Tag: sacrifice

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Snow Time, Like The Present

Inch by inch, the Subaru crawled over the snow-covered road. Inside the car, the CRUNCH and TEAR of our progress seemed to echo as Dad carefully drove the six long blocks up Gay Street.

It was time to pick up Grandma Elsie. And during the Christmas Blizzard of 1982, that was no small feat.

I can see a number of you nodding along. No surprise. You can always tell the long-time Front Range residents by dropping the words “Christmas” and “1982” into the conversation. That was the year of Bing Crosby’s Revenge, when the snow started coming on Christmas Eve and refused to stop.

That was the Christmas Eve when Dad battled long and hard to clear the front driveway – only to peek out the window during his coffee break and see it covered over again.

That was the Christmas Eve when I left my bicycle on the back porch – and looked out the next morning to see just the tip of one handle breaking the snow.

For my sisters and me, it was the coolest Christmas ever, with the world briefly transformed into our own personal Hoth. (Yes, even then we were Star Wars geeks.) Looking back as an adult, I can only imagine how exhausting it must have been for my folks.

Snow transforms the world, and I still love the beauty and magic that it brings as it makes old landscapes new. But it also carries a price.

It means more work, more caution and less haste.

It means breaking your routine and thinking about what you’re doing and why.

Most of all, it means looking out for your neighbor and lending a hand where you can, whether it’s helping to shove their high-centered car off a snowy median or lending an extra shovel to clear a walk.

And when you’ve made it through one of the Big Ones, you remember. Surviving the Christmas Blizzard of ’82 becomes a badge of pride.

We’ve seen those lessons in other times and places, many of them much less picturesque. Tornado. Wildfire. Flood. All the moments that reach out and test you as a person and a community.

Moments like now.

Years from now, a lot of us (I hope) will be boring kids and grandkids with our stories of the Pandemic of 2020. We’ll have our own tales of the uncertainty, the frustration, the odd things we had to do to get by when the world suddenly sprouted more masks than a Marvel Comics movie.

And hopefully, we’ll also have the same lesson to pass on. That it’s in the times of crisis that your love for your neighbor is truly tested.

We sing a lot about love this time of year. It fills our stories from the haunting lines of “A Christmas Carol” to the cheesiest Hallmark movie on the screen. And whether the tale is profound or trite, one element always comes back – love doesn’t leave you alone.

It doesn’t care about what’s comfortable or normal. It’s likely to ask you to change – to uproot what you thought you knew and rebuild. To think beyond your own skin and sacrifice, whether it’s to help a neighbor or a world.

It’s a hard gift to give. And the best one.

And when the world seems cold, it’s that love that will again light the fire.

The time has come. The season is here. The need is everywhere. Remember the lessons we learned in the snow and reach out with them, even when there’s not a single flake to be seen.

The road has been slow and the progress agonizing. But the destination’s worth it.  

With care, we can reach it together.

Even without four-wheel drive.

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The Quiet Time

By now, we should be experts in quiet.

Think about it. We’ve had weeks, even months of practice. Self-quarantine. Social distancing. Stay-at-home orders with every possible distraction removed (except Netflix). Surely by now, we’ve mastered the art of silent contemplation, gained a new appreciation for the inner life, and dedicated ourselves to a period of reflection and self-discovery …

You’re not buying it, are you?

Well, it was worth a shot.

In all honesty, the growing levels of COVID-19 restlessness haven’t really shocked me that much, and not just because of economic pressure and a rising tide of Amazon boxes that threatens to inundate all of suburbia. The fact of the matter is, we’re a loud country. An extrovert among nations. Folks who want to do instead of be, and preferably do it with friends at 100 decibels or more, especially when it comes time for the July 4 Symphony in the Key of High Explosives. (If you’re not part of the annual conflagration, by the way, our dog would like to thank you from the bottom of his eardrums.)

I know, there are plenty of exceptions (myself included). But by and large, we’re not a country that does real well with “sit still and wait.”

