7. CHOP WOOD WHILE IT’S WARM.

My favorite season of all to return home to NC is absolutely fall. There is a different smell in the air- The smell of winter, around the corner. Leaves are finished for the year, but decide to flaunt their most dazzling colors as they go out brilliantly.
It is a season of preparedness, as we get ready for winter, and give thanks for all of our blessings. As much as we love to return home and feast on a fabulously cooked turkey meal, the boys are recruited to help rake the mountains of endless leaves on the property. The boys and their cousins love to jump through piles and play, but know that in every season, there is work to be done. The raking has its rewards, and as soon as they have collected a large pile in the field, it is time for a bonfire. Bonfires and boys just go together. Mix some gasoline in the picture, and you have an awesome party, (or a burn victim).
But we know our boys will learn safety from PoppaBob. He used to be a forest ranger back in the day. That was the day before he did all the other things that he has done. They learn how to build and poke a fire, how to put it out effectively, and how to make a smore. That is most important.
PoppaBob has always been safety king. After he was in forestry, he was in insurance. He has always been about “security” and “preparedness”. He was always the one out chopping and loading plenty of firewood long before winter. Some people may think his precautions are extreme, like the woodstove or the gas heaters, or the extra supplies, “just in case”, but we all know where we can turn in the case of power outages and complete catastrophe. Yep. PoppaBob’s.
Some of this habit may be inherited, since my grandfather used to nail down all of the windows in his house for security, much to the dismay of his family, in the days before air conditioning!
Either way, we know and can trust that PoppaBob thinks of every precaution and is safe. He does not believe in mowing the lawn in sandals (a habit that my husband picked up in florida) and he does not allow grandchildren to ride in the front seat of his car.
One year as a teen-ager, I received my own set of bright yellow jumper cables for Christmas. Since we always drove used cars, I did get some great use from them after all.
His habits have helped me to think more about preparedness wherever I go. To have gloves and equipment for changing a tire, to keep first aid on me at all times, I know this has paved the way for me to raise wild boys. As a mommy of three boys, I was the queen of fully stocked diaper bags and learned the necessity of extra clothing, towels, safety pins, first aid and tweezers.
Even tweezers.
When my youngest, JoBear, was still a toddler, we took a trip to NC, again. We were eating trail mix, and my husband noticed that he was not breathing right. He was sighing heavily through his mouth. I never would have even noticed since he was in the seat behind me, but my husband was really concerned and asked me if I had tweezers on me. For some unknown reason I did. He stuck the tweezers up into the back of JoBear’s nose, and plucked out a grape! Apparently, he stuffed a raisin up his nose, and when a raisin is moistened again, it swells back up into a full-sized grape!
But we realized there are some things for which no one can prepare. My oldest son was a heart patient with special needs, and we had eight years of blessings, and eight years of challenges and episodes as well. Being special needs parents required us to reach down and find a level of emotional responsibility that we did not know we had. It was not something we could pack for, or stock up on, and we realized that the only way to travel our specific journey was to prepare as best as we could, and then give God the rest. Just humbly let go.
I still credit my parents for their humble example, instilling a preparedness and work ethic in us for the things we could control, and honoring a God who would then carry us the rest of the way.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 20th, 2009 at 10:55 pm and is filed under boys, christianity, grief, home Life, parenting, values. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.