This is an excerpt from a new memoir I began writing after my dad passed away in 2017. I thought it would be appropriate to share with you;
In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
Albert Camus
People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.
Anton Chekhov
I love the four seasons we enjoy here in Oklahoma - especially the sense of anticipation I feel when seasons are about to change. Springtime means being able to watch the world come alive again, turning green as grass fades from winter brown and trees burst out in green explosions seemingly overnight. And the flowers…and the red buds.
As spring gives way to the heat of summer, I look forward to early mornings on the front porch and lazy midday dips into the pool and afternoon naps and evenings spent, again, on the front porch.
When fall draws near, I especially love the colors bursting from the dying leaves like splashes of orange and red and yellow and every color in between. I imagine this being like God’s palette and Him sweeping across the landscape by night leaving a surprise of exquisite hues for us to enjoy in the morning as the mist rises from the ponds.
Dad went to be with the Lord at the end of August, right when the summer began to fade into the autumn. This turn of events I was not quite prepared for, yet I have all confidence I will see him again when I go to be with the Lord. Still, even after several weeks and time to mourn, I realize things will never be the same…and a sweet kind of melancholy wraps me up in a blanket that smells nostalgic and comfortable, the aroma of memory wafting from somewhere deep in me. I sense winter is coming.
I love winter. I love the cold crisp air. I love the need to build a fire in the fireplace and snuggling with Melinda. I love the bonfires I build for my grandchildren. I love building a fire in the chiminea and just sitting there in the cold. I love the way fire means warmth yet we wouldn’t need the warmth had we not felt cold. Funny the thoughts one thinks when thinking about winter, How we often associate winter with death, yet we would not appreciate life so much were it not for death. Nothing brings this to mind like the facing of the winter holidays and thinking about the reality of the first Thanksgiving without dad. The first Christmas in 58 years he won’t be here. Yet, the sweetness of the memories of times long past buoy my spirit back to the warming fires of memories yet to be made. I will thank God for what I have and look forward to that grand heavenly reunion with those who have gone on before.
Seasons change. Winter will always give way to springtime. It is this knowledge that sends me right back to the wonderful memories of winters of my childhood. As winters go, winters in northeastern Oklahoma aren’t all that particularly difficult, but long stretches of below freezing temperatures and cold, cloudy weather would often freeze the ponds and cause the bar ditches to freeze over. Just as my grandchildren now long for, hope for, and dream of snow days, so I did as a boy. Though few and far between, we got our fair share of snow.
Being in the middle of America and at the southern end of the great plains, the line from the song Oklahoma rings true ‘as the wind comes sweeping down the plain!’ More than the occasional blizzard of snow, our more frequent form of winter precipitation came in the form of ice…freezing rain. Many times we went to bed knowing a winter storm front was headed our way only to wake and find the ground - and everything else - covered with a layer of ice. Looking out the window next to my bed on such mornings was like looking into a winter wonderland. Better than any Hollywood special effects could produce, the world seemed to have been frozen in time. Trees appeared to be coated in crystal, the weight of the ice causing them to bend as if in some choreographed dance, frozen in mid-step.
Even the grasses in the pastures appeared like waves of shimmering crystal frozen in mid-crest, curling perfectly as they bowed over in a curtsy, twinkling in even in the dim light of a cloudy day. The feeling of walking through frozen grass is the feeling, I suppose, one might feel should they have the opportunity to walk through a field of fragile crystal! Of course, everything was fun and games until one stepped onto a solid ice-glazed piece of ground with no grass for traction and one fell crashing onto their backside!
And the high-lines - the phone lines and electric lines suspended between telephone poles - would become so laden with ice the wires would bend close to the ground causing the poles to follow suit. The stillness of a frozen world can be quite eerie as everything seems muffled by the coating of ice, that stillness broken only by the occasional twinkling sound of an icicle breaking free from a branch and coursing its way through the limbs below. And I can never forget the sound of a frozen tree or frozen telephone pole bursting from the expansion of the frozen water within, the explosion sounding like the firing of a rifle. Ice storms always meant school would be cancelled!
Ice had its beauty, but so did snow. More often than not, we get snow in the form of a dusting, generally only 2 or three inches in depth, but I recall one snowy evening when I was in high school. Having just played a basketball game in Weleetka, Oklahoma, two of my cousins and I had ridden the school bus back home while our parents had driven on home. Our parents had beaten the storm home. We had not, meaning that by the time we arrived at the gym - the old Boynton armory - the snow had already fallen to the tune of 12 inches. Danny, Donna, and I made it as far as the edge of town where we realized we would need to seek shelter with aunt Annie who lived on that side of town. By the time we made our way to her home, the snow was already almost 2 feet deep! Our house was 3 miles to he north and Danny and Donna lived one mile further north from there! After calling our parents, we were instructed to just spend the night at aunt Annie’s…and I am so glad we obeyed!
