Lake Effect Snow

“Are you okay?” I ask Nathanael, my son. He’s four years old. From the bottom of the hill he’s looking up at me, his face and neck covered with snow. His first run down the sledding hill ended with a soft and rolling crash, leaving him splayed like a starfish. After a moment he finally determines, “I wanna go again!” Quickly he stands up and starts the long climb to the top. His older sister Grace has already made her way back up. She doesn’t need my help sledding anymore. She already has two winters on her younger brother.

As Nathan fights the smoothness and pitch of the big hill, I take a moment to look around me. It’s the day before Thanksgiving and we’re visiting my wife’s grandmother in Jamestown, NY. Jamestown is about an hour south of Buffalo in the very heart of Lake Erie’s snow belt. This means that there is always an overabundance of snow from early November until the spring. Tonight is no different. There is at least a foot of snow on the ground and it’s perfect – cold enough to pack, but not so wet that it soaks through your snowsuit.

It’s just dusk and the lights from the streets and the parking lots around us reflect brightly so that it’s not really dark out. There’s a soft, amber glow to everything so you could sled all night if you wanted. It’s the same glow I remember from my childhood playing outside in the snow under the streetlights. We always had lots of snow when I was a kid growing up in Northeast Ohio. Looking around I notice the snow has gathered thick on the branches of all the trees creating a soft canopy covering the houses and sidewalks beneath. There are ten or twelve different families on the hill surrounding us by their laughter and screams of delight as the kids surf down the huge hill in ones, twos and threes. Some are on discs, some are on toboggans and one teenage kid has an old Flexible Flyer. One brave father allows his two young sons to lie down on top of him as they cruise down on their bellies. At a glance it looks like today's version of a Currier & Ives print—folks young and old enjoying the fun and frolic of the fresh, fallen snow.

Grace soon finds a friend named Crystal and she’s off to go up and down the hill without us. That leaves me to give all my attention to my boy Nathanael, and I’m all in. His little 35 lb. frame is made for this, and my somewhat larger frame seems to be holding up. The more trips down we make, the more Nathan’s confidence grows. Soon he wants to hit the big ramp the teenage boys are using with their snowboards. We try it. We crash. We laugh. Inwardly I know that I’m going to be in some pain the next day, but it’s a pain I’ll gladly endure. I also know that we’ll be returning to Grandma’s warm house later where hot chocolate and warm baths await. Grandma's hot chocolate has amazing healing powers.

This is a good moment. It’s a moment that makes any preceding not-so-good moments worth it. It’s a moment that will stick with me for a long time: My boy learning the pure joy of sledding in the perfect snow from Lake Erie, the promised hot chocolate and the forging of lifelong remembrances.

A good moment that is mine.

More later. . .

Stuff

Lately I've been thinking a lot about stuff. More specifically, I've been thinking about all the stuff we've purchased recently. Here is a list of the larger items that we've purchased within the last year: a new refrigerator, a used 40 gig iPod, new replacement windows in our entire house, a new window air conditioner for the office, a new tile floor in the breakfast room, a new smartphone for me, a BOSE Wave machine, bookshelves for the office, a new iMac, a new Dell laptop, a new washer and dryer, new bunk beds for the kids (which are surprisingly expensive) and Andrew Peterson concert tickets. If you go back more than a year, we've also purchased a new furnace and air conditioner, new living room couches, a new standing pantry and a minivan. And I'm not even mentioning the new ball caps, the DVDs, the CDs, the clothes, the books, or the songs off of iTunes.

Let me be very clear right up front that all these purchases have been made with money that we had on hand, and not on credit. We pay off our entire credit card balance every month. We save, we are good stewards of our resources and we do not overspend. Everything in this post has been paid for completely up front or was a gift. The BOSE Wave (an absolutely fabulous machine by the way) was part Christmas gift and part money I'd saved for 2 years giving piano and guitar lessons. The point of reflection here is the actual items themselves, and not how we pay for them.

Most of these purchases came as a result of unfortunate circumstances which brought about a supposed need. A new van was needed when the old one died. A new fridge was needed when the old one stopped working. New windows went in because the original wooden ones rattled in the frames when the wind blew, and a new iMac came along because the old PC desktop died. It's the way life works. By the way, as a recent Mac convert I have come out of the darkness and into the light.

With each of these purchases the flesh gets a fresh jolt of euphoric excitement that anesthetizes. When you become dependent on that euphoria, your purchases increase and become more impulsive and unreasonable. You can make real problems for yourself in a quick hurry. But being a oniomaniac (shop-aholic) is not what I want to talk about either. I'm thinking about something much deeper, much more subtle, and more dangerous than that.

