January finished yesterday.  As we slept, February arrived and brought sunshine and sweater weather.  My neighbor, an indoor lady, was sitting on her deck this morning, the sun splashing golden light on her hair.  A purple glow rose from the surrounding woods and faded into an iridescent haze as filmy clouds drifted eastward.

January is a tricky month here in Kentucky.   Temperatures can drop precipitously by 40 degrees, from highs to lows, from sunshine’s green promise of spring to ice’s advantage over reliable navigation.  On Sunday we could be trimming shrubbery; on Monday spreading salt on a slick back porch.

Unlike our Southern neighbors, Kentuckians are generally prepared for snow and ice with salted and plowed roads.  No preparation, however, can alleviate the paralyzing power of frozen water falling earthward. When a vicious ice storm shuttered Kentucky in 2013, 525,000 people were left powerless when tree limbs couldn’t support the extra weight of ice.  Exploding trees sent wooden shrapnel flying across yards, hammered cars, and punched through roofs. Hazardous electrical lines lay across roadways.  The storm was the worst recorded in Kentucky history.

Typically, storms do not close Kentucky highways and strand motorists. But every winter, snow and ice storms do topple rotted trees onto power lines, which happened in our neighborhood last week. We lose power for a few hours, and occasionally for a few days.  Our customary January weather, however, is scattered with welcoming thaws of thin layers of ice, flurries of birds at the feeder and on the hollies, and human flutters of preparation and caution.

A snow prediction causes a run on grocery stores, as if we were in little house on the prairie and blizzards were going to strand us for a month.  Soon after folks have stocked up on milk and eggs, the predicted storm drops an inch of crusty snow, ice forms overnight after a daytime thaw, and folks slip into slow time.

It won’t  do to rush around on ice patches.  If we expect to drive off in a big hurry, we will be disappointed.  The car windows will need de-icing.  The garage door will need hammering to release a tenacious icy grip.  The car will slide on the incline, the tires straining to track.  The effort with extra layers, gloves, and scarves drags on us.  

On a recent Diane Rehms broadcast, Isabel Allende said, “January is an introverted month…a good time for writing.”  I agree.  It’s also a good time for baking, painting, reading, and watching movies,  a great time for catching up with friends or for quieting oneself.  It’s even a good time to bundle up for a long walk just to experience the thrill of crunching snow underfoot.

It was in January that our lovely Rocio, an exchange student from Mexico, discovered snow as we drove westward across detouring backroads toward a family reunion.  As we worried about running out of gas and dying from hypothermia, she pestered us about  playing in the snow until we finally stopped and showed her how to make snowballs and snow angels.  A normally three hour drive took over six hours, not an event we would voluntarily choose, but one which resulted in delicious hot chocolate at a quick stop and a peek through the keyhole of her wonderment.

Our young pup in his first experience with snow approached it suspiciously.  “You want me to pee in that!?” We gleefully, and dishonestly, stomped around as if we always went out in the middle of the night in pjs, boots, and robes to whoop it up in ice and snow.  Now Pup charges out over the deck, slipping and sliding, tasting snow, and expecting us to keep up while we shiver in our slippers.  He’s a convert, you see.  He has discovered the fun side of icy January nights.

There are anecdotes for January’s chill and thaw.  Florida escapes, indoor gyms, yoga, closet cleaning, movie theaters, soup suppers with friends.  It just won’t do to bemoan weather.  Like a sudden increase in cash flow, January weather provides time flow.  Winter has rhythm, a steady pulse.  The heater fan purrs in the walls, ice crackles along the eaves, and woodpeckers peck at the trees.  January encourages an extra cup of tea or coffee, morning omelets, and baking, if not for the calories, for the fragrance of pumpkin bread or apple cake.

