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Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Memories of FRAN

Well, it's come to me lately that we are closing in on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Fran--that vicious 'lady' that slammed through the Raleigh area in September 1996.
If you know me, you know I love rain, and crave rainy days that don't come often enough for me in North Carolina. They are peaceful and calming. Now hurricanes and tropical storms usually bring the gift of rain in our region, except they often are accompanied by tremendous winds and even tornados. Not good!

On September 6th, 1996, Fran arrived, roaring in around midnight, with a vengence. Greg Fishel had forcast the possibility, but he didn't realize we were going to experience a direct hit. Somewhere between 12:30 and 1 pm, as the wind began to howl, a tall pine tree beside our house was twisted by a downburst and broke into three pieces, crushing my Pontiac van and Seth's Celebrity, stabbing through the living room wall just missing the fireplace, and spearing the roof countless times. It ripped off the gutters and the fashia boards on the front of the house, and the railing on the front steps. (Little did we know it would stay that way for 6+ months!) Next, a second pine fell, blocking the driveway and smashing through our shrubs and crepe myrtle!
The power died soon after. Keith and Seth went to the attic and attempted to make a few temporary patches with trash bags to keep out the pelting rain. Then we huddled together in the living room and hunkered down for the duration; Keith, Seth, Skye, Charlie and me, scared silly! Shivering and praying! Our Basset hound Charlie whined and trembled, hiding under our feet--he was no fool! He knew it was serious!

The wind moaned and roared, the rain came in buckets, and we could see the outline of the young pines bending down to the ground. Every so often we'd hear a pop when a tree split in two, or crashed to the ground, or into a house. We had a radio that was broadcasting the TV weather. That was a comfort. About 4am, the eye passed and the wind grew quieter. That night was one of the longest I've lived through! We certainly didn't sleep a wink! Do you know there were people that slept through the entire storm? Amazing!

At dawn, neighbors began appearing on the street, checking out how much damage had been done. The Vineyard was in shabbles! Trees, limbs, and debris were everywhere. Other than Seth, who headed straight to bed, we ventured outside and walked through the neighbor in bare feet, like zombies, in a daze, just glad to be alive! It looked like a bomb had exploded. I must say, we didn't sustain the worst damage, but our red house took the prize for looking the worst--all the gutters were dangling, the crown molding ripped away from the siding, the cars were smashed, and the rails from the railing were scattered over the yard like matchsticks! As the day wore on people would walk by and take pictures of our sad red house.

Then the chain saws came out. Whoa---nothing like fellas wanting to whip out their chain saws in a crisis! But what a wonderful sound, the roar of chainsaws--progress:) An old friend Bill and his son Brandon showed up to help cut and remove the limbs lying across the cars. What a blessing:) That was the first of countless kindnesses shown during that strange post-Fran September.

The rest of Friday, Saturday and Sunday people all over Wake County were scouting around looking for ice. I remember standing in line at the Harris Teeter at the mall for an hour or more waiting for bags of ice to be unloaded and put out on pallets. The power was off everywhere and food was spoiling. Some of the neighbors had cookouts so they could use up their meat. Some folks packed up and left town to stay with friends or relatives.

Sunday night around 9pm the lights in Shepherd's Vineyard flickered back on. You could hear everybody on Apache Lane and Smokewood shouting in unison "HURRAY!" A community celebrating! I'm afraid SO many areas didn't get their power back for a week or more. We were a blessed bunch!

We finally got in touch with Cameron Saturday night. He had been in Tenn. with a friend and missed the storm. Did he even know that Fran came through the area until I called; that is the question? I'm not sure to this day.

School was out for a week. Clean up crews came into Shepherd's Vineyard and Cary and Raleigh from everywhere; Florida, Charlotte, Texas, Pa., etc. They used cranes, backhoes, roadgraders, dumptrucks, etc., whatever could cut, saw, move, grind, or haul the debris! It took months and months! Many days I watched and took photographs.

Our small damage took almost a year to clean up and repair. But it does give me some 'inkling' of what New Orleans and Mississippi are still going through a year after Hurricane Katrina. And they they had such devastating damage. It will take years and years to rebuild. Can most people stand that stress? Only through the help of others, and knowing that God is their hope. So many friends and strangers helped us through that awful time, and I am so thankful.

Central N.C.is facing tropical storm Ernesto passing through tomorrow and Friday. He's welcome, at least for some much needed rain.....but that's really all we need. Alberto visited earlier this summer, gave us precious rain, but he left some flooding.
Do be careful the next few days, listen to Greg, and pray for a gentle visit from Ernesto:)

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Lake Pine & Fall

I love Lake Pine walking trail.
It's located right across Highway 64 from Shepherd's Vineyard and our house, so it take me 5 minutes to get there (unless I catch the stoplight wrong).

