Growing in Grace

We're at a point in our lives when we're becoming very rooted. I'm not ruling out any mid-life crises to come, but things feel stable, united, peaceful overall. Maybe not moment to moment, but definitely year to year. S. and I see friends and relatives still in the crazy, three-kids-and-moving-to-yet-the-next-apartment phase, and it feels good to have fiiiiinally gotten past that ourselves, knock on wood.

I thought it might be boring in middle-aged prosperity, but it turns out it's not. (Though S. might disagree, stuck in an office most of his waking hours.) I feel like there's plenty of scope for adventure despite not having to apartment-hunt long-distance while nursing a newborn while...well, you get the idea.

One of our latest enterprises reflects my budding middle-aged feelings rather well: we've ordered apple trees for our backyard. Two have arrived already and were planted with care, and one more should be on its way soon. Since we planted two (non-apple) trees last spring as well, and one of them may grow to be 70 feet tall, it was harder than we thought to fit all five in our plot without them crowding each other or shading my beloved garden. I spent quite a while out back with a tape measure and a piece of scratch paper on which I had estimated the space each tree required, pacing distances and placing sticks in the ground as markers. I had to redo that spacing more times than I can count, since each tree was so dependent on the other for pollination. I'm still not quite sure I got it right, but I think I couldn't do any better, which is almost the same.

So the trees are growing. They're beautiful out there, so spindly and yet graceful, with such promise of fruit. Today in church I was looking down the row at my kids, thinking about how much I take them and their sweet little desires for granted, and realizing how much I'll miss them when they're grown and I get all my coveted personal space back. When we planted them, so to speak, we had no real idea of whether or not our enterprise would be a fruitful one, but we had faith that it would.

There's a scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants that I've thought about a lot recently. It says: "And I consecrate unto them this land for a little season, until I, the Lord, shall provide for them otherwise, and command them to go hence; and the hour and the day is not given unto them, wherefore let them act upon this land as for years, and this shall turn to them for their good." I remember having that scripture pointed out to me years ago, it seems to me in the context of the life of President Howard W. Hunter, who only served as prophet for nine months or so. I've tried to have the faith to live "as for years" ever since, through all the uncertainties and uprootings and seeming impossibilities. Even when we knew we were only living in a place for a limited time, we always tried to act as though it were for forever, and we've grown immeasurably through that attitude.

So we plant our apple trees and imagine kids and grandkids climbing in them, and hope for the future fruit -- if not for ourselves, then for others. And in the meantime, while we're waiting, I'll sit in church and rejoice in my children, already bearing fruit: the closing hymn today was I Know That My Redeemer Lives, which happens to be Ian's favorite, and he was singing with his eyes closed and his chest thrown out and the whole congregation could hear him. If you've never seen this kid sing, you've missed an awe-inspiring scene.

Round the Corner

Three miles from our house are the rolling hills of Ashland and Mt. Cuba. I've always loved the human-sized perspective of hills, the impression they give that something bright and new is just over the horizon. We live in a good place.

Savage Small

"Savage Small" was a game invented by my brother Bob for our little brother Bryce--basically Marco Polo with a blanket instead of a pool. It's much more comical when played with several layers of blankets, but K. thinks this puts the kids at a disadvantage. I say that disadvantage is hilarious.

Winter Wonderland

Growing up in Michigan, I had certain things I liked about each season. Fall was my absolute favorite -- not only were there colors, but the crunch of the leaves underfoot and the crisp, brisk breeze made me feel my most alive. Winter was my second favorite, with snow and holiday festivities. (It probably didn't hurt that MI is on the far, far western edge of the eastern time zone, so sunset is noticeably later even in the dark winter.) At some point in my childhood, my Christmas present was a pair of cross-country skis, and there was one Christmas when my family rented a one-room cabin on the shore of Lake Michigan and spent Christmas by the light of a wood-burning stove and candles. Spring was a wash as far as I was concerned, my main memories being of snowmelt mud and yellow grass that had been covered by snow for so many months that it was leached of all green. Summer was OK, but we didn't have air conditioning or access to a pool and so I was mainly excited for thunderstorms and tornado warnings. I do have some good memories of camping trips, gardening, and swimming in lakes.