Although we bemoan the chill in our bones, we also hover expectantly for a morning snowfall, wishing for two or three inches to blanket the grass, frost tree branches, and quiet the neighborhood.  We like muted evenings of reading by the fire, wearing smart wool socks, and snuggling under down comforters.  Unlike our grandparents we don’t have to chip ice from the pump, sleep in unheated rooms, and milk cows before sunup.  January for us is easy time, slow time, with adventurous possibilities: chain sawing a toppled tree, wheeling a sliding car, and searching for candles, not to mention, heating a house when the power fails.

It’s temporary, January.  After all, it did leave yesterday.  As for February, today’s balmy day is likely just tricky weather, a false precursor of forsythia and daffodil blooms and hikes in wild-flowered woods.

The other day I was taking a morning walk through our neighborhood; the air winter crisp, the sky icy azure.  High above me, a raucous, insistent trumpeting swirled.  Looking up I saw geese gathering, circling around and around, over one hundred geese, their numbers swelling as I tallied. I stood, my head tilted skyward, and watched the geese form three V’s, turn southward, and disappear beyond the horizon of trees.  A gardener raking leaves nearby raised his arm to the sky.  We pointed upward and nodded.  Our smiles spread through my body like warm sunshine.

Every year we gather with church friends at an annual Christmas party. The event follows a predictable routine.  We search for a parking spot along our hostess’ long circular driveway, enter her wide foyer, and inhale the festive fragrances of December — chocolate, cinnamon, vanilla.  Guests fill their plates with finger food and chat in the warmth of generous surroundings sparkling with candlelight, poinsettias, and laughter.    We listen to a holiday story, share favorite memories, and sing Christmas carols augmented with lighthearted favorites like Jingle Bells, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, and I’ll Be Home for Christmas.  A pleasant glow accompanies us home.

Today our supper group, The Clean Plate Club, met for our yearly Christmas brunch, this time in our home. In preparation, Herb and I finished gift wrapping, plumbing repairs, and casserole baking.  Our guests are dug-in friends, familiar with almost fifty years of celebrations and griefs. Someone will start a story about a favorite Christmas gift, which for this group is often about an orange in a stocking, one rare Christmas orange still evoking a luscious aroma and extravagant flavor.  We doubt any mesh bag of oranges from today’s Kroger grocery could match its allure.

At Thanksgiving a granddaughter asked, “Oma, do you have Hanukkah in Kentucky?  We have it in Colorado but it might be different in Kentucky.  Maybe you don’t have it.”  She needed to know since she was coming to visit during the seven days of Hanukkah.  How was she to choose between Thanksgiving in Kentucky and Hanukkah in Colorado?  She needed the customs and comfort of both events.

If our memories should fade, our desire for them would not.  Even when we least expect it, we find ourselves surprised by reminders of the order of life, its repetitions and natural patterns: geese gathering, leaf raking, gift wrapping, cookie baking, seasonal singing, candle lighting.  We bask in the glow of the familiar, its rhythm, and harmony.  We don’t require intensity; we need balance and providence, that which is given and that which we create.

We pray for freedom from the temptations of discouragement and its devilish companion fear, which follow us daily, echoing from FOX and CNN, inhabiting workplaces and highways, even invading ordinary conversations.  Let us more deliberately step away from distractions and into essential patterns, colored by wonder, faith, charity, and godly love.

My Honda’s rear bumper represents a dilemma.  Who should pay for its jagged, smashed in damage?

Surely someone is to blame.

The fella at the Honda repair shop asked me, “Who was at fault?”  And the owner of Bird Auto repairs wanted to know what happened and who caused it.  “You should call that guy and ask him to pay for this!”

I shouldn’t have to pay for my new bumper.  I liked the sound of that, zero for me, $700 for the other driver, who, by the way, drove away without a scratch — unless he bent a tire rim or had to replace his two front tires when his right front tire failed as a result of slamming into my car’s rear bumper.

Except…it’s complicated.

On the way to Saturday market, I reminded myself not to park near the entrance to the lot because drivers had been entering it carelessly.  I chose a slot away from the entrance and away from any other vehicles.  No cars were adjacent to my car when I walked off to my favorite vegetable vendor.

