Suddenly Everything Seems Possible + Ice Storm Photos

This is what we woke up to the morning after the lights went out. All the following ice photos are from that first day – all taken through our windows. The snow photos were the second day, mostly also from our windows. Finally, on the third day, we went outside as a family and saw the damage first hand.

The climbing tree, broken branches frozen to the ground

Surveying the backyard.

The pine trees were like Narnia – only the bad, evil witch part of Narnia.

A few shots around town.

The golf course.

Not exactly a safe place to play right now. I have heard many reports of eye injuries as people clean up the branches all over town.

Yes, this is a power pole. Or should I say, was.

Nothing but splintered remains and criss-crossed lines.

Horray!

Our saviors from Wadena.

And so the clean up begins.

I apologize for not posting these photos sooner…I couldn’t look at them without feeling ill. Seriously. I had to avoid them for a few days to get a little perspective.

The following is what I wrote on Wednesday morning, after the lights came on the night before. Allow me add that the power was back out on Wednesday night for a few hours, but that was because of a tremendous thunderstorm and lightning hitting a transformer…just what we all needed, right? It is Monday night now, almost one week later, and again we’re having snow and wind like crazy. It has been a wild couple of weeks that I really don’t want to re-live. On the good side, people were safe and there were very few injuries – mostly the injuries came later with damage to eyes when people were out cleaning up fallen branches. There are some streets that look like tunnels, the piles of branches are so huge. This will take weeks to clean up…months, perhaps. And years to get back our trees.

HOW MANY TIMES DO WE FLIP ON A LIGHTSWITCH WHILE LOOKING FOR A FLASHLIGHT WHICH WE NEED BECAUSE THE LIGHTS ARE OFF?!!! I think that everyone has done this in their lives.

So many switches were on in our house, and that’s how I knew the power had come back on because there were suddenly lights!

We’ve put away the flashlights. The dishes are gently rocking on the Anti-Bacterial setting in my dishwasher. A load of towels is “cooking” on high heat. I turned on my electric blanket last night, just because I could.

But the TV? You know, I kinda didn’t mind not having the TV on. Not having the internet bummed me out, I admit. But I really don’t have to compulsively check Facebook every half hour in order to be happy.

I tell you what does make me happy, though. Three men from Wadena, Minnesota – a town about 5 hours north of here – who restored our power last night, just two hours shy of one week exactly from when it went out. (The oven clock came back on and read 9:06 – it picked up right where it had left – almost as if time itself had stopped. As if the past week never happened.)

I looked up Wadena on my newly-restored internet and discovered that this town of 4,000ish suffered a terrible E-F 4 tornado three years ago. In other words, these men know what it is to suffer at the hand of nature. They know what it’s like to need help from others. They came down to my town so that they could give back what they received.

I told them, “Thanks for leaving your homes and your families to come down and lend us a hand.” They shrugged and mumbled and waved for my camera.

I am not usually given to dancing. But I danced last night.

Suddenly everything seems possible.

Betrayal

I have written the opening lines of this post several times in my head over the past week. I have questioned and prayed and cried. I have wondered whether or not I ought to even write it. Are there things so sacred that they ought not to be written? Things that, in the writing, are depleted by the very act of putting them into words? Or is it just that I, as an imperfect being, am frustrated that nothing I say can begin to touch the truth of a life which was…but is no more?

I am not a painter. I am not a sculptor, or a carver of fine wood. If I were I would attempt to remember through my art, to present a portrait of my cousin that could be admired, touched, hung on a wall or put on a pedestal for all to see. Even then there would be limits: her hair was not quite like that. Her fingers were surely longer: a pianist’s hands. How can I portray her laugh?

My medium is less tangible, but no less imperfect: words.

Andrea loved words. She handled them correctly, used them honorably, and her conversation was intelligent and enlightening. I always enjoyed talking to Andrea and she always made me think. I only wish we could have talked more often, and for many more years ahead. She would comment on my blog from time to time, and I cherish those comments – never wasted words, always seasoned with grace.

Andrea’s sense of humor was dry and sharp, much like her mother’s. I didn’t realize how alike they were until, in recent years, I read letters from them both and saw how closely they resembled each other in viewpoints, in political ideas, in tone of voice. Their letters – or e-mails as the case may be – are ones I sit down to read with a cup of tea and a smile. And it is they I am thinking of when I proof-read my Christmas letter each year, knowing even as I do so that I probably have a few errors which they will notice but be too kind to point out.

Andrea wrote about her visit to the plastic surgeon after her mastectomy. She had me doubled over in laughter as I read, describing his harem of nurses, his words of assurance that her new chest would be gorgeous and compelling. She could laugh at herself, her world, her cancer.

When I was eleven or twelve, Andrea came from Ohio to spend the summer with us on Orcas Island, Washington. Living so many hundreds of miles apart had done nothing to encourage relationship, and, while I’d met her several times over the years, I didn’t really know this cousin who was eight years older than me and I didn’t really know what to expect when she moved into our house for three months. After all, I already had two older sisters; did I really want another one?

Turns out, she enjoyed spending time with me! She even wanted to make cookies with me and didn’t mind me hanging around! She helped me with stuff, she laughed and giggled and schemed with me. She even led me in a culinary triumph: Hot Dog Cookies, just so she could help me trick my dad, her uncle Dave – or, as the cousins all called him, “Jungle Dave”.

The cousins. I’m the little one on the end…Andrea is five over from me. This is most likely the first time I met Andrea…though, to be sure, I don’t remember it!