It's a winding path around a small pretty lake surrounded by trees and populated by Canada geese, a pair of swans and their one offspring, a blue heron, a crane or two, frogs, turtles, and mallards.

I've walked there now for 3 1/2 years, and am on the walkway by 7:30 almost every morning of the week. Once around is 2.2 miles, but I bump it up to 2.4 or 2.6 by adding on an extra side hill walkway--twice, or backtracking here or there and walking a portion twice. Now and then, I do a double loop and make it 4.4 miles; that takes an hour and a half, so I have to allocate time to do that.

I meet the same people every day, and some of us have become walking buddies. We don't know names, but most everybody smiles and says "Good Morning":) Every so often someone will even stop and chit-chat--especially about the swans and their "swanette", or the weather, or someone may ask what music I am listening to (I listen to my iPod), or confide how their garden is doing, etc.:)

Speaking of the "swanette", only one of three swan babies survived this year, and one day in June, he vanished. Oh, many of us were very upset over it's supposed demise! No babies survived last year, and that was sad enough:( I grieved for a week! Then, amazingly, the "swanette" reapppeared!! It was a miracle, I'm telling you! A fellow walker from church told me later that the Apex Park folks had taken him to remove a fish hook he tangled with somehow.
Whew! I knew the swan parents were glad to see their baby---they have worked so hard to protect this offspring!!

Right now it's beginning to look like fall, with the leaves turning colors and fluttering down, and they crunch under my feet as I walk. With the leaves skittering and flitting around, it reminds me of the movie "Little Foot" where the baby dinosauer calls the leaves 'tree stars':) How sweet to walk through the 'tree stars'!

FALL is my favorite time! I LOVE the leaves changing into every kind of red, orange, yellow, or brown imaginable. I LOVE swishing through the leaves.
(I even wait a while to rake my leaves in my yard, while most neighbors are racing to get them off the grass, to the curb and out of sight, quickly!)

I LOVE the humidity gradually dropping:) No more sweaty, sweltering mornings hiking at Lake Pine! No more stuffy, sultry air that makes you feel like you can't put one foot in front of the other one more time:(!

I LOVE the sky in the fall. It's so clear and blue during the day, and the sunset's are brilliant on a clear night:) Then, as a rain lover too, nothing's better than a showery day/night in September or October---it's soothing and calm.

The end of a long, long, dry, hot summer and the promise of invigorating cool walks is in sight:)
Hurray for September lurking around the bend, in fact, just past next week!

Friday, August 25, 2006

loquacious

I learned a new word this week.
It rolls off your tongue:)
I don't hear it in normal conversations in my circle, and have forgotten it from my college days, but it was used in the most tender and kind characterization of Mrs. Elizabeth Turlington West, my dear daughter-in-law's grandmother, at her Memorial service Thursday morning. She died earlier in the week after living a full and rich 96 years!
The service was at the historic Hay Street United Methodist Church in Fayetteville where Mrs. West was a devoted member for the majority of her century on earth.
Rev. Tyson elequently shared about the character of 'Elizabeth'. He made you yearn to have met this lady and to have heard at least one of her stories, especially of Fayetteville:) A friend of Elizabeth's, sitting next to me, offered that Rev. Tyson would fall asleep now and then listening to her:)

Now Kelley probably heard her share of stories from this 'loquacious' lady as a little girl growing up. She perceived her as a tiny 'Queen Bee', much in charge of her domain, and probably not too interested in what a young girl was thinking about or was involved in, but determined to tell Kelley something she wanted Kelley to know:) That may happen when grandmas are so much older.

(Unlike Mrs. West, my Grandma Blue wasn't a talker and didn't have many conversations with me that I remember. But, like Kelley's grandmother West, she was 60 years older than me (Mrs. West was close to 70 years older than Kelley) and not a warm cuddly grandma. What a generation gap that is!)

Ironically, Kelley's dad Paul, an only child, is rather quiet and not 'loquacious' at all! Guess he grew up listening:) Kelley is a listener too, like her dad:)

Now, I tend to be 'loquacious' at times, talkative, chattering, babbling, wordy. I do hope that word won't be what people remember above all about me though, especially since I'm a Stephen Minister, trained to listen! What is the old saying? Something like "Keep your mouth closed and people think you're wise; open your mouth and you remove all doubt that you're not!

I wish I had known 'loquacious' Elizabeth:)

Sunday, August 20, 2006

A Sunday morning

It's a bright August Sunday morning. Keith's at Peace, has been there since 7:30, to run the sound for the first service. Skye is up and gone as well, to check out the new College and Career leader, Tim, and his Sunday School class.

