by jphilo | Nov 24, 2021 | Family
The road home for Thanksgiving was a long one when we lived in Harding County.
550 miles from Camp Crook, South Dakota to Le Mars, Iowa.
Speed limit 55, even on the interstate.
School dismissed an hour early on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and we were on our way by at 2:45. It was a 12 1/2 hour drive with 1 time change to slow us down. That meant we would arrive at my parents’ home around 4 in the morning if nothing went wrong.
Something always went wrong.
Not during the few remaining daylight hours spent on desolate stretches of highway.
Not when we drove through Rapid City where there was a gas station and motel at every exit.
Not before midnight when we were part of the steady stream of home goers on Interstate 90.
Our troubles lurked in the darkness, waiting for the wee hours of the morning until we neared the bridge over the Missouri River. Year after year, like clockwork, as we drove past Chamberlain and our car tires hit the bridge, snow began to fall. The snowfall grew heavier as the car climbed the hill on the east side of the bridge. When we crested the hill and hit the open prairie, the wind blew. By the time we reached Mitchell, sixty miles further on, we were driving through blizzard conditions. More than once–in fact I think every single year we drove the road home for Thanksgiving–we ended up in a cheap motel room somewhere between Chamberlain and Sioux Falls. We called my parents (remember, no cell phones) to update them, woke up the next morning, and hung around until the weather came on the television (again, no cell phones). Then we got in the car and drove the remaining 2-3 hours home.
Sometimes on drifted roads.
Sometimes through ice storms.
Sometimes in frigid temperatures.
Every time, we made it home in time for Thanksgiving dinner with our extended family.
Our experiences on the road home for Thanksgiving made their way into the first chapter of See Jane Dance!–with a few notable changes.
Jane’s parents live in Sioux City, so her trip home is a little shorter than ours was.
She is single so she makes the trip by herself.
She encounters bad weather on the way home from Thanksgiving.
She spends the night in her car instead of a motel.
She’s going to stay right there until the fall of 2022 when the publisher releases See Jane Dance! It’s a long time to be stuck in a car, but don’t worry. Jane’s mother, just like mine, loaded her down with Thanksgiving leftovers, so she won’t starve between now and then.
With Thanksgiving only a day away, neither will I!
by jphilo | May 11, 2015 | Mystery Update
Yes, you read the title right. No more pity parties for poor, poor Jane. After months of languishing while her creator dealt with silly things like greeting beautiful new grandchildren into the world and meeting non-fiction book contract deadlines, Jane is once again up and running.
More than running.
Actually, Jane is galloping toward the finish line. Only the final scene remains to be written before THE END will conclude the first draft. Of course, when an author strings out the writing of a novel over more than 2 years, substantial time needs to be spent on rewrites and edits. Because the author did the writing when she was in her late 50s. Which means her memory’s not so good any more, and her chances of remembering what she wrote more than 2 years ago are about the same as blizzard on Mother’s Day in western South Dakota where dear Jane lives. Which really, truly happened yesterday.
As it has happened before.
The author knows this because she experienced a Mother’s Day blizzard in Jane’s stomping grounds in either May of 1984 or 1985. 18 inches of snow. Wind and drifting. 3 day blizzard. School cancelled. Water pipes frozen. Dead lambs and calves everywhere.
The kind of thing even authors in their late 50s can’t forget.
The kind of juicy real life event that could become a bang up scene in a mystery novel. Except that this mystery is set in the fall of Jane’s first year teaching country school, ending just after first quarter parent-teacher conferences and just before the Halloween party. And Jane’s former school teacher creator can’t imagine a final resolution scene encompassing more than 6 months, 3 more grading periods, and enough art projects to placate the imaginary students in Jane’s class until school’s out in May. Just thinking about that much tempera paint, glitter, and construction paper is exhausting.
So Jane’s creator will stick to the ending already planned.
But, she will tuck the Mother’s Day blizzard idea into her idea file. Just in case the first book in the Dick and Jane series gets published. Just in case it does well enough to warrant a second book. And just in case a writer in her late 50s with memory issues can remember where the idea file is, find the idea in the file, and recall why in the world she scribbled “Mother’s Day blizzard” on a piece of paper and stuck it in the file. The chances of all those things happening are about the same as the chance of a Mother’s Day blizzard in western South Dakota.
You know, it just could happen!
by jphilo | Jan 6, 2015 | Top Ten Tuesday
10. A white, unbroken blanket of snow is so lovely.
9. Life feels cozy when it’s snowing outside, the dishwasher and washing machine are running, and I’m sitting in a chair writing.
