we turned the page on the calendar, and...

my hall closet is crammed with coats. black wool coats, long and short. crisp spring toppers, fleece jackets and thin, hooded parkas. so many coats between my husband and me that we hang them on top of each other so they'll fit snugly, waiting to be pulled out when we need them.

you would think we could put the lightweight jackets away to make room for our winter coverings. but in the first month of this new year, i have worn practically all of them, some days changing out coats by the hour from fleece to topper to wool.

last week temps hovered in the teens, so wool it was, along with long johns and muffs for the ears. by the weekend, rain moved in with humid warmth and even the hooded parka was too much. the next week, the fog lay so thick by my mailbox that i could hardly see the street, so the jacket it was. today it's 60 degrees. tomorrow they're calling for snow.

i don't remember a winter this fickle, yet when we turned the calendar to 2014, we found the weather to be a mirror for what the month would be.

art by

@

debucket

i was so ready to turn the page, (and yes, i still do use a paper calendar), to bring out my 2014 planner and mark the squares with all the good things to be: a. trip to paris. paris! family visits (and not in the hospital), a new fitness routine. i was so ready to leave last year behind with all its changes and losses and move full force into hope.

on new year's eve, my husband and i found ourselves 500 miles apart, he making his resolutions alone in a Hampton Inn in Paduca, Kentucky, and me out with friends sharing ours at one of our favorite restaurants. his aunt was in the hospital, and since she has no husband, no kids, no siblings left, he was the only one to see about her. pull on the wool and prepare for winter.

on my way to dinner that night, i checked in with my son and learned he'd had great news at work. i felt the sun breaking through the clouds. on the first day of the year, i planned my trip to Paris. on the second, my husband headed home in a blinding snow storm. wool again. by the weekend, the temps hovered near 75 degrees, and all was steady, no coat required. then good news again: Aunt Betty left the hospital, and our daughter shared her own work milestone. i found myself thinking, well, maybe we can put our winter buffers away.

on the fourth day, we opened our home to the family of the newest priest at our church — or he would become one the following day— welcoming them with a warm fire and hot soup, filling our house with laughter that seemed to have been absent for too long awhile. on the fifth day, we witnessed as priests surrounded him with the powerful laying on of hands. all warmth and bright sunlight, hope. 

on day 6 i had my annual mammogram, opting for the new digital kind, bracing myself for a minute discovery. but all was clear. on day 7, my great-niece celebrated her first birthday — steady winds and bright sun, little outerwear needed.

then on day 11, the wind shifted, and i felt myself pulling on my heaviest coat to brace for it: the dog and i hid in the hall bathroom as trees swayed and 65 mile-per-hour winds passed overhead. and just about that time (i later discovered) my boss was having a heart attack. he is 44 years old. day 13 brought triple bypass surgery for my friend, and hours of waiting and days of fear for wife, my friend, and his three young daughters. on day 14, a dear friend lost her husband, 66, to

frontotemporal dementia

. on yesterday we bid him farewell.

today the winds calmed. the sun came out. the boss's health has improved. things settled in the the family. 

yet my coworker said she was tired. last week her dog almost died, had to be raised up in an oxygen chamber at the vet school, and today she felt the pieces of january weighed her down like a giant wooden puzzle.

we are just about done with it. january. a month i have loved for its fresh start, for the fact that my son was born at the end of it. but i'm weary, too, from all that has happened to those around me. i know the fatigue, the sadness and fear that grips them.

so i long for snow, the makes-you-stay-put kind, the watch-the-world-transform-into-swirls-of-white-and-crystal kind, that finds you pulling on that wool you are so tired of and heading outside. to hold your sleeve out just-so, to watch the tiny iced-jewels — each of them their own sculpture — rest on your sleeve, to show you that despite all, hope is there. God. Is. There.

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

the glory and the power of it

my grandfather sold cars for over 50 years but he didn't believe in power windows. they would break too easily, he was sure, so i'm pretty sure as long as he was selling my parents cars, the windows had to be cranked down by hand. imagine. 

one summer night when i was 9 or so, Mary Wallace, my friend Lydia's mother, drove up in the driveway to show us her new car. and oldsmobile. plush seats, FM radio (Bigdaddy didn't believe in that either,) and windows that moved up and down as if by magic. 

