Oniontown Pastoral: The Thanksgiving Blizzard’s Sweet Nothings

The first column I published in Greenville, Pennsylvania’s, daily, The Record Argus in 2016 was entitled “Hope Is an Old Tractor.” The plot was simple. One snowy morning I pulled into St. John’s parking lot in my bulbous Chevy HHR and got hopelessly stuck. I slogged to my office and pouted, but then a long-bearded neighbor chugged into view pulling a plow behind his tractor. He’d witnessed my embarrassing performance and carved me a path out. I was grateful.

Nine years later, looking out my writing hut window in Erie, I’m grateful all over again, despite the three-plus feet of snow piled atop my frozen bird bath and the faux column I put mealworms and peanuts on for my hungry flock. Is there a connection between blizzards and gratitude? I think maybe.

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, wife Kathy and son Micah stroked their chins and peered into our snowblower’s business in a proactive effort to awaken it from hibernation. After the customary sparkplug changing, gasoline mix checking, begging and muttering, the machine would not be moved. The predicted historic snowfall came, and shovels, backs and biceps were the only recourse. Sadly, I was of no help, as treatment for atrial fibrillation has me temporarily sidelined. Even in ideal circumstances, however, everybody is better off with me whisking Alfredo than swinging a tool. That’s just the truth.

My wife and son’s exertions aside, a festive spirit often accompanies weather that cancels school days. Staring slack-jawed at fat flakes riding the gusts and piling up at three inches an hour can feel like a tonic going down. If you’re normally able to get out and do as you please, being homebound can invite the soul to take a cleansing breath. The drifts that rendered the roads impassable held me in a healing embrace.

“Healing, John?” you say?

Exactly. When circumstances slow me down, the commonplace becomes medicinal. A blizzard in particular blows kindness’s door open a crack. What sneaks in doesn’t soak the welcome mat. It softens the heart.

Yesterday afternoon, Micah was leaning into eighteen inches of icy, fist-sized nuggets that a city plow deposited across our driveway skirt. As he paused to catch his breath, a guy in a pickup with a plow stopped and motioned him out of the way. In two quick passes, my son’s work was accomplished. Micah waved his robust much obliged, but off the stranger drove without rolling down his window. Aw, shucks, it was nothing.

The weather kept me in Erie and away from preaching on Thanksgiving Sunday at St. John’s but did occasion a dinner invitation from friends Jean and Geoff up the street. In addition to homemade bread and turkey noodle soup, we shared thoughtful conversation in front of a perfect fire. Greyhound rescue Gracie welcomed my every scratch and sweet nothing. This dog’s affection is a gift unto itself, as we Colemans lost our foxhound Sherlock Holmes a year ago. We’re working our way toward getting another best friend, but grief deserves to run its course. Gracie takes a helping of the love we long to give in the meantime. In short, soup, fresh bread, neighbors and a fire made the blizzard somehow amiable.

Shining as a halo above the holiday blessings is a message I received on Thanksgiving morning from daughter Elena before the first snowflake descended. A photograph shows eight-year-old Killian wearing an apron at the kitchen counter, his long hair pulled back. Elena wrote, “Killian just peeled my five-pound bag of potatoes. He said, ‘I’m great at this! Pop taught me.’” I did give the kid a primer on peeling, and he retained every detail. More importantly, he remembers the two of us in the kitchen.

Almost as priceless is a message dinner host Geoff sent yesterday just after midnight. “Hi, John, I saw that the city plowed shut the curb behind Micah’s car. How about I bring some steel shovels and a pick and open that up tomorrow?”

To me, Geoff’s offer shimmers like a tenor’s high C hit sure and true. Seriously, what kind of largesse is this? I’ll tell you. Grace wells up in some folks when nature takes us all by the scruff. Those with eyes to see know that a tractor with a rear blade or a pickup with a plow can be both an instrument of snow removal and a vehicle for compassion. And a steel shovel, a pick and most of all a friend, well, what you’ve got there is a classic, an “Amazing Grace” sung by one pilgrim to another.

If only we humans could bring the same shovels and love to our neighbors’ needs every day that we do in a blizzard, banks of suffering would melt away as if on a warm afternoon. May it be so. I remain hopeful.