As night gave way to morning, the glare from the sunlight being reflected from the snow outside seemed to pierce through the curtained windows. As we threw open one the curtains, we had to shield our eyes from the glaring brightness of the light being reflected back at us. Once our eyes had adjusted, we were met by the most amazing display. Daylight revealed not only the beauty of the snow but the treachery as well. As I gazed at the piles and piles of drifting snow I realized we would have never made it the three miles home. We would not have made it three more feet! The highway that ran directly in front of aunt Annie’s house was no longer visible. So deep was the snow that one who was less familiar with the location would never have known a highway was even there!
We were blown away by the magnitude of the snowfall, anticipating how long we could survive if no one were able to get to us. And just as we were beginning to plan our strategy for surviving the adventure into the great blizzard of ’75, we heard the faint sound of an engine. Even though the sound was muffled due to the blanket of snow, we definitely could hear something coming closer and closer. After a few moments and much to our amazement, we saw a jeep coming through the snow, making a path where we suspected the highway must be! And then, much to our astonishment, the jeep pulled off of the highway and into the driveway of aunt Annie’s house! We had been rescued!
Even though our grand plans for survival had been stymied, our disappointment gave way to the realization of our dilemma. Power was out, meaning heat was gone. The water supply lines had frozen, meaning nothing to drink. Aunt Annie had only food enough for a couple of days, meaning the three extra teenagers had already eaten her out of house and home. Even though no other vehicles were on the road, my dad had called Glen Bowles and told him of our predicament, knowing Glen had a four-wheel-drive Jeep that could make it through with ease. As Glen drove us home, I imagined what might have been ala Jack London’s Call of the Wild…all the way home.
Mom and dad were constantly warning us to stay off the frozen ponds. This was quite difficult to do since one of our daily winter chores was to break holes in the ice at pond’s edge, opening a place where the cattle could drink. Cattle are not smart enough to do this themselves, though I have witnessed the smart horses using their hooves to break through the ice on their own in order to quench their thirst. What’s a boy to do when the frozen expanse before them seems to call - to beg - them onto its fun-filled surface?
At the ice’s own enticement - that’s my story and I’m sticking to it - we discovered that if we ran fast enough…got a good running start…we could slide swiftly and easily across a narrow area between the pond’s banks and glide completely to the other side without causing a single crack in the ice! On more than one occasion, though, we ventured out a bit further than we should have only to find we did not have quite enough momentum to carry us all the way across! As we slid to a standstill, invariably the ice would begin to develop small fissures beneath our feet, running like spider webs cracks the expanse with the speed of lightning, inducing panic and dread in whomever happened to find themselves in such a predicament.
Sometimes, the cracking ice sounded like a slow creaking as we felt it giving way beneath us. At other times, it sounded like a gun going off somewhere below! More than once did the brothers on dry land search of a fallen willow branch with which to extend aid to a brother in need! This was all fun and games to us until the day one of the cows went into labor and fell through the ice. Discovering her too late for intervention, both she and her calf had perished. From that day forward we were a bit more careful. A bit more…
The small creek that ran through our property- the creek we called ‘the ditch’ - provided some of my favorite winter-time memories. Running almost the entire length of the 90 acres we called home, the shallow waters of the ditch always froze completely solid for weeks at a time. Joy upon joy the day we discovered this! Even though we did not have actual ice skates, we would ‘skate’ along the length of the frozen waterway on the most epic skate-marathons ever! We would enter the ditch at the crawdad hole near the western edge of the property and head eastward across the farm. Laughing and pushing and skating our way along the ditch, one would have seen 4 heads in line slipping and sliding their way in stair-step height, as we made our epic way down the ditch as far as it would take us.
Although none of us knew a thing about hockey other than the evening sports reports on the evening newscast, we would play hockey the entire length of the ditch. Skates? Cowboy boots would suffice any day thanks to the slick smooth soles. Stick? Any willow branch would do. Puck? A frozen cow patty! Rules? Don’t draw blood. And off we would race, vying for control of the ‘puck’. For hour upon hour, we could be heard across the pasture as we traversed back and forth, laughing our way to the house as suppertime drew near.
