Expecting snow

A story and a poem

Here in the mountains, we’re expecting snow.

Sounds magical, I know. But something weird has been happening this week.

Let’s go back for a second: the last Friday in September, my boys were supposed to be leaving for a weekend retreat with our local church middle school group. We’d only lived here a month, but the group had been a significant touchpoint for them - a place where they felt safe and supported, and where many of their new friendships had been cemented. They were nervous and excited, but as we heard the weather forecasts for the weekend - heavy winds and rain - uncertainty around the trip grew. It ended up being cancelled on the Thursday…and we all know what happened on Friday.

Today, they were supposed to leave for a ski trip with the same group, and all this week, as we've heard rumours that there will be heavy snow this weekend, that same uncertainty around their trip has grown (ironic, isn’t it? A ski trip being cancelled because of snow?). The resort is an hour and a half away, in the higher elevations of our mountain range.

On Wednesday, I noticed something in my body while I checked the weather forecast: a tightness in my chest. Shortness of breath. My throat constricting - I wanted to cry. It felt like deja vu: holding my boys’ excitement for something they’ve been waiting for in one hand, and the threat of weather in the other. The body keeps the score.

Now the trip has been rescheduled (I swear to God, if we get another snowstorm in February…). My neighbours are texting our group chat with offers of extra firewood (a running joke - so many trees fell here during Helene that we all have enough firewood to last a century), and last night, at the grocery store, the shelves were empty of eggs and milk and bread - a Southern phenomenon I’d forgotten about while living in England for nearly 20 years.

“There’s some trauma here too, yeah?” Simon said to me while we stood in the coffee aisle, choosing a bag of beans. And he’s right. None of us saw what would come on the 27th of September. A few suspected we might lose power for a day or two, or that the gas trucks might not be able to make it up the mountain for a couple of days if a tree or a power line fell. We couldn’t have known that we would lose 40% of our region’s trees, or that our power would be out for weeks, or that we wouldn’t get clean drinking water until nearly Christmas.

I wanted eggs to bake cookies with this weekend, but I tried three different places yesterday and they were sold out everywhere (as I type this, my friend Mary Carroll, who owns a small organic farm at the top of our hill, has texted me to say she has a dozen extras from her chickens).

Many years, Simon and I go out to the shops on Christmas Eve. Occasionally we’re picking up cranberry sauce or one more bottle of wine, but we also just like to soak up the vibes. The trick is not to get sucked into the panic. We did the same last night at the grocery store. We have what we need, and that is enough. We also have incredible neighbours, and there’s comfort in that.

Still, on the way back to the car, I asked Simon how much gas was in the tank.

“Plenty,” he said. “It’s half full.”

He handed me the keys, and I started the engine and pulled out of our parking space. I headed toward the highway, and tried to let half be enough. But then I remembered driving across a bridge I wasn’t sure if I could trust, past an empty mud pit where 12 mobile homes used to be. I signalled right and pulled into the gas station.

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I wrote the poem below in December; the first one I’ve written since before I moved from England to Western North Carolina in August. It started as a little test for my traumatised brain: could I still string words together?

I know it seems morbid at first glance but, repeat after me: two things can be true at once.

Grief and sorrow. Morbid and hopeful.

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My friend’s son saw a body in their backyard

Washed down the river, by the land sliding off the Blue Ridge.
She says he doesn’t know if he believes 
in God anymore, her eyes wide, searching, 
and I say of course - 
who could trust a God who scrapes his fingers down the valley, who sweeps death across the back porch?
Just so you know, I hear there is a god who drives a big rig, brim-full with clean water. There is a god down the road who draped Christmas lights from an overturned school bus. And one who brought a big black kettle all the way from Canada in his truck bed; every night, he makes stew over a fire in the dirt-pit by the river. 
And I don’t know, but maybe, 
a god like that will be the kind 
we could all - eventually - believe in. 

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This weekend: if, in one hand, you are holding something heavy, I hope you can look at your other hand and find its equal in lightness or hopefulness or joy.

xx

Faith