I'm taking time to catch up on answering my emails and read at least one article in the N&O. That article tells of a group of friends traveling through Scotland this summer. Included is a photo from the Isle of Skye.
It brings back fond memories of our 30th anniversary trip to England and Scotland in August of 1999. In reality, I had hoped, planned, and wanted to go there all my life. My mama talked about the Blues and the Stewarts and beautiful Scotland, especially the Isle of Skye, since I was old enough to remember! And with both sets of our families from that area of the world, it was a destination Keith and I hoped to see in our lifetime.

The plane trip itself from Pittsburgh to Heathrow was amazing to me, a girl that has traveled by air only a handful of times in my 56 years! But the pastoral scenery and quaint villages and large cities were far more beautiful and intriguing than I ever imagined---the land of poets and preachers.
It made me ponder what had forced so many people who loved their homeland (that 'fair' land) so dearly, to leave it and sail across the ocean never to see it, or their families, again....? A heart-rending choice:(

A place I hope to see again with Skye Chancel and Keith (plus Cameron, Seth & Kelley if they want to go)----on a bright August day:)

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

"CSI"

I've discovered "CSI" this summer and, after watching years of "Law And Order", I am hooked on this crime investigation series! Spike TV runs 3 shows in a row almost every night, and I'm in front of the TV to see them any time I can. It is an intriguing storyline, revealing the interplay between the "CSI" characters as they use scientific methods to solve each crime.
I am an unabashed addict:)

Monday, August 14, 2006

Patience

After Keith and I had spent a rare, relaxing weekend in the mountains celebrating our anniversary, a Monday morning wake-up is not easy!

Skye had asked last night if I'd go with her to Wake Tech to be her 'support' (and 'supporter', as in money:)) as she picked up her ID, parking permit, and books for the fall semester. I had the time and figured it'd be a good time to do some bonding and put in a "Mama" word or two:)

Well, it became a day of class 101, "How To Be Patient"!:)
We waited in line for an hour to have her ID photo taken and receive her parking sticker. It felt like two hours! I finally let the comment fall out of my mouth that I wouldn't recommend that she become friends with the girls waiting in front of us--and I won't go into that here! Let me leave it that I believe one girl knew she had a captive audience.

Next stop, the Bookstore. Amazingly it didn't have a line, so that was our present for the day! Hip, hip, hurray! But there Skye discovered she had signed up for a class she had taken two semesters ago, so we set out for the College Transfer office.

After walking across campus and realizing the office had, over the summer, moved to the building where we had spent most of the morning, we marched back the way we came. When we found the right office, Skye signed in and we began our wait there--- we waited, and waited, and waited. Waiting has a cumlative effect, don't you think?!! I'm pretty sure it does!! It became half an hour. Now the time crunch began, making us more edgy. Skye needed to be at the Y at 2:45 and we were thirty and hungry! It became 45 minutes. I had an appointment with Cameron and Edna to look at townhomes and apartments at 3pm....ugh:( Finally, after an hour, Skye's name was called, the solution was provided quickly, thank goodness, and we escaped to the car!!

All during this experience we mentioned how we should be patient, that everybody needed to learn patience, the it is important to be patient--and there we were, working out how to "do" that word for hours!!!
Were we learning how to do it?
I'm not sure waiting makes me better at it--I get better at being frustrated:( I tend to grit my teeth and tell myself to calm down. I think planning ahead helps. If we'd had a deck of cards, or each of us had brought a book.....that seems to give me a sense of not wasting time. But, as I said to Skye, "We should never wish away our lives away either", and maybe being impatient comes close to that.

Being patient is a hard thing to do well.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

What a haircut

This afternoon Skye and I had an appointment with Dee, our longtime beautician friend, to have our hair cut. On the way over Skye decided, spur of the moment, that this was the day to give up her strawberry blonde curls for Locks Of Love, a non-profit organization that asks for donations of hair to make wigs for people, primarily cancer patients, that have lost their hair. Skye had been growing her hair out for many months and had checked online for donation information. So when we arrived at Upper Cuts, she told Dee 'LOL' required at least a length of 10 inches of hair. After brushing Skye's hair till it was smooth and silky and free of any tangles, Dee, with a good 3 or 4 whacks of a sharp pair of scissors, did the deed :) Skye must have felt 5 pounds lighter--she has such thick hair!!
Hopefully, when we have packaged and shipped her severed ponytail to "LOL", in time it will help someone feel much better:)

As this was going on, in the chair across from Skye and Dee, sat a pretty young woman in the process of getting her hair colored and styled. As her hairstylist, a friendly young man, combed and snipped and brushed and blew, she talked...and talked ....and talked!
Now I'm a Stephen Minister and am trained in listening (which doesn't mean I'm always good at it), but this fella had the patience of Job, I'm thinking! She went on and on, and on---she told him her financial situation, her woes, her dating dramas, her family problems, etc., etc.:( I finally willed myself to tune out and tried hard to focus on Dee shaping and drying Skye's hair.
After the young girl left I told the hairstylist I thought he deserved a nap after all that listening he had done! He agreed!! Listening to someone talk nonstop for at least an hour is emotionally and physically draining!! I do hope the young girl felt better when she left---she left us exhausted in her wake!:( It's like she shifted all her burdens off herself, and onto all of us in that room....then walked away.

