Fools Spring

 We are in the midst of "fools spring" as a friend told me a few days ago. I agree. It's been a particularly cold and hard winter, with nice and warm days in between. Yesterday I spent the day outside, knitting, reading, and writing some scripture to remember. It was a good day. I got a bit sunburned from being out there too. I slept well last night from all the fresh air and sunshine, in between dreams that captivated me. 

This is a picture I drew of myself as a baby. It's from a photo my parents had. I'm not good with color really so I'm trying to get better with it. I didn't do it yesterday, but since I'm inside mostly today, I'm reminiscing. 

I got some doilies out of a chest I inherited from my Grandmother. The chest had been given to her from an uncle who had become an apprentice to a town carpenter in the early 1920's. He made the chest in 1921-26 and made a coffin for a baby. After the coffin he stopped being a carpenter and moved on to something else. The chest has moved through the family down to me now. It's full of the old linens that Grandmother had, and a few things she made including these doilies. She was very talented and always busy. She had a 40+ acre farm, worked in a cloth factory, raised 6 kids, took care of her ailing husband at the end of his life, and made all kinds of things like this. I don't know if she knew how to relax at all. She never seemed to. For some people, relaxing is a hard thing to do after so busy a time in life. 

My Honey and I went out for pizza for supper at a local place that has fantastic food and even gluten free options! We don't go out often due to the fact we have to keep an eye out for so many things we are allergic to or don't eat because they aren't really food. But this place has been a good choice for us. After hurricane Helene, this restaurant was damaged and closed for a while. Well, everything really as damaged and closed. We were fortunate not to lose our own home, but many people weren't. While the scars of the storm are still here, and some things will never be the same. it's nice to have some things that are back to normal.

Everyone here says "The Storm" and no one questions which storm. We've had some winter storms but they aren't "The Storm." We have had some very windy conditions this winter, and until The Storm, I had not worried about the wind. Many people are still in campers or in tents and I imagine they know more personally the effects of the wind than I do in my house. Still, there's a collective PTSD happening in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee that is hidden in our conversations, in our smiles, in the way we all keep jugs of water hidden in various places in the house to use as flush water just in case. I'm not sure that this will fade for most people. I know some folks who have talked about leaving the area because they hate the way you can't look anywhere without seeing the destruction still. Only recently has the trash been picked up from the sides of the roads where they told us to put it. Local landfills wouldn't take storm debris- not destroyed house materials, not vehicle parts, not any part of the woods that had been displaced and washed into yards and fields instead of being up the hills in the woods. There are some places where the woods came to the roads and the new pavement lets you know every time you drive over it, that a disaster happened here. It's the scars that won't likely go away. It's also the "disaster tourists" that have come to snap pictures of our loss. We are normally a tourist area- everyone loves to come look at the forests and mountains and lovely streams and waterfalls. It's one of the most beautiful places on earth! We have our fair share of people wanting to enjoy nature since they never get this back where they live. But the disaster tourists are a different breed. They seem to want to be a part of what has happened, though they aren't and weren't. They want us to relive it all for their entertainment. They want our dusty clothes still on us and the mud we slogged through so long and our unwashed faces streaked with dirty tears from days of not having power or water (water water everywhere but not a drop to drink). I also think many of us want to take about it too, but we don't want to still live in it. We want to be heard when it comes to our fears and worries. We want to know that there are others who went through the same thing and how scary it was. We want the bonding that happened immediately after when we trudged through the water and mud to check on our neighbors. We want the kindness and outpouring of love that happened in the weeks and months since when no one cared about who you voted for or didn't or what church you went to or didn't. I think maybe that might just be what the tourists want too. Everyone wants to feel like they're part of something and that they're loved beyond what they do and what they look like. 

I'm not sure why I rambled to this topic. Maybe I'm still breathing the dusty air from after things dried up- it's in my blood now. The mountains that we snuggle into like babes slid down upon us and changed the way they looked. I think I can't help it because it's just everywhere still. When the grass grows and the foliage covers the scars, things might feel different. The leaves on the trees might hide it from us. The view will be breathtaking to the tourists who come but even past that I'm sure us locals will still see the wounds on the mountains. But we all have to pick up the pieces and live on. Everyone has to help his neighbor and get on with living. We have to plant flowers and gardens and hope for the tiny buds to shoot up through the dirt, bringing promises of life. But not now. This is fools spring.