Chrysalis

Hope supports change

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Location: Abilene, Texas

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Blue Norther

Earlier this week I made a remark on Facebook about getting a little ice cream. My more-northerly friends were amused. Today it was about 70 here in Abilene, Texas. The temperature this time of year -- early December -- is a descending roller coaster: up, plunge down, up, down a little, up, down maybe a little further. Not until last week did we see temperatures low enough long enough to change my raggedy but still green cannas to darkened and then shriveled husks. I still have chrysanthemums and geraniums and begonias blooming in the back yard. The fall pansies I planted in November have blooms as big as my palm, sunshine yellow, velvety midnight purple, hopeful clear blue, rusty red, white. On chilly mornings the pansies clench their leaves against the cold, but the midday sun lifts their faces. The strawberry plants have changed from green to red. Everything else looks weary and desiccated. The bird bath evaporates instead of freezing over.

This time of year it's dry, very dry, and windy -- nothing like the Santa Ana winds of California, but more like a freeze dryer. Consumption of hand lotion increases exponentially. Pecans rattle down off the trees -- though this year the crop is light. Grackles pick them up and drop them from midair onto the parking lot at work and squabble over the fragments. This morning the south wind that had been blowing for two days brought a scent of moisture. It was actually cloudy today. I saw a couple of cars with their dusty coats speckled. We've been praying for rain, but it looks like the rain has "gone off" to the north and east of us.

Tonight the weather forecasters predict what we call here in Texas a 'blue norther.' It means that the high will probably be sometime in the morning and then when the front comes in the temperature will fall steadily all day, with a howling north wind. It could be worse -- we could have more than just a stray flake of snow; but they don't seem to think there's enough moisture for that. When a true 'blue norther' is approaching, you can look to the north and see a massive bank of grey-blue clouds blotting out the sky, and coming fast, like a barrel rolling. Maybe it's just scarier because you can see it coming for 40 miles if you are out in the open.

I remember a family story from the 1890s about my great-grandfather's brother Zeph and one of my great uncles, a boy then, who went with his uncle in an open wagon to the Breaks -- where the tableland of the Texas Panhandle crumbles off into arroyos and cedars -- to cut firewood and bring it back to their families three or four days' ride west. They were out on the open plains with no tree, house, or embankment when a sunny day like today suddenly turned blue. The wind began to pick up. Zeph put the boy in the bed of the wagon and covered him with their bedrolls and headed back. They made it. But Zeph was tough, you know. He helped build the Lockney Christian College brick building with a broken shoulder.

I think of Zeph when I load a dire internet weather forecast predicted for two days, three days out; when hurricane forecasters track a storm for a week before the surf even begins to rise. I can't change the weather, but I can decide to take a coat to work tomorrow when the weather is apparently fine. If I lived in Houston, I would have time to evacuate. Outside of aching joints and their sense of smell, what did my pioneer ancestors have to warn them? The great Galveston hurricane of 1900 killed 5,000 people who had no warning.

Last Sunday was Dec 7 -- another day that people remember as one where no warning was given in 1941. People of our generation will remember Sept 11 2001 for the same reason.

March 11, 1971, my father passed into an intersection at the same time as another driver ran the stop sign. No warning.

Thanksgiving, 1999, my mother found a lump. No warning.

Somewhere in my body, there may already be a rogue cell that will bring me to death. If not that, then something.

It's easy to feel like we know what's coming when pundits, economists, analysts, forecasters, Doppler radar all ceaselessly stream from glowing screens. But now and then there is a perfect storm.

When it comes, some are destroyed and some have a chance to hunker down and get through.

It's not that we are necessarily clueless about everything. There are signs and seasons, and reason. Now and then we sniff the warm south wind but also remember that it is December, after all, and take a coat, just in case. Then when the sun comes out again, we can turn our faces up.

Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." -- James 4:13-15

3 Comments:

Blogger Justin said...

That was powerful, Carisse. I didn't suspect the pastoral twist you were going to put on the blue norther story. I wish I was better at putting the unexpected "twist" into my writing.

8:58 AM  
Blogger Stoned-Campbell Disciple said...

Very thoughtful. There are often signs ... some of us are as bad as the weather person in interpreting them though ... like me!!

11:24 AM  
Blogger Sheila said...

Yes, that is a big part of why I love storms, I think. They are such a powerful reminder of our limitations. Not that I like destruction at all, but I also don't like smugness or the idea that humans can control the world.

9:59 PM  

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