Under snow, the screened porch awaits

Be aware, this is a column about weather, about a cold month in our lives, about snow. There have been a couple of big storms out here, which means the 72-year-old man at my place bundles up every few hours to shovel heavy, wet snow and, being in what the medical world calls “heart failure,” he gets a little anxious, wondering “What in the heck am I doing?” He was actually doing just fine until reading an article in a national newspaper answering the question, “Is shoveling snow dangerous?” The answer, of course, is a resounding, “Yes.” You can know too much.

Yesterday I watched as a doe made her way across the field in front of my house, leaping forward a few times in the deep snow before taking a break, and then leaping again. After seeing her struggle I managed to get to town and pick up a fifty-pound bag of alfalfa cubes for the wild creatures that share this land with me.

I gave up plowing my own lane a few years ago when it became clear that I needed to spend every moment with my wife, so I struck a deal with a neighbor. When it snows he comes over with his big John Deere tractor and blade, then at the end of the season, I pay him for his winter troubles, which he in turn puts in a granddaughter’s college fund. It’s a good deal for everyone. I could return to doing the plowing myself now, but I’m tired.

On the back side of my house is a screened porch, one where my wife and I spent many hours, reading, listening to the sounds of insects and birds, and just generally hanging out. After she passed a few years ago I never went out there again, letting the dust pile up, the paint on the Adirondack chairs peeling, walls getting dirty, and corners piling up with bugs. It was all rather like Miss Havisham’s wedding table in Dickens’ “Great Expectations,” the table she left intact after she was jilted at the altar, leaving food rotting, mice taking over, and cobwebs everywhere, forever and ever.

Last summer a friend convinced me to clean the porch, wash the chair cushions, and do some painting on the chairs, which I did and. I added wind chimes given to me by another friend who made them and was ready to begin sitting out again. It still hasn’t happened. When two falls to one, things change, though the porch looks good in snow and does in fact cause me to look at it and say to myself, “Maybe this year.”

A few weeks back I was in the front pew of a great church listening to a chamber orchestra and choir performing some of my favorite baroque music; you know, European white guys, Handel, Purcell, Telemann, and Vivaldi, all of whom passed in the middle of the 18th century. It was magical stuff, lightness on the edge of melancholy. January can be a melancholy month, a ‘sit and stare at the snow for a little while with nothing happening in your head’ kind of month. Perhaps you know the feeling.

Toward the end of my wife’s journey, I showered her every morning, lathering her beautiful long hair with shampoo, followed by a conditioner. After drying her off with a towel she would sit down in her white terry-cloth bathrobe while I blow-dried her hair. As I did this I sang to her, the same song every time, because it made her smile, even during the hottest days of summer. The song? It’s one you all know, with terrific lyrics about love for another. “Gone away is the bluebird, Here to stay is a new bird, To sing a love song, While we stroll along, Walking in a winter wonderland.”

Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County. The Dubuque Telegraph Herald recently published a 60-page magazine of Kurt’s columns. The magazine can be purchased here.