'let's go for a ride!' she said giggling, her eyes as wide as her grin. we piled in and off we went, no doubt rolling the windows down and up in the summer air so much so that they might have broken. but they didn't.

Lydia's mother was fun like that. giggling at us girls as we made onion soup on her front porch from wild onions that grew in the yard, played dress up in her shoes. (we piled the onions in a tin bucket along with dirt and water and left our concoction on the front porch — which nobody ever used — to rot in the spring sun.) giggled as we created beauty parlors on her side porch, ate Oreos in her kitchen (no more than two.) crafted barbie doll houses with wall-to-wall carpet, new in the 70s don't you know, from scraps scavenged from her new house. the only thing that would warrant her ire was if we woke the baby. and there were always babies in the house.

birthdays at her house might mean traveling 40 miles to be on television... Lydia's birthday is in November, and so backyard parties like the rest of us had in summer were out of the question. in my memory, we rode across the miles for what felt like a day, then we marched behind WITN-Y the Marching Hobo, watching ourselves on the black and white screen, LIVE. now THAT was a party.

in first grade, she visited our classroom toting a harpsichord, then sat down with it in her lap and made music, playing the songs from our music book. whose mother could do that?  i can see her fingers now, picking out the songs, her voice taking on the words like a bird singing on the clearest of days. the very idea that mothers could be something other than mothers changed me. i didn't imagine that as work, but joy.

she called me su-su. i don't cotton to nicknames, but this one made me feel as if i were part of her brood. she sang at my wedding, my favorite hymn. "Lord of all hopefulness, lord of all calm, whose trust ever childlike, whose presence is balm..."

betty jean, left, with mary wallace

i remember standing there at the chancel steps as she sang the words i had so often sung to myself in the dark when i felt alone. in her voice, the words were balm to a nervous bride. she had known me all my life, and here she was, singing at my wedding. calming me, just because she was there.

Mary Wallace sang for countless brides, including her own daughter... and it was always an event. not to mention funerals— sending her husband off to heaven with a personal rendition of the Lord's Prayer.

she wrote me letters as i grew older, when i wrote stories she liked, and i still have one or two notes i cherish. she was proud of me, of who i had become. i could recognize her handwriting as if it were my own mother's. 

mary wallace, left, sending sparkles

three years ago, she came to my daughter's wedding. fitting, since my child had been in her daughter's wedding some years before. she stayed to the end, lighting sparklers and cheering the newlyweds on. i could not have had this special day without her. there Lydia is, too, in the checked dress in the picture there, celebrating with her mother as we sent the Pea off with her Prince. 

a couple of years ago i came home one day to a message on my answering machine. 'don't you call me back,' she said, but don't you dare take me off your Christmas card list!' (we routinely lampoon the standard holiday newsletter, and she loved the humor of it, knowing about my family, keeping up.) and i have kept her on my list, still.

this year, i won't get to. she died on Friday, and yesterday, we said goodbye.

if funerals can be great, this was. favorite hymns, stories that made everyone laugh and cry a little, and in the end, her own voice. the voice that celebrated and soothed so many, did all this and more for all of us gathered, once again to grieve for her. there she was, singing the Lord's Prayer, all the glory and the power of it, forever. and we were all blessed by it.

Lydia is not the crier i am. get up and get going, she would often say to me when i faltered. but yesterday, i had the chance to hold her up a little. after the service she looked at me with red eyes and said: "Mama would probably be upset with me, but i had to hear her voice in church one last time."

upset? i doubt it. just filled with joy to have a few last words for her brood.

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

our light has come

ok, so i haven't written daily during december, at least not here at writemuch. but i have been writing a lot in my job and in my head. why just a few days ago, in the wee hours of the morning, i dreamed that i had found the characters and plot to the next harry potter (well, HP wannabe)... literally dreamed up the world and had actors taking parts in the screen version, even setting it up for the sequel.

if only i could remember it. in the middle of the dream i dreamed that i was thinking now this is a great story, so great in fact that it is unforgettable. apparently not so unforgettable that when i woke just minutes later, the whole thing had vanished more quickly than dear ol' harry under his invisible cloak.

and so i have vowed that i will wake myself up from a dream of this sort again and write the whole damn thing down (even if i can't read my own handwriting, which is hard to do in the middle of the day, much less in the wee hours with the lights off.)