So there’s a real irony to the fact that our first restless steps beyond the house and the grocery store are coming just in time for Memorial Day.

A couple of years ago, I noted that Memorial Day is something of an oddity among the holidays, since it doesn’t ask you to do all that much. There’s no calls to put out acres of holiday lights, or dress in bizarre costumes, or call your mom before her day slips away again. (You did remember this year, right?) Instead, we’re asked to pause and remember and reflect, to hold close the memory of those who gave everything they had to protect the nation.

And to be honest, we don’t do it all that well. We mean well, most of us, but backyard grills are seductive. And swimming pools. And the chance to grab the first three-day weekend in the last three months or so.

But now … now we have the quiet holiday in the midst of the quiet time. A moment where we’re still supposed to be taking it slow and distant, the perfect atmosphere in which to focus on the things that matter.

What if we actually did?

What if we took the time to remember those who stepped forward to protect those more vulnerable, whatever the sacrifice?

What if we learned from them? And emulated them? Not by hurrying to a foreign battlefield, but by coming to the aid of our friends and neighbors, even when it’s difficult or uncomfortable?

What if we took a moment to recall the cost of conflict, and then looked for ways to ease it?

What if we opened ourselves to the lessons of the past, so that we could build a better future?

What if we just stopped to think? To look beyond our skin? To see a need and stand up to fill it, as someone once did for us?

That would be a Memorial Day worth remembering. And not just for the epic barbecue rubs.

Take the opportunity. In a world of uncertainty, be someone’s reassurance, even if it’s through the simplest of acts. In a time where distancing is survival, take the actions that bind all of us closer together, even when we have to stay physically apart.

So many gave so much to bring us where we are. But it’s up to us to carry it forward, with our heart, our willingness, and our sacrifices, big and small.

Don’t do it for applause or acclaim. Do it because we’re counting on each other. Because none of us can do this alone.

You may even find a quiet satisfaction.

And at a time like this, that’s the most fitting reward of all.

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In Living Memory

OK, quiz time. Which of the following comes next when you hear “Remember, remember…”?

A) “… to turn your clocks back one hour to end Daylight Saving Time.”

B) “…what you came into the room to get five minutes ago.”

C) “…a time in September, when life was slow, and oh, so mellow.”

D) “… the fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot.”

If you answered D, there are decent odds that you either have English relatives, or you’re a fan of  the movie or comic “V For Vendetta” … or that you know how a columnist’s mind works on questions like this. (We’re a little predictable.)  The chant, of course, is a traditional one for Guy Fawkes Day in England on Nov. 5, and a catchy one at that. Some of you may have even finished the next words: “I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.”

Now comes the harder part. Why? Why remember?

Those who remember anything at all might recall that Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament. But the details of why, or who he was, or what century it happened in, or that the observance was once an occasion for virulent anti-Catholic fervor … that tends to be fuzzier for most people. Most of the time, what gets remembered is the admonition to “remember, remember” and not much else.

Which brings me to Veterans Day.

Each year on Nov. 11, we get our own call to remember.  – specifically, to remember and thank the veterans of our armed services, especially those who have served during wartime. Cities offer parades. Restaurants offer meals. We hear their stories, shake their hands, maybe put out the flag for the day or the weekend.

But how often do we think about why? Do we think about why?

Or are we just remembering to remember?

I wonder. I really do.

It began as a remembrance of horror and a pledge of peace – the Armistice Day, when the relentless and pointless four-year slaughter of World War I finally came to an end.

In this country, it continued because of a Kansas man named Alvin King, a man who repaired shoes and felt that the sacrifices of the still-recent World War II veterans and those who came after them should be honored as well.

Two ideas. Two kinds of memory.

One, the memory of things past. Of a portion of life given at the country’s call. A recognition that some were willing to risk pain and fear and death and despair in order to serve a land they loved. Some came back to thanks and parades. Some returned quietly, as though knocking off work at the end of the day. Some, instead of welcome, drew recriminations.

It’s a story that most of us cannot truly know or share. One unique to those who have served. And so we remember.

