Grandma, there's alot of smoke...part 2.

  We evacuated that evening to my son's home that was nearby. From their development we could see the smoke billowing up from The Forest. I drove the car to a nearby hill behind the local high school and joined scores of other people just watching the fire. Many soon realized that while they were there out of curiosity, I was there because my home was probably in the path of the firestorm. So many people, total strangers offered help---a place to stay---a ride anywhere I needed to go---anything that they could do to be helpful.One woman came up to me with tears in her eyes and said she was sure my home would be safe. At that point I wasn't so sure.

  A few days went by of not knowing and still being unable to get any closer to our home. The news was constant....videos of homes in flames, reports of people and animals that did not escape. The roads were blocked with fire trucks, emergency vehicles and bulldozers.

  One morning a few days after the first reports of the fire, my daughter got a call from a friend of hers. He was a reporter for the local newspaper and he had somehow been allowed to go behind the police barricades to report the story. He called to tell her that he was standing in our yard, looking at our still-standing house....and he wanted to know if he should feed our chickens!!!!Our home was still standing!!! From the pictures that he sent us from his cell phone, it looked as if the forest around us had been burned, the grass was scorched but that the house was untouched! Our adult chickens were still alive and the 30 baby chicks in the incubator had all made it through untouched.

  He reported that there was a very large rabbit in a cage in our garage---with the door to the cage wide open. In our rush to evacuate we had no place for the farm animals and had to leave them behind. The rabbit's cage door had been left open so he could have a greater chance escaping. He was back in his cage with not a whisker singed.

  With this good news, we were hopeful again of seeing our home. But the news that night turned bad, with the wind shifting and the fire coming in many different directions. With this, came the pre-evacuation orders for my son's home---the one we were staying with!!! So once again we were packing up and waiting for the word to leave. It was a difficult time for all. Many more homes and out buildings were lost as this fire grew in intensity and strength. The smoke was incredible and the sight from nearby hilltops was unbelievable.

  Interestingly enough, the road to my garden center was never completely closed and the water and power were not turned off. So every day I would go to check on the place and to water. The helicopters loaded down with 500 gallons of water would be constantly flying overhead. Little did I know that one of those helicopters had dumped a bucket of water on my home to save it just a few days before.

  About 5 days after the fire started, we were allowed back to our homes for 15 minutes to retrieve medicine or pets that were left behind in the chaos of evacuating. We had a police escort to and from our homes, and as the police woman sat in her car, we were allowed to run inside. My daughter and I grabbed the 30 baby chicks and the rabbit. We were told that the SPCA had been feeding the adult hens in the outside pen, and that we couldn't take them. With the animals safely in our truck, we could take a minute to look around. The ground around the house was charred. There was smoke rising from piles of dead branches. The flames had come 18" from the foundation.

  As we drove back on the route to exit the Black Forest, we were struck with the complete devastation we saw. Homes gone. Forests burned to a crisp. A complete and utter silence over the entire area. The loss in some areas was complete. In other areas a home was untouched. A playground was still standing. A wooden cow lawn ornament stood guard over the property of her mistress, who would come home to find little else.

  Nine days after the beginning of the fire, we were allowed to return home. At first we were told we could stay only 3 hours, but then the all clear was given. The fire still raged east and north of us, but we were allowed to return home. As I went inside the house, I discovered that a portion of the kitchen ceiling had caved in. The water that was dropped on the roof to save it from catching fire had found an air vent. With all those gallons of water rushing in, the little air vent had bent and let the intruding water into the roof, which caused the ceiling to get wet and cave in. Other than that, and a little smoke smell in the basement, there was no damage whatsoever. We could see the burn marks just inches from the house, and the woods all around us had been affected. But the house was fine. Perfectly fine!

Continued----Part 3 to come.

"Grandma---there is alot of smoke."

  We had a fire here in the Black Forest 2 months ago. The grass was brown, the ground was hot and dry and the trees were like kindling. We were having the hottest and driest June in recent history. The perfect recipe for a fire.

  The morning of the fire, I had been at work at the garden center. Everything there was so parched and I had been watering all morning. The wind had picked up and was blowing hot, dry air. I had decided to take some of my kids and grandkids fishing that afternoon at a nearby lake to escape the heat.

   While we were there I got a text from one of my employees that he could see smoke billowing up in the trees behind the shop. I then got a call from a family friend saying we needed to get home right away as the fire was spreading. I had 4 little kids with me and my son who is in a wheelchair. We quickly gathered up all of our fishing gear, lunches and  lawn chairs and loaded into the car.

  The lake where we were fishing is down in a hollow next to the mountains, and we could see no signs of a fire from that perspective. But as we drove up to the road to lead us home we were met with a startling sight. There was a mushroom cloud of smoke right over the Black Forest...right where our home should have been. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was a massive "atomic bomb" size cloud.