The temptation for me (it's practically genetic) is to seek to find my security and safety in my new stuff that works. For the first time in our married life we have two reliable vehicles at the same time, with enough money to maintain rather than fix them. It gives me peace of mind and I feel good about my life. I can fall asleep to the quiet whir of all the new, working appliances in my weather-tight, energy-efficient house. All is right with the world. It's all good.

What a load of crap.

This peace of mind that I think I have is a house of cards; a mirage. What happens when our possessions fail us? Our cars will eventually die. Our computers will eventually crash. Our new appliances will eventually wear out. Do we just go buy new? What happens when we don't have the money to buy new stuff? What then? Where is our security? Our peace of mind?

I am militant about getting rid of peripheral possessions. Growing up I was taught to keep everything because you might one day need it or use it again, or we might be able to sell it in a garage sale or on eBay. I have summarily rejected this philosophy, and have probably gotten rid of some things prematurely (to my wife's frustration). But what about the possessions that I do keep? Am I seeking peace and comfort in them? Am I fooling myself into thinking that they one day won't wear out or break? I don't know.

C.S. Lewis said, "He who has God plus many things has nothing more than he who has God alone." If God was all I had, would I have peace? If God was all I had, would I be secure? If God was all I had, would it be enough? At the end of things all my stuff will burn. Am I okay with that?

More later . . .

Dreams and Sleeping

My whole life I've had vivid dreams while I sleep. At least 6 nights a week the craziest dreams rip through my mind at a pace I can barely keep up with, and when I wake up I guess I'm rested. I get so little sleep anyway I'm not sure my body would even know real rest. I haven't slept well at all since our children arrived over six years ago. I might get 5-6 hours a night, and if I sleep longer I wake up feeling ucky.

The vivid dreams started early. When I was young I had a recurring dream that I had two moms: my evil mom and my real mom. The evil mom had a warped, demonic face and a cold, whispery voice. It was my mom, but a dark, twisted version of her. My real mom always seemed to be in the next room when the evil mom appeared, so they never actually met. I couldn't convince my real mom that there was a horrible woman lurking around the house terrorizing her son. I had that dream many times.

When I was in high school I started doing a lot of music and theater. The classic performer's nightmare became a regular in the queue. It's the typical dream where you're on stage and you're the lead, but you have no idea what show you're in or what you're lines are. The urgency and acute nature of the stress is breathtaking. Very recently though, I actually recognized while I was sleeping that I was having one of these dreams and I somehow woke myself up. What a feeling of empowerment that gave me.

Rarely are my dreams the kind that bring peace or a sense of fun. I've never had a dream that I was Superman and that I could fly. The closest I've gotten is The Greatest American Hero; I've got the suit and should be able to fly but I can't. That's frustrating. Or maybe in my dream I've got a Harley between my legs, but I just can't seem to get her going, or she's just really slow.

I also dream about losing one or more family members. This looks different every time. Sometimes I dream that I'm having an affair with some anonymous woman and my wife discovers us. She takes everything and leaves. Another time she takes our three kids up in a hot air balloon and it disappears without a trace. Another dream has my 4-yr.-old Nathan walking across the rafter beam in a huge barn. And of course I'm yelling at the top of my lungs and of course . . . he falls. These dreams are the worst.

My dreams of late have been of the CIA/NSA flavor, with a bit of the Bourne Identity thrown in. I'm being pursued by a large group of agents who are very sinister and powerful. I wake up running.

Another very weird aspect of my dreams is that anyone can show up as a major character. I might think of the most random person during the day, or see someone's image in a magazine or paper, and they will guest star in that night's dream. It might be someone from high school who I just reconnected with on Facebook, and they'll appear in my dream like we were never apart. Weird.

In the Bible God frequently uses dreams to communicate with people. I can't help but wonder what, if anything, He might be trying to show me. I won't speculate, but whatever it is, it's certainly coming to me in HD.

More later . . .

The Difference Between Males and Females. . .

We have a room in our house that we call the sun room. Sometimes it's referred to as the breakfast room, even though we eat almost all our meals in there. It's located on the north end of our small Cape Cod over what used to be the coal room in the basement. (Our house was built in 1940, and most homes were heated with coal furnaces back then). It's a bright room because it has huge windows on three sides. It's bright and cheerful, hence the name.

Earlier today Christina, Rose, Nathan and I were just sitting down to eat our lunch in the breakfast room when Christina bursts out, "What is that?" She was pointing down at the Newsweek she was reading. Stuck there on George F. Will's The Last Word commentary was a nasty white-colored booger. "Whose is that?" I thought to myself while chewing.

Upon realizing that it was in fact a booger, Christina covered her mouth and inhaled a cry that rivaled her "Charly, there's a Spider!" cry. A wide-eyed Rose copied her mother and covered her mouth with both hands too. "That's a booger, isn't it?" Christina said. Without hesitation Nathanael's eyes brightened up and he said, "A booger? Where? Can I see?"

More later . . .