Ramblings

We’ve been snowed in this week.  Totally and completely snowed in.  This doesn’t happen very often in Indiana.  Not nearly as often as they get back home in Michigan, confirmed by the reaction I received from my father when I called to tell him about our storm.  And even they don’t get anywhere near the amount that we used to get when I was a kid.  We had a huge picture window that faced the road and an open field.  For snow-storm entertainment, we used to sit in the living room and watch vehicles of all shapes and sizes some barreling down the road and get stuck right in front of our house.  It happened almost every time.  Dad would go out and help them get unstuck.  And once in awhile (probably if it was a hot car and my teenage sister suspected it might have a hot owner!  Oh wait, we called them hunks back then…) we would bundle up and take them some hot chocolate.

The other night when we were home bound, emergency vehicles only permitted on the roads in our county and many surrounding counties, I was transported back to those days.  I was wiping off the supper table, the kids were playing in the family room, lights on, lots of activity and a country radio station in the background.  Tony was playing it through the computer-I remember having the big boom box on our kitchen table with the antenna reaching up to the ceiling in order for it to come in clear.  That was the only time that Mom and Dad allowed us to blatantly play the local country station in their presence.  It was the only station that would announce our school closings.  Anyway, just being in the house together, knowing we could go no where and hearing the guitar, banjo, harmonica and twangy sound of country coming across the airwaves made me feel warm inside.

For a minute I thought I might want to go back to those days of my childhood innocence, hoping for a snow day so we didn’t have to go to school.  Then I remember a conversation my daughter and I had a couple weeks ago.  The girls kept getting sick one right after another until this nasty virus made it’s way through our house three times. In a state of exhaustion, I made the statement that I wished I was 22 again (thinking, happily married with no sick kiddos to take care of yet).  Janae asked me later if I really DID wish that.  And I had to stop and think… “No, “I told her, “I really don’t, because that means I would still have to go through all the lessons I’ve learned since then and I don’t really want to have to do that.”  I’m glad to leave the past behind me and it’s great that God only gives us vision for the present moment.  We would never survive otherwise.