Winter Chores

I am caught off guard by winter. In the night, while I sleep, it goes about the business of covering everything up, with snow, and ice, and cold. And I wake, to a steel gray sky, and a thick crust of white. The trees carry the burden of winter, too, holding up with frail stick arms tall slices of snow. The mantle drops from the limbs with the least bit of movement from the wind. I wish I could see the green ground, but it is silenced beneath the snow. I wonder if it could speak up even if it wanted to.

I draw my coat around me, and put on my snow cap (the creamy white one; I wear it rarely but it seems fitting now), and pull on the only pair of gloves I could find. Mittens, actually. Rainbow colored mittens. I am a sight as I emerge into the white outside, wilding a snow shovel. Snow continues to fall from the sky; tiny flecks of snow, the kind that is made when it is so cold it takes your breath away. It is light, like sugar sprinkles, falling again over everything. Like depositing layers of icy sediment, the snow is steady, then recedes a bit, but it never stops.

So I begin the task of shoveling the driveway. I make a pattern out of it. At first I move right to left, making long scrapes in the snow. The shovel grates against the pavement when it finally finds it. Right to left. Scrape. Right to left. Scrape. And then I change the pattern. I move from center right. Then center left. The shovel scrapes the pavement. I move to center again.

In the distance, I hear the scrapes of the neighbor's shovels. We are all in proximity of talking, but we don't. The cold has sucked the voices out of us. And there is something about the winter that wraps you in a blanket of solitude. So we all continue our work, creating as we go a strange rhythmic song of snow shovels grating. The sound is a little harsh, but at points is muffled according to the distance between us. I go to center, work right and then back to center. The sky sprinkles sugar fine snow all over me and the part of the driveway I have already shoveled. I'm sure my rainbow mittens would curse furiously at the cold if they could. The cold is stifling to everything around me.

But then I hear something unexpected. Out of place, but such a welcome sound, my wind chime chirps in the wind that is starting to pick up. It sings to me a promise of growth. Of spring. I hear my wind chime most during the dawn of a fierce summer storm. It bangs against itself in a furry of metallic notes, alarming me that the thunder would soon be rolling in. But here is my wind chime, barely, tentatively, sending its notes into the air.

It is saying to me, hope is coming. Let the ground rest. Let the buds yet to be formed on the trees wait just a little longer. Let God lay the cold blanket over everything, and let it all be quite. Remember to rest. Let it all rest. Hope and promise are coming.

I arrive at the end of my driveway. I pick up the last scoop of snow and fling it to the side. My neighbors have retreated back into their houses already. And the song of scraping shovels stops.

When I walk up onto the porch, I put the shovel down and listen. I still hear my wind chime continue to ting, reminding me to rest. Snow, as it falls, is not at all as noisy as rain. It has no sound at all.

Beacon

My mother is a great source of inspiration to me. I have recently felt a great sense of sadness, over many things, and in combination, they have left me almost paralyzed and withdrawing. At my worst, she came to me and said, "I am your mother." Indeed she is. God provides these people, these beacons, to you, in times of total darkness, and you hear them call to you, call you out of the hollow, and back into the light and world. They are strong for you in times you can't be.

And today, my heart is so lifted and hopeful. I see that its light is full again and the darkness is falling away. I tell this to my husband, and my friends, and then my mother, my beacon, called me from a place where she feels a little lost.

My grandmother is sick again. My mom is burdened because this is a difficult transition for her, this passing into twilight of someone that has guided her, and she loves, and she doesn't want to see in this frail state. My mother has asked me many times to write something about my grandmother. And I have not, until tonight, truly done that. But I see in my memory my mother and her mother in all these pictures, and they melded together in this poem.

Mom, you are so strong. I am with you and grandma is now and will always be with you, too.


