In the last bit of March

Today:

Snow has long since worn its romance value thin.  The horses think so, too.  But as I came home this morning from the feeding and grabbed the paper off the snowy driveway—all tucked into its red plastic bag against the elements—I had a moment of joy.   I love what happens when light passes through translucent color.  The snow in front of me was stained a clear crimson as the sun burst through the bag in my hand.  Just a patch of color against the white.  A stupid plastic bag + clean, brilliantly new snow = a moveable feast of color.

Yesterday:

So many odd things.  The wind has just come up – just thirty seconds ago, and it’s blowing like mad out there.  Earlier this morning the air was soft, the way it almost always is when it’s being pushed by an oncoming front.  I’d tried to sleep in, (really, I was sleeping in) when I heard sirens.  We live about a block and a half from a fire station, so it’s not that unusual.  But sometimes they feel very close, and I always worry—first about my people, then that a horse has gotten out and caused an accident.  These sirens didn’t sound all that close.  But for some reason, maybe because I was on the cusp of sleep, they frightened me – like a little electric shocky feeling.

So I did what I always taught the kids to do—I started praying hard.  I didn’t know who for.  In my mind, I worried that Guy had just left for a church meeting (though really, I’d just heard him come in—that’s how dopey I was), and then about Scooter, and the horses, then about everybody.  But the sirens weren’t close.  And I drifted back under.

Then the phone rang.  You can picture me flailing around, carefully not saying bad words.  It was Jane, our neighbor, and she apologized for waking me, and asked if I was sick (why else would a perfectly healthy grown-up be dead asleep at that time of the day?) and then mentioned the little fact that her husband, Reed, who is pushing eighty eight, had gone out on the jogging trail on his bike and found himself a little heart attack on the way.  He’d called her from the river. 

Guy and I were out the door within twenty five seconds.

She could have called anybody.  There are twenty, thirty, maybe forty people within two blocks who would have dropped everything and done everything. Reed is a great man. Jane is a great woman.  I have great neighbors.  And he was all right.  A jogger had passed him, sitting on the trail – Reed had waved happily at him – while he was sitting on the cold asphalt trail with his bike beside him, worrying over his heart.  But the jogger came back, worried, and the paramedics were called. Reed had had meds with him, and took them and felt better.  So it turned out very well – not everybody gets to start out his Sunday with a ride in a bright red emergency vehicle (no siren on the way to get him checked out – just in case).  And not everybody’s bike gets carried home in a ladder truck (cool).

But if I needed a reminder (which I always do) of the tender mercies of God and the remarkable, fabulous, awe-inspiring power of a neighborhood that is healthy, involved and loving – this was it.  There were five of us crowded in with Jane and Reed at the emergency room, not one actually family.  One of us had lied to get in: “He’s my grandpa,” she told the desk.  And on a Sabbath.  I just shake my head.  And the visits and good wishes and concern went on all day long.

I’m awake now.

Today:

Light shines through Reed and Jane.  I love the color they throw—