February 22, 2015

Another week of snowstorms, ice dams, and midnight rides on windy starlit roads; frozen fiords and fast labors, hidden road signs and toppled trees. Something in the universe is shifting.  I shovel and shiver. I watch my roof and hope it holds.  So much weight.  There is so much weight on top of me. On my roof, on my car, on my shoulders. It will give way at some point, either melting gently or blowing wildly, it eventually disperses to where the weight is evenly distributed and things move freely again. Everything in it’s own time.  Be strong.  Hang in there. Hold on.

Daisy arrived on Wednesday. Over terrible roads and frigid cold they made it on time. Her arrival will herald change somehow.  Not exactly sure what form that will take, but all this bullshit is not going unused. When all were safe and tucked in together, when gratitude was expressed, and nay-sayers sidled away, we took a cleansing breath and talked about how we could use this to help others. She’s on-board.  She agreed to tell her story.  We’ll work on that when she has had time to recover. For now we celebrate snowplows and furnaces and insulated pipes, snow tires and good neighbors and mothers with reliable cars, older children who can help out, nearby clinics with pediatrics, and glimmers of hope that keep us from giving up.

My women’s writing group met yesterday for the first time in a long time.  We wrote, we read, we laughed, we cozied up by the fire when the afternoon light faded. I absorbed the strength from these women, their stories remarkable and raw. We were women on ladders, at our wits end, with a piano, at midnight, windy, with sentences “good enough to eat”.

We read a poem by Pamela Alexander.  A line leaps off the page:

Do not lean the ladders of reason against a burning house.

No. Don’t.