When I returned to my car, it was dwarfed by an adjacent extended cab, long bed truck.  Apparently the pickup’s driver also wanted to avoid parking near the market’s entrance.

I’m well rehearsed on how to back out of a parking space. However,  I do not know how to see through a truck.  I now realize that asking someone to watch for me as I backed out would have been advisable.  But hindsight doesn’t come first;  it comes when?  You got it– afterwards!

After you slip out of the space, after you crane your head as if you really do have x-ray vision, after you hear the thud and feel the surprising punch of another vehicle hitting yours.  

Where did HE come from?  But of course, HE came from the entrance you had carefully avoided.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, ma’am,” he said.  “Are you okay?”  He looked dumbfounded.  And he was sincerely sorry. “I just wasn’t watching.  I was looking toward the other lane.”

I thought, “%^*#%!”

“This has been the worst morning.”  And he did look frazzled, this man on the way to buy vegetables for his wife, this man with the unperturbed family dog in the backseat.

“It’s just a bumper,” I said.

“I was hurrying.  My mother is in a nursing home.  My dad fell off the roof and is in the hospital.  I have to get to Indiana today.  And now this!”

After we traded essential information and asked things like “What’s your dog’s name?”  And “What church do you go to?” I drove off.

Okay, so he wasn’t watching.  He was in a hurry and was distracted.  But… I chose the parking space.  Besides,  I could have asked a friend to watch for an oncoming car.

Why make problems for this fella?  Because he was more to blame than I?  Or maybe he wasn’t.  Maybe circumstances simply complicated our Saturday-to-market choices.

I could have called him and asked him to split the cost with me.  I think he would have been glad to do that.  I went so far as to rehearse my request.  But I just couldn’t do it.  It was only a bumper.  I would eventually have enough money to pay for its repairs.

Don’t get the wrong idea here.  I can be self-righteous.  Just ask my husband.  Once I get on my high horse, it would take a crane to pull me from my saddle.

I just couldn’t find any steam for blaming the other guy.  And without that steam, I couldn’t ask for recompense.

So for now, I’m driving around with a jagged hole in my car’s bumper.  I’m even getting used to it.  It’s an image thing:  I’m the kind of person who can wait to have a bumper fixed, which kind of surprised me, the notorious perfectionist and consummate editor of life.

—————-
Blame is just a lazy person’s way of making sense of chaos. — Doug Coupland, author of All Families are Psychotic.

Ellie traced the outline of her name on the lined paper lying on her desk.  E-L-L-I-E. The morning bell had sounded.  The twitter of five-year-olds settling into morning kindergarten rose and fell from pockets of the room.

“Good, morning, children,” welcomed Mrs. Alexander.  “Does anyone have a birthday today?”

“I do!” shouted Stephen.

“Me too!” said Ellie, impulsively.

“Are you sure, Ellie?”  Mrs. Alexander remembered vaguely Ellie’s birthday celebration in the fall, six months earlier.

“Yes, really.  It is.”  Ellie knew she was fibbing. She could feel the fib on her skin and in her tummy.  She didn’t know to say, “I was only kidding, but I wish it were.”  She hadn’t learned yet how to squelch spontaneous outbursts for attention.

In Mrs. Alexander’s class all birthdays were celebrated with pictures of cakes, colored and decorated by the children.  Ellie loved coloring and decorating her cake picture, but disliked having to give hers away to someone else, even if that was the reason for the drawing and coloring, to celebrate someone else.  If it could be her birthday, she could keep her picture.  

For Stephen she made chocolate cake with strawberries.  For herself, she made a lemon cake with red rose buds.   On the blackboard in the front of the room were Stephen’s and her name.    S-T-E-P-H-E-N.   E-L-L-I-E.  She carefully copied Stephen’s name in purple above his cake.  Her own name she wrote in green crayon.