  With 5 kids in the car seeing all of this also, I knew my job was to keep them calm. They all were staring at this sight in front of us and none of them spoke for a minute or two. Then my littlest grandson said..."Grandma, there is alot of smoke!" Another started to cry and one tried calling his mom. A little friend of my grandson, who was along desperately tried to call his mom, then his dad to see if they were alright. We still had 15 miles to drive before we could get home, and all the while this huge cloud of smoke is straight in front of us. With soothing words, and calm answers I was able to hold it together until we pulled into the drive.

  Two of my grandsons and their friend ran to their home, and I got to our house just in time to see a wall of smoke pouring over the woods directly behind us. The fire was still quite a ways away, and we felt we had time to grab a few things.  My sweet 5 year old grandson wanted a snack....and my son in the wheelchair hopped out as quickly as he could to scoot downstairs to pack a few things as we knew we had to leave quickly.

  I propped my grandson at the counter with a box of goldfish crackers and some juice and went back to my room to grab a few clothes. I stood in the closet trying to calm my nerves and logically think what I should take with me.

  At about that time, another son, who was at the airport about ready to take off, called and offered to have 3 trucks and 10 of his employees come to help me "move my house". While they were on the way we got the mandatory evacuation call from 911. Another son showed up at about that time, and started taking pictures and home movies out to the car. By then the crew from my son's business was there as was my daughter. We started throwing things in baskets and the crew started moving furniture and pictures out to the waiting trucks.

  My grandson was still eating goldfish crackers and drinking his juice at the counter, but once the crew was here he moved out to the trampoline to watch all of the excitement. He even handed a few toys from the sandbox to one of the "moving men" to save for him!

  The men helping with the move were so kind and compassionate. One of them even came and hugged me and told me they would do anything they could to help. As we were preparing to leave, I stood in front of my 10,000 volume library and cried the first tears all day. My books! They were all going to go up in flames...such a loss. They were all my friends. I had spent so many hours with them. They had been with me for years and years and I felt like I was abandoning them. One of the guys offered to start hauling books out to the truck if that is what I wanted. But in the end , we closed the library door and walked away. That part was the hardest.

  Within 45 minutes most of my house was loaded into the waiting trucks, and we were pulling out of our drive. Our development road was clogged with bystanders watching the smoke and flames as the Black Forest burned. We had to take a back way out of the forest in order to get to my son's home in town.

  The site was scary. Hundreds of cars and trucks were pouring INTO the Black Forest to rescue children, pets or belongings. The sky was dark and the smoke was everywhere. It was very sobering.

Part 2 next time......

Missing Abram

  Can you miss someone that never took a breath of air. Never opened his eyes on this beautiful world? Never got a chance to meet his loving family? 14 years ago tomorrow, my son Abram, died at 9 months gestation. He weighed 7 1/2 pounds, had fat chubby cheeks and a mass of black wavy hair. He looked perfect---but still...so very still.

  You see there was an emergency, and I did not get to the hospital in time for them to save him. He went straight to heaven without having uttered one single sound. I almost died in the emergency and was not able to really process what had really happened until much later. After a week in ICU we were finally able to lay his sweet small body to rest. The casket was so tiny. The grave was so vast.

  After 14 years, with so much time gone by, I still wonder what he would look like, how tall he would be, what color his hair would be. Would he love to read? Or would he love sports more? Would he want to be a greenhouse guy or would he be the Dr. in the family? No doubt he would be spoiled rotten...since he would be the youngest. How would our family dynamics be changed with this other little person in our lives?

  I DO miss Abram. I miss not knowing him. I miss not hugging him. I miss not being able to teach him how to read, ride a bike, ask a girl out on a date. I miss the person I may have been having known him.

  He will always be that cute, chubby cheeked baby to me that was still...so very still.

Happy Birthday in heaven Abram.

mom

Sometimes you just don't feel like it!

Sometimes you just don't feel like it. You don't feel like getting out of bed in the morning. You don't feel like going grocery shopping to fill those empty cupboards.You certainly don't feel like paying bills, disciplining kids or taking out the trash.  You don't feel like doing much of anything. I have had the better part of three weeks feeling this way----I just don't feel like it!

And such great timing for this to happen. Thanksgiving is this week, Christmas is right around the corner, and I am the chief cook and bottle washer for both of these events in our family. What if I just cancelled everything? What if I sent out a mass email to all the family saying---"I just don't feel like it"! How could I even entertain such an idea? How un-motherly of me. What happened to Whole-Hearted Parenting--Mother-Culture and all the other things that I once embraced as a mom? What about all those seminars I attended---some that I even spoke at-- that encouraged me to be the life-bringer to my family? SIGH.

