What Is It with Us and Winter? A Tragedy Averted

For some reason, winter is always a problem for us. Terrible things seem to happen during winter. One year, I was very overdue with The Baby and my dad ruptured several discs in his back. We were living in a small cabin with no indoor bathtub or toilet and there was ice everywhere. For my dad to get back and forth to Ol' Rosy (the outhouse) was impossible, so he had to use a bedpan, which spilled on several occasions. I, and my very pregnant belly, spent a lot of time close to the floor that winter cleaning nasty messes.

Then one year our whole family got sick. Pneumonia, bronchitis, sinusitis, laryngitis--you name it, we had it. Bo was sicker than he'd ever been, unable to sleep and in terrible pain. On Christmas eve, I'd still not put up decorations, wrapped gifts, or anything. We were in the middle of building a house and everything just seemed hopeless.

Two years ago, we had a horrible ice storm and were without power for a week over the Christmas holiday.

Because we live on a hill, getting into the driveway once the winter weather hits is quite a challenge. The first winter we lived here, we were driving home from visiting friends up north and arrived home very late, to the tune of 2 a.m. When we reached our road, it was clear that we wouldn't be taking that route with our big van, so we tried an alternate route. That route was completely drifted over, a fact we didn't discover until we'd unsuccessfully attempted to navigate it and ended up back-end first in a snow drift. With a two-week old baby, four kids and a young guest in the car, we tried to figure out what to do. It was a two-mile walk in the drifting snow, by now it was 3 a.m, and we couldn't run the engine for fear of the tailpipe being blocked by the drift. We'd die of carbon monoxide poisoning. My husband had his cell phone and called my dad to rescue us. He got the Jeep stuck in a snowdrift and staggered through the storm a 1/2 mile to be stranded with us. We finally called a neighbor who brought his truck and shuttled us to our drive, where we trudged uphill and then steeply downhill to our littel cabin in the woods.

This year, we've had very mild weather. Until today. It was great for sledding and snowboarding, but when we arrived home from church, we were unable to get our van up the drive. That was tolerable this morning; there was nothing to carry. But this evening, we had fourteen gallon-jars filled with raw milk, a sleeping toddler, three bags of groceies and a few sundries to haul.

We decided to get out and push.

The three older kids and I got behind the van and pushed as hard as we could. At first, we didn't seem to make any headway, but then we moved it a couple of feet. The frightening thing was that everytime we seemed to get the thing moved, one of us would lose footing and the van would start sliding backwards. I thought for sure I was going to end up on the ground with the van sliding over me.

But we made it up the hill and into the parking area. There, we realized that our Jeep was parked on the wrong side of the garage, which would make it difficult to unload the van.

"Do you want to move the Jeep, or do you want me to?" asked Bo.

"Doesn't matter," I answered.

"I'll do it, then." And he hopped out of the car, leaving the van running.

Sweetheart asked if she could play in the snow. Her brothers had run down the hill after pushing the van instead of riding inside of it, and she thought it unfair that she'd not get to throw a few snowballs, too.

"It's dark," I protested. She lamented from the back seat.

The next thing I knew, fifteen-year-old Houdin was yelling Sweetheart's name. I looked over to see her lying on the ground behind the Jeep, the vehicle still moving slightly. It stopped, and Sweetheart scrambled to her feet, and then collapsed in frantic tears. My darling daughter had almost been backed over by her own father. He hadn't seen her. How could he have? She'd been bent to the ground to pack a snowball. I hadn't even realized she'd left the van.

While sixteen-year-old Bard was helping Sweetheart into the house and comforting her, Bo finished maneuvering vehicles and then began unloading the milk from the van. As I was putting away the mountains of hats, gloves and scarves, I hear a crash and a yell. I raced into the garage to see that one of the crates of milk had fallen out of the back of the van, shattering a glass bottle and breaking the lid off of a plastic one. Bo was beside himself with frustration.

At the same time all of this was going on, my dad was kneeling in the back of the van with his feet sticking out of the side, extracting The Baby from her carseat where she was groggily talking to him. I closed the front passenger door...on my dad's foot.

I'm not sure why these things happen in winter, but they seem to be very attracted to us. It made me think about how many things could go wrong during the day and how blessed we are that these things were potential tragedies, not real ones. At church tonight, someone announced that in a nearby city a car had slid off the bridge and crashed through the guardrail into the river. They still had located neither the car nor the passengers. How horrible those people must have felt. How terribly frightened they must have been as they realized what was happening to them, to see that river rushing toward them just before impact and to feel the icy water close in around them. My prayers immediately went up for them.

I don't know why God spared Sweetheart tonight. A foot or two further, and we might be in serious mourning right this moment. But we're all safe, as a family. We're warm and alive and blessed to be so.

I don't know, either, what it is about winter that brings these challenges, but if they come to you, too, during this time of year, please be safe and count your blessings.

Peace to you.