Holiday Reflection 3: Snow for Christmas

Folks who live in our area are very accustomed to something called HURRICANE SEASON.  It begins on June 1st and ends November 30th every year.  It's not something that we fret over but we do stay stocked with the necessary items should the need arise such as flashlights, batteries, fresh water, canned food, lanterns, etc.  One of the things I am very grateful for is the fact that the need rarely arises.  And one of the main reasons for this gratefulness stems from September 21, 1989. 

His name was HUGO and he came through here with the intent of making his presence known LOUD AND CLEAR.  He also left a wake of destruction and devastation in his path that left people in shock.  Hubs and I packed up and took our daughters (we only had three of them at the time) to my grandmother's house in the upstate--3 hours north of here--where a Hickory Nut tree fell on the house.  No one was hurt and we believe it was because Grandmother and Granddaddy's house was built back when they constructed houses the right way without skimping on materials.  That tree barely cracked a rafter or two.  Amazing.  The NOISE it made, on the other hand, scared all of us half to death! Hubs and I looked out the door at one point and watched huge pine trees swaying back and forth like catapults in 65 mph winds.  Meanwhile, 3 hours south, the low-country was being beat to death by 135 mph winds.  Our house fared quite well.  The tree that fell did so across the back yard and the wind merely took off some shingles from the roof.  At the time, my mother and Hubs' parents lived on Sullivan's Island- one of the barrier islands around the Charleston area.  The only way onto the island in 1989 was the Ben Sawyer bridge--a swing span bridge- that someone did not secure and one end of it ended up in the water.  We had to take a boat to get over there and survey the damage.  My in-laws fared pretty well, mostly loosing insignificant things.  My mother however, lost everything due to an 8.5 foot water level in her house.  Interestingly, her refrigerator floated on it's back and our daughters' art work on the front was untouched. Many, many houses, unfortunately, ended up looking more like the ones in the following pictures and, our church at the time, which was completed flattened--we ended up putting up a HUGE yellow and white striped circus-like tent and having church in it until the new building was finished.

This house was picked up and dropped in the middle of the road by the winds.

Christmas 1989, lighting the Advent Wreath in our Church Tent

As December approached and our thoughts turned to the Christmas season, Hubs asked what I wanted for Christmas.  I told him that I wanted SNOW.  And we got it.  We got a lot of it!  AND, to this day, if you ask our daughters what their daddy got me for Christmas that year, they will reply: "SNOW!"  Even the youngest who did not arrive until 1991 knows how her dad got the snow for me that year. (No wonder they think he can do anything! Heck, so do I!).

My mother-in-law (Irene Nuite Lofton) wrote a little book of poems chronicling the months following HUGO.  She titled the book: THE BROKEN BRIDGE

Here is one about the Christmas snow that year:

FORECAST

Snow predicted for tonight,
if freezing temperatures hold
we will have a record white
Christmas.

Tonight
all is overlaid
by a white coverlet
of softly falling snow.

The scars left
by a devil storm--
rutted wounds in the driveway
dark, broken cedars in the yard,
bulwarks of rotting debris
left by shrieking wind
and rising tide,
lie newly transformed
into mysterious blue-shadowed
mounds and hillocks
of gently sloping snow.

Tomorrow,
the eve of Christmas Eve,
the children will be out
trailing laughter,
tumbling from warm indoors
into the blue-white cold
building snowmen
with icicle noses and old felt hats.
The children and the snow together
will lift our hearts.


One more, if you will indulge me.  This one was written before the Christmas snow:

I WOULD HOLD BACK NOVEMBER

I am not ready
for the bustle of Christmas.
I long to have back
the days of fall.

I long to have back
our Indian summer
when sun lay golden
on the marsh
and the days were soft
with autumn.

A month of storm
has intervened
to interrupt
the gradual waning
into winter from fall.

I look at the calendar
and see winter days approach
and feel cold
creeping in at every crack.
But I still long for fall.

I would hold back the days of November.
I am not ready for December.