It wasn't until S. and I lived in Virginia that I understood why so many people loved spring. I had no idea it could be such a beautiful season -- the snow never stayed long enough to kill the grass, so it came up sparkling green and fresh, and the hill near our student apartment was dotted with little wild violets and butterflies. Plus dogwoods everywhere, the hilly land bursting into full leaf, and a bath of sunshine covering everything. (By comparison Michigan is not known for its sunny skies...)

But it wasn't until here in the Northeast that I first started to dislike winter. Somehow, the length of the seasons is skewed here and winter steals an extra month just from spring. Despite a longer winter, though, there is much less snow than I would expect. I guess our northerliness is countered by the fact that we're near the coast. Last of all, my husband works later now than he ever did earlier in our marriage, so winter is long, dreary, dark, cold, boring and a little lonely.

Enter this this year's snowstorms. Having constant fresh snow on the ground brightens and transforms the landscape so wonderfully. I remember as a child waking up on a winter morning and hearing a certain clear hush in the cold air, whereupon I would rush to the window and discover a fresh blanket of snow outside. It never failed to surprise and delight me. Somehow as an adult, I've had the opposite experience -- weather reports are much more ubiquitous, and more often than not I'm disappointed by a possible snow in the forecast which then doesn't fall. It certainly never takes me by surprise in the morning.

But this year, there have been a number of mornings when we rush to look out the window and gasp in amazement and delight. It has been hard work to shovel it all off of our driveway, but I mainly enjoy the exercise and the excuse to be outside and active. And to top it all off, I've had my husband home from work to enjoy it with me and the kids. I love it. Even as I type, there are more fluffy flakes falling outside my window. I've been surprised that the kids haven't been drawn to play out in it very much, though I suppose it's really too deep for them to enjoy much before getting very cold and wet, especially since we never bought them any snowpants or good boots. (Shame on us.) But I do hope that they end up with some good, snowy winter memories like I did. How can they avoid it after 38+ inches in less than a week? The icicles alone will seriously stick in their minds...

(Just a brief description of the above view -- that green bucket is sitting on the corner of our front stoop, Lucy's preschool grapefruit-birdfeeder is hanging from that low branch in the near background, and right near the tree trunk is a smaller lump of snow that marks our bench, where we like to sit and relax in nicer weather.)

We recently had the kids watch The Dark Crystal for the first time, and we thought our row of snowy leaning cypresses looked like the Skeksis.

Snowed In, Under and Through

It's a good thing we have three months worth of food storage, because I get all my storm warnings from mid-Atlantic coworkers and never know whether to take them seriously or not. (Given the amount of fretting that accompanies every snowy forecast, you might get the mistaken impression that it does not snow here--multiple times--every single winter.) Anyway, it looks like this time they were right. Earlier in the week, my Saturday plans included a long, exploratory walk in the woods. Saturday morning, about 7am, those plans got thrown out the window:
I heard we got somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 inches, to the great pleasure of my Michigan bride:
One of our neighbors has access to snow plow, and must have plowed our driveway in the middle of the night, because there was only about 15 inches of snow covering the driveway when we went to dig ourselves out. I don't think he even knows our names, and this is the second time this winter he's plowed our driveway.

I remember one particular winter in Utah, the drifts were halfway up the doors and we could hardly get close enough to deliver the newspapers along our route. I also remember waking up to ice storms in Connecticut, with all the tree branches translucent and bent low to the ground. I think storms must find a place in everyone's memory--the astonishment at how quickly the world can change around us.
In spite of all that, the big drifts are already sagging in the sun. My forecast: two weeks of wet socks.