres of farmland, interupted briefly by the cities of Kansas City and Des Moines. During summer it can be nice to drive by acres of corn wheat and soybeans, but in the winter it is stark. From the Flint Hills to Minneapolis it is a grind that you just get through by force of will.

1080 miles.

In the hours before I left I drove around Waco and wished I had taken more time to see the place. It really is a special little spot with its own history and its own special mark on America. My youngest daughter has graduated from Baylor University. More than likely I will never go back to Waco, but one never knows for sure. I only know that next time I won't be the only one driving.

Labor Day

Since moving to Minnesota this day always turns my mind toward winter. Labor Day brings the mental checklist of things I have to do between now and the end of October. This year was no different.

• Bring the boat off the lake
• Pull in the dock and lift
• Plow under the garden
• Store the lawn furniture
• Put away the hose
• Get Christmas lights up
• Cut the grass one last time
• Fertilize the lawn
• Plant spring bulbs
• Schedule the snow plow guy
• Store the hammock
• Find the snowshoes
• Get plenty of blue stuff for windshield washers
• Crank up the snowblower
• Set out the jack o' lantern and other fall stuff

It is also the day when I eat my one Cinnabon of the year.

Merry Christmas to me

I tell this story not to show what a great guy I am, but to remind me that at least this one time, I did the right thing. Barely.

today I went to lunch at a Chinese place by my office. As I walked I passed a young woman with a baby, sitting near the entrance. That was not unusual. This time of year there are plenty of babies and moms on the Minneapolis skyway. Christmas shopping, pictures with Santa, etc.

What caught my attention was the sadness on her face. Like something out of a painting. One of those expressions that we have when we are out of options. Deep sadness mixed with gloom, agony, despair. 

I went inside and ate. I ate quickly as I do when something is bugging me. I kept thinking about her. wondering why she was so sad. Feeling guilty that I didn't stop and ask her. But of course my guilt was not so great that I would go look for her. Of course not, I had lunch to eat. If I left I'd lose my place in line! No, I just waded through with the sort of bad feeling that you let linger. Just long enough until there is nothing you can do about it.

I finished my meal. I walked back to where she was sitting, and of course she was gone. I looked around. I strolled through the skyway and headed toward the direction of Macy's and Target, thinking that if I were her I might be going that way.

Whatever she had been doing and whatever I was doing fell into synch. There she was again, this time pushing the baby in a stroller and on her phone.

Unlike when I first saw her there were now a lot of people around. So I wasn't going to actually talk to her, that would have looked weird.

She was talking to a friend asking for money to buy her baby a coat and hat. Something about being robbed last week. No help came from that friend I could tell. As I passed her she was quickly dialing another friend, and I stayed close enough to hear her plead,  "do you have 30 or 40 dollars that I can borrow until payday?" She retold the story again of her situation.

I felt the wad of bills in my pocket, and I knew it was about what she needed.

I turned around and looked at her. She could have been twenty or so, but had the care-worn face of someone much older. I handed her the bills and said, "this is for you. Merry Christmas". she had a stunned look on her face. And in the middle of Macy's, a week before Thanksgiving, I got this wonderful Christmas-style bear hug. She said " thank you so much". I mumbled a reply. 

I walked off to hear her, still on the phone with her friend, "you wont believe what just happened..."

I will buy a lot of things this Christmas and spend a lot of money on people I love. Some on sale, some not. But the best bargain of the Christmas season will be that forty dollar hug.

There are so many needs around us. So easy to just keep walking.

I think this is a metaphor

On the deck

This winter seems to be longer than normal, with more snow and cold. Don't know whether that's true, but seems that way. Perhaps as we age the more difficult weather days seem longer than they actually are.

They weekend was spent gazing at my Weber Grill. While shoveling snow off the deck I wished that it was warm enough to cook something. While that's always possible in theory, the reality is no one wants to stand over a grill when it's 14 degrees.

