Sometimes hibernating in winter can lead to cabin fever, but sometimes events conspire to provide way too much excitement in breaking up the monotony...  The occasional approach of a huge snowstorm usually creates enough elation to satisfy my need for a little change in scenery.

It was fun food shopping on Sunday, getting ready for the anticipated wallop of a good old fashioned nor'easter.  The snowflakes began falling Sunday evening.  Tim left for an extra shift at work and Beverly arrived to spend the night so she could have a short commute to work in the morning.

We woke up Monday morning to about 6 inches of the white stuff - more than enough to delight me.  But it kept snowing!  We wound up with 10 inches before a lull in the storm!  Of course the schools and most other businesses remained closed so Beverly and I were faced with the challenge of shoveling our cars out and excavating a spot for Tim when he could get home.  So we bundled up and came up with a plan.  (Did I mention that I was so glad she was here!?)  We found an unoccupied visitor parking spot and started to dig.  For some strange reason I love shoveling snow - that and doing laundry are my favorite chores...  It was exhilarating and we chatted about all kinds of childhood memories, like the snow forts we used build at the end of the driveway so we could pummel our much older (21 years) and adored bachelor cousin Leo with snowballs when he arrived to visit in his Cadillac.  (He had a friend who was a dealer...)

I dug out the front of my car and then guarded the dug-out empty spot (visitor designated parking spaces are at a premium in our condo complex) while Beverly drove my Echo over to claim it.  We then worked away at what remained of snow in our parking place so that Tim could park the Tercel there whenever he got home.  (He had been at work some 17 hours by then...)  The next thing we were going to do was the spot where Beverly was parked, but we were exhausted and sore by then and she has four-wheel drive and decided it wasn't all that necessary to get hers done, even though it would turn out later that we would need her car.

When I got home and checked my email I discovered that my son had found a genealogy website where the the whole family can work privately on the family tree on-line.  Geni  Well, that completely absorbed my attention for the rest of the day...  I lost track of time, Tim got home at last and dinner was late.  And, it had started snowing again.

Tuckered out, I finally went to bed only to be awakened perhaps an hour later to learn that my daughter-in-law was being taken to the hospital by ambulance for emergency surgery on a hernia.  The roads were still in very bad shape, so Beverly drove me to the hospital in her car (after we brushed the foot of snow off of it!) and we spent the night there with Nate so he wouldn't have to wait alone while Shea was having surgery.  (Tim had to sleep after being up over 24 hours...)  It looks like Shea will be all right but she will need to stay in the hospital for several days to make sure everything is working as it should.  The hard part was enduring the uncertainty while she was in surgery.  My paternal grandmother died of a strangulated hernia, but I kept telling myself that treatment had no doubt improved since 1943.  And I kept my mouth shut, too, not mentioning this to poor Nate, who was beside himself with worry.  The surgeon finally came to speak with us at 3:15 a.m. and Nate finally got to go see her in intensive care at 4:30 a.m.  Beverly and I finally left him there and came home to sleep.

So, yesterday I slept a couple of hours and did laundry and kept a migraine at bay...  (Disturbing my sleep routine is one of my migraine triggers...)  Today I'm going to try and get up to my dad's - I'm not sure about the roads yet...  Auntie wants to get to the bank and book store!  Larisa was at Dad's for the storm and the next night, too, so hopefully John is managing with Dad all right without Beverly.  Will get there after getting Auntie settled and will swap storm stories with John I'm sure.  Will have to check in on Shea, too.  But I'm ready to go back to hibernating now!

I have been meaning to transfer something I wrote in a group discussion in December 2008 over here to my blog for several weeks now.  Mostly so I could tag it and find it again.  The words seemed to have come to me from somewhere else, and I had never summed up my spiritual journey with that much clarity before.  What I wrote:  

I was looking for so many answers as a child and as a teen.  In my 20s I thought I had found all the answers (imagine that!) but it was really all a pile of dogma which began crumbling away in my 30s.  In my 40s I finally learned that, as Thoreau put it: A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place, but a seed to be planted and to bear more seeds toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.  In my 50s now I'm figuring out how to live in the present, be an observer, and find my own way spiritually...

Last night my cousin gave me the sad news that he will probably have to sell our great-great-grandparents' Gothic Revival house and barn in Dennisport on Cape Cod.  When our grandfather died in 2001, Matt was able to buy the house and has spent the last eight years renovating it, even though he lives six and a half hours away.  At one time he was worried that I'd disapprove of the improvements, but I welcomed them, knowing and accepting full well that change is inevitable.  And he's done such a beautiful job - the outside still looks the way it did in the late 1800s when Martin E. Thompson, captain of the Schooner Nellie Lamphear, lived there.  In 2005 he was recognized by the Dennis Historical Commission for the restoration and given a certificate of appreciation.  And the inside is beautiful with small changes that don't take away from any of the cherished memories of visiting our beloved grandparents there.  Nothing lasts forever, but still my heart is breaking. 
 

The catalyst that converts any physical location - any environment if you will - into a place, is the process of experiencing deeply.  A place is a piece of the whole environment that has been claimed by feelings.  Viewed simply as a life-support system, the earth is an environment.  Viewed as a resource that sustains our humanity, the earth is a collection of places.
~ Alan Gussow  (A Sense of Place)

Another place "claimed by our feelings" was another Gothic Revival house on the Cape.  It originally belonged to Tim's great-grandaunt and uncle, early modernist painter E. Ambrose Webster, who established his Summer School of Painting there about 1914.  Tim's aunt was forced to sell it last summer.  We took some comfort that she found a perfect buyer, though, a man from the Provincetown Art Association & Museum who has no heirs and intends to restore it and leave it to the museum in his will.  Still, it broke our hearts, because it was a sanctuary for us - we spent time there almost every year and treasure priceless memories of being there with each other alone sometimes, and also times with our children and other relatives.  And Tim, of course, has childhood memories there of visiting his grandparents, too.  We were very blessed, and never took it for granted.

There are so many people, though, on this planet that don't even have these material things to lose, or who have lost so much more than this, so that helps me to keep a perspective.

When I was seven years old our grandparents sold the house belonging to my grandmother's grandaunt and uncle, where my grandparents had lived while caring for them in their last years...  It was located in Woods Hole, also on the Cape.  Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution purchased the property and have used both the house and the barns for offices.  We've visited from time to time and they've always graciously let us in to poke around.  It's kind of surreal seeing office equipment standing where the furniture used to be.  But at least it is well cared for and used for a good purpose.  I wonder now what kinds of feelings my grandparents had at the time they sold it.  Seven year olds don't think about such things!  I hope Matt can find a well-intentioned buyer who will appreciate the history of his house.  And by writing this I hope that when our granddaughters are old enough to wonder about such things, they will have a record of what their grandparents were thinking and feeling when these treasured places were sold...

I have a Bird in spring
Which for myself doth sing --
The spring decoys.
And as the summer nears --
And as the Rose appears,
Robin is gone.

Yet do I not repine
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown --
Learneth beyond the sea
Melody new for me
And will return.

Fast is a safer hand
Held in a truer Land
Are mine --
And though they now depart,
Tell I my doubting heart
They're thine.

In a serener Bright,
In a more golden light
I see
Each little doubt and fear,
Each little discord here
Removed.

Then will I not repine,
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown
Shall in a distant tree
Bright melody for me
Return.

~ Emily Dickinson

American Robin is the state bird of Connecticut and I've been happy to see them the past couple of weeks!

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