Even though farm work was not always easy, it was good for me. regardless of the season, the cattle need to be tended to…especially in winter. the cows needed to be milked daily. This was my chore. By the time I turned six, milking was my daily chore. How I dreaded the morning-time wake up calls of my dad. On cold, crisp winter mornings when it felt I had just gotten the pillow and blanket arrangement just right, my dad would call out to me from the stairwell below our attic room, “Dennis! Time to get up! The cows ain’t gonna milk themselves!”
While this rankled me to no end, I found humor in the possibility of a cow somehow managing to milk herself and led me to wonder to no end how I might be able to train her to milk herself! Rising and dressing for the cold, I would shudder each time my warm just-awakened face was met by the bitter contrast of the freezing outside air as I made my way to the pasture to wrangle the 2 cows for milking. My cold frozen fingers were always made warm by the engorged teats as I methodically puled down to start the flow of milk. While this made me feel warm, I am sure the cow never appreciated the icicle-like fingers my touch must have reminded her of!
Breaking the ice was not a one-time task each day. We broke the ice once each morning and again each evening. Since there was no green grass to be had during the dormancy of the winter months, we needed to feed and hay the cattle each day, just as we needed to break the ice, twice each day. My brothers and I would load several bales of hay onto the hay trailer we kept attached to the tractor for that purpose during winter months. Along with the hay, we would load a bag of cattle feed, nutrient-rich grain compacted into what we called cattle cubes. Driving the tractor to a certain area of land, one of us would open the feed bag and slowly pour it out on the ground as another brother drove the tractor slowly across the pasture.
While the cattle went for the cattle cubes, we would then begin dispensing the hay. Again, while one of us drove the tractor across the field, the other brothers would begin cutting the two wires that bound the bales. Once the wires had been cut, the hay would then be dispersed as we tossed or pushed the compacted sections of dried grass to the pasture below. As the last bale was released, we could look behind us and see a trail of cattle, heads down, looking like statues frozen in the pasture. This kind of work was so good for us, instilling the very stark reality that if the work was not done the cattle would die. Dad and mom were teaching us the most basic reality of hard work. To work is to serve. To work is to give life. To work is good.
Winter meant Thanksgiving and Christmas to me. Whenever the first cool crisp days of autumn made their way to our neck of the woods, my heart began to long for pumpkin pie and turkey and dressing and the time when Grandpa Herman and Grandma Lela - my mom’s folks - would drive down from Sapulpa and drive me and my brothers to see the lights in Tulsa. Even now, I can see the lines of cars as we drove up the Bee-line through Glenpool and then over toward Bixby and up Memorial Drive. From my vantage point lying in the back space where the window met the car seat, I felt as if I was flying, imagining the car an airplane - or better yet - Santa’s sleigh transporting me through the magic of Christmas!
Winter time draws me to a sense of wonder, taking me back to innocent days before I was so self-focused. The wonder of a home-made sled dad built for us and the lack of a hill big enough to actually use it on. The wonder of dad flipping a discarded car hood and dragging it behind the tractor, me and my brothers giggling around the farm in glee. The wonder of my mom singing me to sleep in the cold mid-winter nights beneath handmade quilts she had quilted herself. The wonder of the one-of-a-kind designs left on my bedroom window each frosty freezing morning. the wonder of the sound of ice pellets pummeling the roof above me or the wonder of the silence of the world after a heavy snow. The wonder of sitting on a chair feet dangling above the floor furnace after having come in from doing the winter chores. The wonder of how good it feels to be nestled in a warm blanket and to wake up feeling cared for through a cold winter’s night.
Were it not for winter, how could I appreciate the coming of spring…or the freedom of summer…or the nostalgia of fall…or the coming of another winter? I suppose wonder comes when faced with the bleak coldness of death that one becomes more grateful for the disparity of the seasons. Simply put, how can one know the joy of summer without the cold of winter? How can one prepare for the winter without the warmth of summer. The seasons go hand in hand. Even though one might associate winter with death and bleakness, one’s point of view can mean the difference between despair and joy. Might as well choose joy, right?
Joy is what I choose as winter nears. I choose to remember skiing with my children. I choose to remember the good times my mother and father created for us while I was growing up. I choose to remember the igloo we built when my children were growing up. I choose to remember pulling my children across the pasture, rope attached to the plastic sled, plastic sled attached to the horse. I choose to remember daring the twins to swim in the snow while I watched from the warm waters of the hot tub. I choose to remember the myriad snowball fights.
I choose joy…even as we approach the first holiday season without dad. His memory will linger as long as I am here…and that is enough for me. I love the winter…
Dennis Jernigan
Photo courtesy of https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2017/08/02/14/26/winter-landscape-2571788_1280.jpg