However, there was something about cleaning off the snow, and digging out the tires from an ice pack, that made it feel a little warmer. I took the lid off and smelled the dead coals from the last cookout of 2013. Stale old used charcoal. And yet, it did have this tiny aroma that gave a hint of better weather to come.

Today I look out on snowdrifts 3 and 4 feet high. Piles of plowed snow 6 ft high. In just a month, most of it will be gone, replaced by water on the lake, a few puddles perhaps here and there on top of the huge ice cover.

Pitchers, Catchers and the smell of barbecue

On this coldest date of the year, two observations.

1) I stepped off the bus this morning in -17 temps. Was hit by the smell of barbecue coming from who knows where and immediately felt 100 degrees warmer.
2) Pitchers and catchers report in a couple of weeks. Kudos to the Arizona Diamondbacks for reporting the earliest of all, Feb 6th, followed by the Dodgers on the 8th and the Cardinals on the 12th. Everyone else in the National League is still sleeping in on those days and show up sometime around the 14th. It will still be cold here, but somewhere there is the whizz of a pitch, the smack to the glove and the crack of a bat that all sound like spring around here.  

Sub zero dreams

"It's a little chilly out there", is a much-heard phrase in the winter. Minnesotans have a way of not admitting its really cold. But when it slips to double-digits below zero, we finally throw in the towel and confess that just like the rest of the country, we're cold. It may have taken us longer to get there, but we are shivering. School is closed today, and we are secretly a bit ashamed.

I stand in my living room and look out the window. My smoker has snow piled around it from earlier days spent shoveling snow on the patio. I have since given up on keeping it clear. My trusty Weber grille has a nice round mound of snow on the cover. A container of lighter fluid is nestled in the snow nearby, a silent sentry in the barbecue army.

Looking toward the woods there is not a single sign of life. No birds. No squirrels. No red tailed fox hunting mice under the snow. As I drink a cup of coffee I am the only thing moving as far as I can see. 

My deck gives a loud pop, as it does when we get below zero. Like I need a reminder of how cold it is out there. Looking across the lake it is hard to imagine that in a few months there will be boats and water skis and canoes. First will come a hardy canoe or two. Soon after the docks will begin to appear, mysterious fingers coming up from the soil and stretching out into the water.

But for now, on days of minus this or minus that, we simply look out the window, taking a little solace from the fact that the sun is now out at 5pm and that wondrous rotation of the earth is turning toward summer. Mr. Winter is at his strongest this week. But he is getting old. Soon he'll glance to the north and take a tiny step in retreat.

Burning the red sox hat 2014

No better way to start the new year

I want to be hot

More snow is on the way this week. I am ready to be miserably hot.

T-shirt sticking to the back hot, sand in the wallet hot, walking on the sides of your bare feet hot, can't hold the steering wheel hot, 5am with sweat beads on your forehead hot, sunburn on the top of the head hot, bramble and stickers on your jeans hot, dust devils on a dirt road hot, asphalt melting/trout killing/blister raising hot. Yeah, nice and toasty.

I want to get burned by nails in my deck, I want to see roses shriveled up and brown in my back yard, I want birds to flock to my sprinkler, I want to need mosquito spray, I want to see flies around old watermelon rinds, I want to see blood mixed with sweat when i do yard work, I want to run out of cigars, i want bandaids to not be able to stick to me, I want to look like I just got out of the shower when I walk across a parking lot.

I want to cut the grass, clean out the garage, smoke a pork roast, slap a bloody mosquito onto the side of my neck, I want to sit in my back yard in shorts and a t-shirt and listen to baseball.

A time to move

Tomorrow we close on the sale of our old house. How quickly the place we called "home" for over ten years has become relegated to status as "the old house".

I am sitting on the steps to the kitchen, trying to put a few thoughts together. Collect the memories.

I lived here for almost a year by myself. From August 2003 to June 2004. While Rob finished high school, while Rachel rebuilt her life after a Peace Corp tour was cut short by war, while pre-teen Caroline dealt with the trauma of leaving the street where she learned to walk and talk, while Robin prepared for one more move, I was here alone. After 24 years of marriage, one year of relative solitude was not what I was expecting from my life. But it came and it went and it was good and it was bad. I would recommend it to others. It reminded me of how much my wife is part of me, and I of her.

