Cold rain had been falling for a couple days. Complete saturation had long since happened and the creek at the bottom of the cabin lawn was rising again. We had the four wheeler for traversing the rutted and red-clay-water-running-in- streams trail that we had for our lane. Words fail. Minnesota mud has no equal for sticky and slimy and staining. Mud that swallows whole roads, and doesn’t return them. Come, throw your rocks in there, your largest movable objects, offer them up, help us build a road on the bottomless abyss of red-clay mud. Actually it’s what it does to the mind that is concerning. Can you tell?
We loaded a trailer, already hooked to the 4-wheeler, with our clothes and a few of Elv’s tools and other things we might need for a few weeks. A cooler of food. Anything I might want for my trip to Idaho. We arranged for mail pickup and plant waterings. I hated to leave. Inside the cabin it is warm and clean and dry and very comfortable. We have finally accomplished the bathroom build, albeit unfinished. Leaving wasn’t easy.
Besides, it was still raining. Not just any old ordinary rain. This rain was rainier, seemed to me, like the mud is muddier. Cold, wet slanting needles, stinging, dashing and slashing my skin through my scarf. We climbed onto the wheeler, red mud slinging off our boots, dirtying the seat and our denim. Our heads bowed to the rain and wind, already wet, we pulled away, through the soggy woods, over the little brook, swollen and swirling -the one I call my kitchen creek. It’s usually so small and quiet. Then over Elvs bridge and the ford where the water was washing over already, getting higher by the hour. The neighbors waved as we churned by. It took a long time it seemed to reach the car parked a mile out at the end of Joshua Road. In the rain, tears don’t amount to much.
We have a travel trailer that one could never quite call home… It’s small and thin and trailer-ish. But we’re going to at least have a place to live safely far away from mud! Since it’s parked in Clark’s big yard under the majesty of huge, old, white pines, we will enjoy it. Because we choose to count our blessings, however hard that might be. Once I stopped to realize that God, at least, hasn’t been surprised or upset by any of the changes in our lives, I got over myself, again, and bucked up.
I even went shopping for things we need for the Innsbruck. (Doesn’t that read/sounds so much more genteel than does travel trailer?) Ahem, so I went to the local Salvation Army used shop and found four Gibson plates in cream and blue, my colors for dishes. Elv says he broke all the big plates we had when the cupboard door flew open when he moved the trailer last fall.
Next, I found three crystal goblets. I know they’re crystal because I tapped them with a finger nail to be sure. They sang rather nicely. Plain old glass does not sing when you tap it. It only plinks blankly somehow.
Besides those, I found a blue vase with a gridded lid for putting flower stems through. I wasn’t shopping for a vase. I don’t need more vases, but the truth is that they are on the wrong side of the sea of mud through which I do not care to pass. This blue vase solves that.
And then there was the lamp with the happy, blue daisies. I really liked it a lot. The daisies are not just painted on the flat surface; but are deeply shaped into the glass or maybe it’s glazed pottery… could be.(I looked it up, it’s ceramic. It’s also truly vintage and possibly worth a few.) But I don’t need this lamp and the shade was in bad shape. I settled for taking a picture and left it there. But I really wish to own it. I fear I’m in great danger of setting my affections on things of this earth, again.
Then I went over to Restore to get a replacement faucet for the kitchen sink, Innsbruck again. That’s where I saw a chair that I want to own. It’s dirty and will need new cushions. But it is the right shape and size for me and there’s a lot of wood that needs painting on it, which I enjoy doing. I know right where I’ll put it. And it would pair up with the daisy lamp perfectly.
I found the faucet right away, and left without that chair.
“I could get both and restore them and give them as a gift.” I told Elv during supper. He wasn’t moved in the least.
“Isn’t that lamp a bit over-sized for our place?”
Anyway all that to say this. The beauty of a blue daisy lamp is grace to my senses for the ravages of red-clay mud. I suppose that’s why I think I want it. Maybe all I need is the picture, really. Until the healing green and warmth of summer cures the mud; I’m going to take the beautiful and this season of spring as strengthening grace.
Stone House Scribblings 