8. This year’s first big snowstorm didn’t hit until January, which means this winter won’t be as long as it could be.
7. A snowstorm means evening activities are cancelled, so there’s nothing to do but to download and watch the Downton Abbey Season 5 premiere.
6. After a month of Camp Dorothy, which just ended Sunday evening, it’s nice to have a guilt-free reason to stay home this Tuesday instead of going to visit Mom.
5. I can imagine trying to teach children, tired from Christmas break and excited about the snow, instead of teaching them.
4. This snowstorm affirms our decision to by an all-wheel drive Subaru in November instead of waiting until spring as originally planned.
3. This snowstorm granted the Man of Steel’s wish to test the Subaru on winter roads…and he was delighted with the way it handled.
2. Our daughter and son-in-law beat the storm and arrived at their home in Madison, Wisconsin safely.
1. On a day when our daughter-in-law was in labor, our daughter and her husband raced home ahead of the weather so they could pack and move, the sibs and I were going a little crazy attending to details related to Mom’s upcoming move, and the page proofs for Every Child Welcome arrived, a snowstorm seemed like a fitting metaphor for our family’s life. And when the storm ended, God used it to remind me that our stormy day would pass, too, replaced by beauty. In this case, the beauty of a brand new granddaughter, born just after midnight this morning.
by jphilo | Dec 31, 2009 | Family
Last week’s winter storm made the Wednesday evening before Christmas a rather trying one at our house. Anne and her fiancee thought they could outrun the storm bearing down on northwest Iowa by leaving for Wisconsin early in the afternoon. For the first few hours, they made good progress. But as darkness fell and traffic slowed the storm caught up with them.
Anne called around 6:30 PM to say they had pulled into a rest stop on I-90, not far from Rochester, Minnesota. “We’ll spend the night in the car,” she said. “The visibility’s so bad we can’t even get to the next town.” After reassuring me they had plenty of blankets, food, water and gasoline, she hung up.
If the call had come two or three years ago, the thought of my daughter marooned at a rest stop in a blizzard would have kept me awake most of the night. But in the last few years, I have seen God so powerfully at work in our lives, I was able to fall asleep, confident that He would watch over my daughter and the man she’s going to marry.
The same night Anne slept in the car, the cold woke Hiram and I woke in the middle of the night. An ice storm had knocked out our electricity, but instead of fretting about when it would come on and how our daughter was faring, I piled extra blankets on the bed and thought about something I’d recently read in John Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Life.
“We simply take life and breath and health and friends and everything for granted. We think it is ours by right. But the fact is that it is not ours by right.” Piper goes on to remind us that we are sinful, we’re the ones who rebelled against our Creator. “Therefore, every breath we take, every time our heart beats, every day that the sun rises, every moment we see with our eyes or hear with our ears or speak with our mouths or walk with our legs is, for now,a free and undeserved gift to sinners who deserve only judgement…for those who see the merciful hand of God in every breath they take and give credit where it is due, Jesus Christ will be seen and savored…Every heartbeat will be received as a gift from his hand.”
I lay, waiting for the extra blankets to warm us, and thought about my daughter’s life in a new way. The years we’ve had with her are an undeserved gift. So is electricity and a warm house and Christmas and a husband who loves me. If I accept these good gifts from God, then I can trust him, even when what he gives is not what I think I need. Then, I fell asleep asking him to prepare me for whatever news came in the morning.
When we woke, the electricity was on. The house was warm. An hour or two later, Anne called to say the snow had stopped, and they were on their way. By noon she called to say they had arrived. Once again, God’s grace was poured out upon our family. I thanked him for the undeserved gift of our travelers’ safety. I asked him to make me mindful of his grace.
Please God, I pray again whenever I feel my heart beat, continue to make me grateful. Don’t let me waste your grace.
by jphilo | Dec 18, 2009 | Current Events
For the past twenty-four hours, winter storm warnings have been flying around faster than snowflakes in a blizzard. The forecast inspired Anne to drive home last night instead of waiting until morning.
This morning, I peeked out the window, expecting a cloudy sky, a little wind, and a little snow to greet me. Instead, a bright sunrise blazed through the branches of the spruce trees in the back yard. Even now, three hours later, the sky is a clear winter blue and the tree branches are still, still, still.
But the forecasters promise a storm this afternoon, snow in the north part of the state, ice in the south, and a mixture of the two in the middle of the state where we live. I hope it waits until after noon when I visit my mentee over the lunch hour. We haven’t seen each other for three weeks, what with the West Virginia excursion, and I want to see her before Christmas and plan a time next week for us to bake treats for her family.
Then the storm can hit. We’ve got DVDs to watch, popcorn to pop, and five years of catching up to do around here. It’s not a storm warning at our house; it’s a blessing, one I intend to savor.