I had little furniture. What I had Rachel had helped me move with a UHaul. A bed, a dresser, a treadmill, a lazyboy, a recliner. A coffeepot.

We moved the family here on June 16, 2004. Our 25th wedding anniversary.

This was Caroline's home more than any of the other children. I remember her shaking in fear as a first epileptic seizure gripped her on the stairs. The helplessness of parents who could only hold her and pray. But it was also in this house she met much of the wonder and trial of junior high and high school. Birthday parties, sleepovers, helping me put up Christmas lights and smoke the perfect pork shoulder.

It was a good place for a man and wife to enter their fifties, and be confronted with their own mortality. There were health scares, big and small, that reminded us of how much we need and love each other, and how limited is our time together in this place.

I remember Rob bringing his future wife, Laura, to this home for the first time.

I remember  Rachel screaming "I passed" and leaping in the yard, when bar exam results came in the mail.

I remember watching my wife sit quietly at the dining table, reading her Bible, taking notes. Pausing to stir a pot, start a load of wash, say a prayer.

I remember our loyal friend Rocko. He who was oblivious to the move from St. Louis, and was always happy to see any of us. How he aged so, and how the walk around the block eventually turned into a walk to the end of the street. He's still here, under a rock that is under a tree that borders our back yard.

I remember special meals shared with those we love so much and special visits from family members Judy Jarrett, Betty Walker, Kristin Walker, Hannah Izard, Emily Izard, Rodney Welch, Kevin Welch, Audrey Welch, Barbara VanAntwerp, Becky Amos, Shelby Campbell, Katie Welch, Audrey Welch, Laura Welch.

I remember the joy on Robin's face when her big sister Betty showed up for a surprise weekend visit.

I remember long drives to see our children, drives that started and ended in this driveway. To Chicago, to St. Louis, to New Orleans, to Waco.

I remember winter snows that seemed they would never end, as the drifts piled higher and higher. I remember learning how not to plow when the wind is blowing.

I remember watching our team win a couple of World Series from this place, how we all called or skyped each other as the last pitch of the last game was thrown.

Thank you Lord for a home where prayers were answered. For jobs, for relationships, for guidance in the big and little decisions of life, for physical healing. Lord, our prayers of thanksgiving from this place were lifted often it seems, but never ever enough.

The winter that will not end

It is mid-March. My thermometer refuses to move above freezing. 

The white Christmas blanket covers my world well into Lent.

Winter now just lingers, past the anticipation of October, past the appreciation of December, deep into the disgust of March.

Like the last guest on a boring evening
Like the last chapter of a dull novel
Like the swill at the bottom of a child's soda bottle
Like tennis elbow
Like leftover cabbage



 

Baby it's cold outside, sorta

While temperature is a measurable certainty, the longer I live in Minnesota the more I appreciate the psychological side and how it affects how cold or hot we feel. Today is a good example.

Driving in to work the temp outside was -7. If it were November this would be terrible and depressing. It would be dark as I drive in and a crust of ice would be rapidly forming on the lakes. Even worse would be the looming sense that things are only going to get worse.

But it is February. When I get out of my car I can tell it really is below zero. I feel the cold sidewalk through the bottom of my shoes. The tiny bits of moisture in my pants and overcoat freeze and make a swishing sound as I walk. It feels like I'm wearing a thin layer of cardboard. When I get back in my car this afternoon, it will hurt to hold the steering wheel. I may wear gloves and ear muffs inside the car for the first ten minutes or so of the drive home.

But it is February. March is a week away. The sun is in the sky at 7am, not buried below the horizon as in November. The ice houses are coming off the lakes. When I step out of my car the day feels cheery. (And i'm not a cheery day kind of guy). There is the knowledge that warmth is coming, even if it is not here yet. Winter was fun but we're ready for a change.

If you close your eyes, that snowmobile you hear in the distance sounds like a lawnmower.