I am usually an upbeat, positive person that sees the glass half- full and a bright rainbow over every  cloud. But this dark, feel-sorry-for-myself attitude has hung around a little too long.I just can't seem to shake it. And even though I do have some circumstances in my life that should cause me to be sad and let-down, that doesn't usually mean that it should affect me as it has. But sometimes down is the only way it seems to go.

Then this week I read something that changed my entire attitude this week as a mom, as a Christian, as a person. We have been reading Ann Voskamp's book "One Thousand Gifts" for our bookclub. Her writing style is different, to say the least, and sometimes I got lost in her imagery. But more often than not, as I was reading along, something she said would just jump off the page at me and tuck itself deeply in my heart. She talks alot about thankfulness and looking at our life through a completely different lens---the lens of Eucharisteo (thanks). You will have to read the book yourself to get all of the meaning in that one word. But one of the quotes that dramatically changed my attitude this week I would love to share with you.

"Are stress and worry evidences of a soul too lazy, too undisciplined to keep gave fixed on God?"--Ann Voskamp    


That was it! I had stress. I had worry. And I was too undisciplined! Why did I have "spiritual Alzheimers" (another one of her nuggets)? Why did I keep forgetting about Him? What a dummy I am. I had tried everything from shopping to sleeping to crying and nothing was working to get me out of my funk. But here it was---in black and white written by a pig farmer's wife in Canada. Someone that I may never meet, but that brought me back to the truth that I knew all along but was not applying in my life. He is always there....even when I don't feel like it, HE does. So after a little confessing, a little praying and a little singing I feel better. 100%? No--not yet~~ but better.

And now I do" feel like it". So bring on that turkey--stuffing--cranberries--dirty dishes--mess and chaos that goes along with all family holidays. I am ready. I am smiling. I FEEL LIKE IT!

Book club

I belong to a book club that meets at my home once a month. It was started a few years back and has had many members come and go over the months that we have been meeting. Some took full time jobs and did not have the luxury of sipping tea and eating brownies and talking about literature and authors at 1:30 on a Friday afternoon.

Others left because of the choice of the books we were reading, or the discussions we had about "other things" during our meetings. (We tend to go off on many, many rabbit trails). Some gave no reason, but just stopped coming.

But now our group has a core of about 9 ladies that come regularly with some visitors thrown in each month. Let me tell you about this group!

WE have alot of fun. We laugh and eat and read together some pretty amazing---and some pretty awful books--[no titles mentioned but we know who you are]!

We talk about our kids and our families and our backgrounds. We share stories about things that have happened to us that month, or things from the past that have taught us a lesson or two. We talk about the authors, the conflicts, the heroes, the settings. We make plans to see the movies based on the books we just read. We are even kicking around a "field trip" to one of the countries we read about (Ladies...can we PLEASE read Under the Tuscan Sun?)

But most of all we can be ourselves in this group. No agendas. No judging. No lectures. No preaching. Just a group of great, strong women who have seen a thing or two in this life, and enjoy being with others who let them be themselves. We all walk away from our Friday meeting with a smile and a sigh that we are going to be ok. That we are accepted for who we are, and that someone loves me.

We also walk away happy when someone loves that great book just as much as we do---and kind of puzzled why anyone would think THAT book was any good! But that is the beauty of book club.

Love you book club ladies!

Thankfulness has been neglected

So I have to admit, I have neglected posting things on this page for a long time. I have been feeling sorry for myself lately, and it is hard to post things that I am thankful for when I don't feel thankful. Life had gotten in the way. Maybe the little things have just built up to where it is hard to see past them. Maybe the big things are so big that it is hard to see around them. Maybe I am just selfish and don't want to see anything good right now.

But just because I don't feel it does not mean I can't be thankful. Just because I don't feel God's love does not mean it is not there. This life cannot be based on feelings---it has to be based on trusting in the things I believe and know to be true. And one of those things is that I have alot to be thankful for. So the list continues:

Thankfulness List

Snow covering my bird feeders but persistent birds still getting breakfast
The canary's lovely voice
The taste of homemade bread with homemade jam
Selling 8 books on amazon in one day!
A new candle to burn while writing letters
Writing letters on beautiful paper
The dear ones I am writing to
Planning a trip to Europe soon
Travel guides fetched from the library
A new book on my night stand waiting to be discovered

 To stop feeling sorry and to start feeling glad...

Thankfulness revisited

Thankfulness list continues:

Sunday mornings
Waking up to a light dusting of snow on the ground
A puppy waiting at my bedroom door to greet me

The promises held in a new day

Thankful to be able to experience the wonderful gift called Nature that is all around me.