Together Andrea and I taught Dad that if he asks for Hot Dog Cookies, he’s going to get them. And let me tell you, there’s nothing like Snickerdoodles with a slice of hot dog hidden inside.

I’m pretty sure he even ate one.

After that summer it was back to sporadic sightings of each other, but every time I saw Andrea, I was glad: our grandparent’s 50th anniversary, and later their 60th, family weddings and reunions. She even came to Minnesota for my wedding, and once, she came for work. My husband and I drove over to Rochester to see her that time, about three years ago. We had lunch and we talked about her cancer – briefly. It was easier to not talk about it. Easier to believe the doctor’s words that, while chronic, it shouldn’t be fatal.

That was bone cancer, I think…after the breast cancer and before the brain cancer. Before she couldn’t see to read, couldn’t walk, couldn’t play her piano. And it was before she got married, if I remember right. Andrea waited a long time to find the man who was perfect for her. She told us about him at my parent’s 50th anniversary, when we all met at the Washington coast to celebrate.

We were so happy for Andrea. They got married not too long afterwards. Two years ago? Three? Either way, it wasn’t long enough. Not long enough when you say your vows, believing that, “till death do us part” will still be a long way off, a distant and aged event you both can enter into, wrinkly and bent, but willing because you’ve led a good and long life.

She led a good life, yes. But not a long one.

It’s not fair. It’s all wrong.

The fingers that played are still. The voice that laughed is quiet. She told her family that she was looking forward to seeing her brother, also gone far too soon from a terrible disease. I think to even say such a thing was to acknowledge that she knew that hope, that intangible, wispy miasma, was gone.

Or, rather, is it this way? Was it hope which allowed her so say such a thing? Hope, faith, whatever you want to call it. She knew – as much as a human heart can – that she’d see her brother again someday because she knew Whom she had believed.

Faith in Jesus is what held Andrea together. When she wept, when she questioned “why”, when she cried out to Him that this was not what she wanted, it was faith and faith alone which enabled her to face death, knowing that it was not the end. It was merely a change in viewpoint. A new piece of sheet music upon her piano. A new word – or whole strings of words, of understanding – to add to her vocabulary.

“Where, oh death, is your victory? Where, oh death, is your sting?” 1 Corinthians 15:55. The sting of death was destroyed by the death and resurrection of Jesus.

We will see Andrea again.

Yes, Andrea’s body betrayed her. But her God never will.

I Philosophize About Epiphanies

When I began this blog a friend asked me, upon hearing the title, “But what if you don’t have any epiphanies one week? What will you write about then?” I refrained from smiling but I admit I thought, “You aren’t a writer, are you?”

The truth is, a writer can write whether inspired by some huge revelation or not. I can write about the big stuff, yes, but I can also write about the normal moments of life. The day-to-day events that create me far more than the big things. Because, while big things may mold us faster, it’s the daily stuff that makes us able to face those big moments with grace.

While the huge “Epiphanous Moments” may not come every day, every time I sit down to write (or stand at the sink and get to thinking or drive into town while pondering) I have moments where life becomes a little more clear, where things clarify themselves into coherent thoughts or sentences and I have to run to the computer to jot down my revelations (or write them on the back of a business card if I happen to be in the car, all while keeping my eyes on the road and upholding the law).

I think that most of us have small moments of realization all the time. I will think about some decision I have to make: let’s say, to dye my gray hair or not. I ruminate. I puzzle it out. I consider. This may take anywhere from a few minutes or hours to weeks or months. Then, quite suddenly, I know. I have decided. And, of course, I want to act NOW. I get on the phone and make the appointment. Preferably for that very day, though, in the case of haircuts, that never seems to work. (In case you’re wondering: I haven’t yet decided about my gray. I’m still too freaked out to decide. I do know I need a haircut, though.)

Yes, those small decisions or epiphanies, if you will, happen all the time. But I do certainly have huge epiphanies, too. Take the moment that I knew for sure that I wanted to marry my husband. We had been talking about the “M” word and I knew that he (being the researcher that he is) had bought a “secret book” about marriage (Saving your Marriage Before it Starts, by Les and Leslie Parrott) which he wouldn’t tell me the title of lest it freak me out. We’d talked about the future, about kids and life together, but he hadn’t yet officially gotten down on one knee…which he eventually did exactly 17 years ago next month, in the snow, in the gazebo (and camp) where we had met. I totally knew what my answer would be at that moment…thanks to the thinking I had given to the issue prior to that event…and The Epiphanous Moment that came as I stood by my computer one evening and suddenly JUST KNEW.

“Yes,” I said to myself, watching him as he worked on the computer. “Yes.” I hadn’t been contemplating it just then…it just smacked into me from the blue. “YES! This is the person I want to spend the rest of my life with.” There. Decision made. No regrets.

I remember that moment clearly – though it was not romantic or memorable in any other way. It was a decision reached after the question had been left to simmer on the back burner of my brain. It was a decision made in a normal moment of life, knowing that I wanted all the rest of my normal moments to include him.

I did not know the moment was coming until it came. Such is the mystery of the epiphany. It is untouchable/unforcable/ unforeseen. And it is jolly good when it comes.

And that, my friends, is why I blog my epiphanies. Even if it’s a lesser decision – to dye or not to dye – I can write about it. I can make it work. I’m never at a loss for topics. The huge epiphanies may not come every day…and that’s okay. Just like my decision to marry The Sailboat King…I want my blog to include the normal moments in life.

I want to stand by my computer and say, “Yes”!