sometimes, though, it's not about my writing at all. sometimes the joy of words comes through the people i love writing and reading their own stories — stories i admittedly helped pull out of them — but their words, their dreams, beautifully rendered on the page.

today was that kind of day.

each sunday during Advent, i've had the privilege to mentor a group of writers who share the pews with me at my church. we've been gathering for years, off and on, during sunday school, to put ourselves into the stories of the Bible and write our way out. i think we are in our 8th year, though we've departed the text and written about Lent from time to time.

it's been a remarkable journey. and i have grown to love and respect all the people who sit at the table with me, churning out their personal stories with great enthusiasm and humility. some of them have been with me for years, others new to the table, but all are searching for the role God plays in their daily life, in their struggles to be good people and parents, to work through their grief, to accept life when plans go awry. you can't know how much i admire how they put it right there on the table, when too often their instructor is not yet ready to do the same. they have written about their marriages, children and siblings they have lost, riffs in families and the struggles and joys that come with this busy season. they've written with humor and with grace, and we have made good use of the box of Kleenex that sits in the middle of our table.

and today, this group of writers shared their stories with the larger congregation. i felt like a mother watching her child perform, take her first steps or riding away from me with her back to me as she peddles away on her bike. in the words these dear friends read, i saw growth, too, as writers and as Christians who have come to understand that God is there, even in the middle of sadness.

it's funny. we set out each season with a set of readings and no idea what we will write about or if our stories will connect in any way to each other, as any good collection should. and every single year, as i begin placing the stories in our collection, it's a goosebump feeling, because stories set apart by circumstance, gender and generation are woven together as if from the same cloth.

this year's collection is all about light, the aha! kind of light that comes when we finally understand we are on the right road.

advent: noun. "coming into being or use."

i'd say that's what this year's collection is all about. but why don't you see for yourself? our light has come, and you can read all about it here.

but that's not all. this afternoon i sat in the audience to hear my mentor, poet Sally Buckner, read from her collection, Nineteen Visions of Christmas. i was sally's student almost 40 years ago at peace college, and one of the joys of the season throughout the years has been to receive a Christmas poem from her as her card. she has collected some familiar to me, and many not, and listening to the cadence and clarity of her words today reminded me of why i want to be a writer, and how much she has taught me about the craft. i can only hope i have taught my own students half as much.

what a joy, in the midst of this season, to be both teacher and student in one single day. but come to think of it, shouldn't every day be just like that?












writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

Of Sons

This morning, my heart was heavy as I headed to church. A former neighbor of mine, I learned yesterday, was mourning the loss of her 19-year-old nephew, killed the night before in a car crash near his home. The son of one of my best friends from childhood is in his seventh week at boot camp at Parris Island. He wants to drive a tank. Another friend tries to work through her son's drug addiction. My own son just turned 21 a few weeks ago; already he's lost two friends, one to a wreck, the other to drugs. Good boys, good families all, families who have brought their sons up to have faith in God and  hope for making a mark on the world.

I knelt in prayer for all of these sons of ours, some whose lives are so filled with promise, others cut short of knowing what that promise could be. Praying that God wrap his arms around all of these parents, comforting them in their losses, in their worries, and providing them with hope for their sons in the middle of all their uncertainties.

Then I sat, opening the bulletin to find that for our prelude, we would have guest bell ringers, a group of moms and dads, all of whom have lost children, but who have used their commonality to seek solace in the music, and in reaching others as they perform.

Among them was a member of our parish who lost her son 11 years ago at 21, in a college fire that is now legendary in North Carolina. She has channeled her grief into a crusade for sprinkler systems in college residences, traveling around the country, speaking before Congress. And she rings the bells.

I wept as she and the other parents rang their beautiful notes, their arrangement of "Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Thy Peace," filling them — and the church — with such joy, as they honored the children who no longer sit at their supper tables. Two families who had lost two children each — two — a situation incomprehensible to me. My friend — pregnant with her third child due in a month — sat next to me and wept, too, the quiet grief of mothers who know that our tether to our children is so tenuous. We watched, as the mothers and fathers in our midst drew themselves through their grief and into that joy that surpasses all understanding, drawing us with them, until our hearts felt full, too.

Later, when my son called home for his weekly check-in, I found myself wanting to reach through the phone, tighten the tether, as close as he would allow. wtmch