My mother,
who came from a
woman of mountains,
of the halls of wood frame
homesteads, swept yards,
and peeling laughter
from brothers, and sisters,
from a woman who
descended steps of
stone school houses, in black
muslin skirts, and married
a young war veteran,
leaning , laughing
against bridges,
Inez, pop. 600.
My mother, who
stood in kitchens,
watching cakes baking,
eye level of polka dot
Aprons, of fifties
Formica tables and
peanut butter rooster
glasses, and
grasshopper slip-ons.
I see you, my mother, in
black and white pictures,
bangs cut straight
with Mary Janes and
cardigans, trying a smile
in a park in Cleveland.
And there's your mother,
in black and white and
long legs and dark hair
and isn't she beautiful?
And my mother you are
your mother's daughter,
strong and true and a
fighter and I am
of you and with you and
I am too her daughter;
because of you,
she continues.

Fifth Business

I took a writing class several years ago. Besides the fact that the class was a blur to me because I felt so utterly out of place (I am still not comfortable saying I'm a writer; I write, but in my mind, I am still not good enough to be called a writer), I remember one class where we discussed Fifth Business. This random term popped into my head while I was driving recently (I remember the spot it came to me, exactly; I had just passed Tim Hortons, which is a coffee shop for those of you who don't know). Fifth Business. It dawned on me that as of late my life is full of Fifth Business.

Before I sat down to write this particular blog, I googled Fifth Business. I wanted to see what might pop up. I was unaware that someone had actually written a book called "Fifth Business". Perhaps they had the idea long before I did. But, included in the description of this book was the origin of the book's title: Fifth Business, a character essential to the action but not a principal. It is a theater term; it is the folks that come onto the stage to further the plot, to make sure the main characters go in the direction they ought to go, to not stray from the storyline. They are the bellhops in all the movies that occur in hotels. They are the cabdrivers in the all the scenes where people are in cabs. Or the old woman in her recliner in the senior citizen's home that divulges at just the right theatrical moment the story of her life. And the main character realizes something at the capitulations of all these characters.

And then these characters dissolve from the scene, having spread their knowledge like golden dust and then having strode off to Neverland.

I have had so much Fifth Business lately that I ought to be walking the straight and narrow. My life's plot should be riding on a taught string.

I have been thinking about all the people that have come in and out of my life, every person that has left an impression on me; I am like a card of smeared black fingerprints left when someone might be in a hurry. I can see all of ther faces. I can hear the conversations I had with them. I can feel my mind wrapping around their comments and turning on a light switch on my head. I can see them all, but some names I have forgotten. Like the boy from college who always told be about the stories he wrote. And I would lean on one hand and listen, because truly I envied him for his create endeavors, and maybe he continued my life's plot by letting me know I could have dreams, too.

I saw him in the mall, recently, and I could not remember his name. He clearly called me by mine, but I could not remember his. Fifth business, it is essential to the action. But not principle.

More recently, though, I have been restless. I feel like I am standing still, but my mind is crawling. It is not content, it does not sit still.

My plot needs jolt. It needs to move forward.

There have been things that recently in my life have appeared so important to me. So important that I have hung my moon on them. So many of these things don't even make it to the calibre of Fifth Business; maybe they are props, distractions, general two-dimensional back drops that have not left me feeling fulfilled. But I have looked upon them as principles; things that are essential to my story.

How blinded we are by the props, the Fifth Business that is at a moment important, but fades so quickly.

I realized my principle tonight. My son, my little Ethan, has developed a fascination for Cars. Cars in general and especially Cars the movie. He asks for it constantly, in his slightly unintelligible one year old way. So, I gave him a bath and put him in his footed pajamas, and laid him in my bed. I sat down next to him, and he snuggled into me. His hair smelled like flowers. Cars was on. I stroked his hair, and rubbed his dimpled hands and he never flinched. I know he was watching his favorite movie, but I tend to think he liked me being there.

Fifth Business has its place, but Ethan, he is principle. I need to remember that.

Fifth Business always exits the stage. Principle is there until the curtain drops.