Mrs. Alexander collected all the cake pictures.  She would give them to Stephen and Ellie before the dismissal bell.

As the day continued, premonitions of dread and embarrassment seeped into Ellie’s thoughts.  How would she deal with twenty-six colored cake pictures?  What would she tell her mother when she got home?

Her classmates congratulated her.  “Wait ’til you see the cake I made for you!”  said Susan, her favorite classmate.  “I made a chocolate cake for you,” said Peter who liked to ride bikes with her down Poppy Avenue.  “Happy Birthday,” said shy Judy.

What would she say if her friends discovered her lie!  The fib on her skin creeped into her neck.  Her feet squirmed.  Her eyes avoided Mrs. Alexander’s.

As she left school with the twenty-six cake pictures in a folder, she considered throwing them away, but she felt like everyone’s eyes were on her in the school halls and playground.  I know, she thought, I’ll throw them out on the way home.

The walk home followed a short meandering street, up a set of stone steps through a neighborhood park, across Hillview Drive to Helen Avenue.  The cake pictures grew heavier and heavier with each step.  How could she throw away all the pretty cakes?  But what could she say when she got home?  She decided she would throw all but hers away.  In the alley behind the houses on Helen Avenue were garbage cans.  She would go home in the alley and discard the pictures.

As she walked through the alley, dogs barked.  A neighbor was hanging out her wash on a line.  “Hi, Ellie! Have a good day at school?”  Ellie squeezed the birthday folder to her chest.    She came to the garbage can behind the Brown’s garage.  She put the birthday folder on the ground. When she reached for the can’s lid, the tin lid scraped and clattered.  Suddenly dogs erupted in cacophonous barking and howling.

Ellie snatched up the folder and took off running toward home.  She raced into her yard, threw open the basement door, and pounded upstairs and into the kitchen.

“Why, Ellie, what’s wrong?” asked her mother, Ruth.

“I hate those dogs.”

“You can have some butterscotch pudding after you change your clothes. Oh, what do you have here?”   Ruth reached for the folder.  The pictures fell onto the floor.

“Nothing, just some pictures we colored.”  Ellie swept up the pictures with her hands.

“Birthday cakes?”

“We all got cakes today.  Everybody colored a cake for everyone so no one would be left out.”

“How nice.”  Ruth took the pictures out of the folder and lay them on the kitchen table.  “Look how pretty they are.  Which one did you do?”

“This one.  It’s a lemon cake.”

“That’s lovely.  It looks delicious.  Well, better change your clothes, Sweetie.  Then come have some pudding.”

Ellie couldn’t shake free of the gnawing lies.  The pudding felt like mud in her throat.  She wanted to blurt out the truth but it remained stuck somewhere between her belly and her tongue. For years thereafter the memory stuck like a stone, colored with shame and embarrassment, a good curative for her partiality for exaggeration.

…..

Then when Ellie was seventy, she told someone the story, someone other than her husband, who had long ago become accustomed to Ellie’s flights into confession.  After all, her husband had his own stories:  locking a brother up in a rabbit cage and target practicing in the kitchen.

The story at first seemed about shame, about seeking redemption, the child within the aging adult looking for absolution by finally telling the truth, which all sounded utterly ridiculous now that her own children had fibbed their way through childhood and adolescence and recovered to be adults.  One could only laugh at guilt howling like barking dogs in an alleyway.

What if the mother had known?  What if the story was not about teaching a child not to lie, but about loving someone so much a person got a free pass upon which to start anew?

Two versions:  shaming or loving.  Which one happened in this story?  And how would the outcome have differed if the mother had said, “Oh, Sweetie, don’t lie.  You know better!  No one in our family lies! You take those pictures back tomorrow to Mrs. Alexander and tell the truth!  Wait ’til your father hears this!”

I venture to say, this is how love works.  Since we are all flawed, we can help one another be better people by going forward, not backward, not faulting, not blaming, and by feeding, kindly feeding and trusting that nourishment works better than punishment.