I was afraid to say much by the time I sat down in Dee's chair:(

Shhh:) I need some peace and quiet (a quote by Seth)

Monday, August 07, 2006

A monster in our family

There's a monster that lives in our midst. It is so scary most of my family doesn't talk about it, we try hard not to think about it, and it has been looming and lurking around for for 10 to 15 years or more.
It steals, robs, and slowly kills.
Nothing can stop it, and it makes everyone shudder to think it might appear at their door.
Children and grandchildren cringe to think where it will strike.
If I think about it, I could 'take to my bed' and weep for days---and tremble in fear.
It has ravaged the lives of three uncles I have loved and, especially, my mama's life.

What is it?


Alzheimer's.

It has taken my mama's personality away, her dignity, her sense of belonging. She doesn't know her grandchildren anymore, and will soon forget my brothers' names and sister's name and mine, as well. My children will never know her as she was most of her life; a smart women who yearned to go to college and study art but couldn't afford it, a beautician because it was within her means, a gardener, a delicious baker of biscuits, fried chicken, potato salad, and pies, a farmer's wife, a postal worker, a writer, a Sunday School teacher, a lover of books, and creator of countless pretty quilts:) She loved family next to God, and the Blue & Stewart families were as real to us children as our own. Scotland was our homeland, where we "came from" and never we were never to forget it!
Now she searches for home, yearns for home and her mama, and it's not to be found on this Earth.

So, this fear of the monster---
Do we let that fear overwhelm us, paralzye us, or do we laugh over funny "Mama stories" and live in the knowledge that fear is not from the Good Shepherd?
God will not let us forget Him, or will He? Then again, if we do, I firmly believe He will never forget us--- and that's all that matters in the long run, in Eternity, right?
Because Heaven is where we are restored and renewed, and the monster is no more!!!

Sunday, August 06, 2006

A joyful wedding shower

Yesterday, Saturday, I co-hosted a wedding shower for a dear friend's daughter. What a sweet time. Mary, a friend of my dear friend, offered her home for the event. She is someone I'd met only a few times previously but, during the course of planning the event, have found her to be a delightful and humble person:)
Her home is brand new and is a ways from the Cary, Apex area. Located beyond the Raleigh city limits, up Creedmore Road, Mary's subdivision is set among horse farms, pastures, and many trees, making the last leg of the trek over so peaceful and calm after driving through city traffic:) Actually, I must add I love the pastures on Edward's Mill Road too:)

Wedding showers are usually a time of fun and joy, and this was no exception:) The chicken salad, rolls, and fruit were delicious, as well as the cake from Cary's Blue Moon Bakery (let me recommend them here and now--yum:)). The bride opened many beautiful and practical gifts (I LOVE to watch gifts being opened!) and all the ladies chit-chatted freely.
Friends and family rejoice to see the couple tie the knot:) Both moms like one another and have grown to be friends:) What a blessing!
My dear friend's husband, and the father of the bride, died a year ago---far too young:( He is sorely missed, but the happiness of a wedding is like a precious balm of Gilead. Don't you know he must be smiling:)

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

A Wedding in August

Keith & I are facing our 37th wedding anniversary this week. Our wedding day was one of the hottest, stickiest, most humid days you can imagine! And there was no air conditioning in that tiny country church--ugh! We all sweltered!!
I rode to Roseland church in Keith's mom and dad's camper. Now, not everybody gets to do that! And there was no reception afterwards--that's one regret I have. It just wasn't done back then in rural NC.
We had the cake cutting after the rehearsal the night before, which my aunt & uncle graciously hosted:) Now that was a fun night:) All my college friends and childhood friends were there. All that comes to mind today about that evening is laughing myself silly:) I'll have to ask Keith what he can recall.

I remember when we celebrated my mama and daddy's 40th, and thought that 40 years were SO MANY YEARS! We took them to the Raleigh Dinner Theater at RTP, had a delicous buffet dinner, and watched a play about a radio program. Sadly, my daddy didn't live to celebrate their 50th:( That was one of the comments I remember my mama saying on the day Daddy died, that "We didn't make it to our 50th":(

Keith & I plan to go to a neat cabin near West Jefferson the second weekend in August. Sweet friends own this heavenly spot overlooking the river:)
The mountains are where we honeymooned 37 years ago. That much Keith & I got right--the mountains are the place to be in hot, hazy August!