But we also need a second memory. A memory that looks forward. A memory that remembers that the struggles are not always in the past, that our veterans are not just a story to be told and a hand to be shaken once a year. That we have an obligation to meet their needs, to heal their wounds, to help them as they once helped us.

And most of all, we need to remember the price. And the ancient commitment to our veterans, so often broken, to create no more of their number. To seek peace in a world of war.

It is an imposing memory. A demanding one, even. But essential.

Remember, remember.

And then make the memory real.

I know of no reason why this veterans’ season should ever be forgot.

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Love in a Cold Time

The first serious snowfall of winter always energizes me.

Maybe part of me never stopped being nine years old. That’s how old I was when the Christmas Blizzard of 1982 hit, transforming the world around me with sudden rapidity. A six-block drive to pick up Grandma became an epic journey in my Dad’s crawling Subaru. A bicycle left on the back porch disappeared beneath a carpet of white, except for one tip of one handle. The entire back yard became a frozen world to explore, one that my sisters and I – proper “Star Wars” fans, all – immediately declared to be Hoth from “The Empire Strikes Back.”

In the years since then, I’ve learned about the joys of freeing high-centered cars, salting frozen sidewalks at 6 a.m., and wrenching your spine while shoveling snow. (Snow shovels make a very inadequate cane, by the way.) None of it has deterred me very long from my basic thesis. If anything, it’s deepened the complexity, setting off two overlapping voices in my head:

“It’s wintertime. What a white, beautiful and lovely place the world is.”

“It’s wintertime. What a cold, chill and deadly place the world is.”

The latter cannot be denied. This is a time of year that can freeze people outside or drain them inside, as the dark nights lengthen. It’s a time when we become all too aware of the people who should still be here celebrating with us, when the empty chair takes on a presence of its own and summons more ghosts than a dozen “Christmas Carols.”

Which is why I maintain that this is still the perfect time for a celebration of universal love.

I admit, this may take some explaining.

Almost every belief and tradition turns on the lights this time of year to hold back the cold and the darkness. Whether it’s Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, Yule, or something else, there’s this deep-set need to push back against the encroaching night and create beauty. The light kindled stands all the more bright and lovely by contrast, even without five marching Snoopys, four Santa Nativities, three melting lights, two inflatable turtledoves, and a partridge in a floodlit pear tree – all of them on the same yard.

But anyone can plug lights in a socket and “ooh” at the result. It doesn’t necessarily follow that we also turn our thoughts to tidings of comfort and joy, especially in times when the thermometer would have to be heated to reach two digits.

But it’s all the more fitting that we do. Because this is the time of year when love takes guts.

Love comes easy when the sun is shining and the world is green. The barriers are down. It’s when we relax, when we court, when we find it easiest to visit on the spur of the moment. Why not?

But when it takes an act of will and a thick pair of boots just to make it from the front door to the mailbox … that’s when even the smallest gesture takes on new meaning. The natural instinct is to stay huddled inside in the warmth – and we have to ignore that instinct if we want to be able to help a friend, a neighbor, a stranger freezing on the street.

We expose ourselves every time we do that. But we also spread the warmth to places where it otherwise could not go.

Anyone who lives in Colorado, I think, knows that it’s during the times of extremes that you find out what your neighbors are made of. Flood or drought, wildfire or blowing snow, this is when you see the open-armed charity and almost selfless courage begin to emerge. It’s when a community is tested, to see whether you truly have a community at all or just a bunch of people living together.

This particular test is more predictable than a rising river, more enduring than a blaze in the woods. So what better time to celebrate brotherhood and goodwill? Sure, church scholars talk about how Christ was probably born in the spring or the early fall (to draw from my own faith for a moment), but the story of love coming to a hostile world would still belong in the winter, even if no other tradition had demarcated the territory and lit the darkness.

This is where risky, selfless, muscular love belongs.

And if that love comes with strong vertebrae and a snow shovel – so much the better.

See you in Hoth, everyone. May the season be with you.