The season of waiting

Winter has taken aim and humbled those of us living in the Midwest and the Northeast.

It was 15 below the other night, with a windchill of -40.  Tonight, temperatures will begin a steady decline and Monday's high temperature is expected to be -15.  The high.  MINUS FIFTEEN DEGREES!  In some areas of northern Iowa (that would be here in the Big Woods) the windchill factor may reach -60 degrees.  We are being warned that frostbite can occur within 5-10 minutes in these temperatures.

During the winter, I drive a 1996 Blazer with 4-wheel drive.  It's a workhorse, but it's cold-blooded.  Even parked in the garage, I keep a battery charger plugged into it.  It is no guarantee of it starting up.  I'm not so certain it will start when the temperature turns arctic on Monday.

The poet, Linda Pastan, calls this 'the season of waiting'.

We've entered the very depths of winter.  Bone-chilling, perilous cold, the threat of snow and ice and treacherous roads.  Weather fit for neither man nor beast.  My two dogs, Jack and Joey, waste little time doing their business these days.

We wait out these severe weather alerts, crawl under the covers at night, fall into a sleep that will be quickly forgotten when we venture out to our vehicles, and pray the engine turns over and we let it idle for 10 minutes to warm up.

I have a big pot of chili simmering in the slow-cooker today, thick and hearty with black beans, kidney beans, lentils, onion and green pepper, tomatoes, and soy burger.  Nothing will taste as good tonight when the winds pick up and the arctic comes to Iowa.  It is worth the wait.

There is little to do in this waiting season.  I read books and write poems.  I putter around the house, organize my closets, sift through dresser drawers, bake loaves of bread and try new recipes.

We settle into our 'long winter's sleep', pray we remain safe in our warm homes.  We dare not think of spring yet because we know February can be the cruelest month of the season.

So we wait it out, imagine winter is a survival test and we must steel ourselves against all attacks.  We will be under siege for the next few days, hunkered down and paying respect to nature's ferocity.

While we wait, we practice patience.

Shivering is just another part of Iowa

It's unseasonably cold in the Big Woods with afternoon temps never getting above 18 degrees and it's expected the thermometer will dip to zero tonight.

Shivering is truly another facet of Iowa.  So is starkness.  I'm grateful to have a poet's sensibilities which allow me to look at the frozen ponds, the oak and walnut trees wind-stripped and now in deep prayer as they wait for spring.

I drive past fields harvested to brittle, broken stalks where farmers let their cattle forage for bits of seed corn and silage.

I counted three bald eagles circling the nearly iced-over Maquoketa River today, hoping to snag a fish come up from the deeper waters.  On the fence posts, hawks watch the ditches for the quiet movement of a vole or rabbit among the burst cattails and milkweed.

As a poet, all my senses ride shotgun; the wind howling down the river valley, the dusty smell of old barn board, the frigid blast of bitter cold when I take the dogs out at four a.m., the crisp chill of the well water from the tap, the sudden glimpse of a snowy owl vigilant in a tree on my way home from work today.

The dark arrives early these days, and it does seem like my day is shorter, that time has run out and I'll have to begin another day in mere hours.  But here in the Big Woods, it means the stars come out sooner, and against the clear, cold black sky, shine so brightly they steal my breath.

Let winter come.  I will find new words for it.

How dogs, diners and death brought me back to life.

It's three years since my partner, Jeff, died. The grief was consuming, breathtaking; sometimes beautiful, sometimes hellish. “We all ask the same question,” the poet, Dorianne Laux said to me shortly after Jeff died. “Who am I in the face of death? For you, the answer is a simple one: I'm a writer.”

And so I wrote. Poems filled with my grief, my anger, my confusion. My wonder.

A year later, I loaded my belongings and my dog, Jack, and returned to Iowa where I grew up. I moved into my father's lake home in the tiny village of Delhi in Delaware County.

I found a job as a short-order cook in a small diner, a place where farmers gather in the early morning to gab over coffee and eggs.  "We're like a family here," the owner's wife told me the first day.  It was a far-cry from retail manager, but I found the artistry in working the grill.  And I found a family.

I'd only been in Iowa three months when I met Joey, a fat ball of black fur and the saddest puppy eyes. He was leashed with a bit of twine and two young girls were desperately trying to find homes for him and his three sisters.

I wrote more poems that fall and winter; poems about Iowa, about the farms and the churches, about the quiet. I still grieved for Jeff, but there was a shift, a turning, a discovery that I was going on and surprisingly, it was okay.

My second winter is coming. Joey is a big, lovable teddy bear of a dog, and he and Jack make an odd pair. The three of us crawl into bed at night, the best threesome I've ever had. 

And recently, I noticed, grief slipped into memory.

 In theory, you let go.