This year with the holidays, I had a sense of what is important in my life, and what were the stupid things that I was focusing on. I was totally stressed, and I did not know why. I finally figured it out! I am from the midwest. As you probably know, we were hit by a major blizzard for Christmas. The blizzard left people without electricity, without any way of leaving their homes, and for Farmers and Ranchers, no way to get to their livestock. Accidents happened. People were killed as a result of these accidents. Talk about stressful. It is hard to imagine how difficult living can be under these circumstances. It brought back memories of long ago snow storms that I had conveniently forgotten. The blizzard of '49 I was 8 years old.
I can't remember all of the details, but I do remember that all of my family went out to hand scoop through snow drifts to make a trail about a half mile long, so that we could move the cows to a hay stack, so that they would have food. It was necessary that we do that horribly hard work to keep the livestock alive because they did not deserve to go hungry and die. It was just something we had to do and we did it, even though it was physically very difficult and it was really cold. We worked with neighbors that sometimes we really didn't care for, so that with all of our efforts together, we could get to town for badly needed food.(only to discover that the grocery stores were totally out of food, as the supply trucks couldn't get to the stores to deliver supplies to the stores.
We had canned vegetables and meat, but we ran out of floor, salt, coffee and soap. But I don't recall that anybody was depressed or unhappy, because we realized that we were not alone. All of our neighbors were in the same situation. We just hoped that nobody got sick, or was injured, as there was a very slim chance that any body could get in to rescue us. Army planes flew over the blizzard area, and we were told if there was a real emergency, that we were to take coal ( which was the heat source for most of us) and write in big block letters S O S.
And then they would try to drop supplies to us. I remember that we were getting low enough on food supplies that my Mom was ready to cut open our toy bean bags to fix another meal for us, when they finally got our road opened so that we could get into to town for badly needed food. What dawned on me this Christmas was, that we were not concerned about presents or something new for the house.
We all worked together to have the basic necessities of life. We appreciated a meal, we wanted to take care of our animals, we were concerned about our neighbors, we grieved for their misfortunes! We didn't resent that we had to work really hard and in really bad conditions, we were all willing to do whatever it took, to take care of our neighbors, our livestock and our families. Maybe it is time for us to get back to those basics and quit worrying about keeping up with the Jone's and having all of the newest and latest of gadgets.
It is time for us to be grateful for the ability to take care of our families, our friends and our neighbors. It is time for us to appreciate how good it is to have our families, have a meal on the table (even if it is a very basic meal) and maybe we just need to be happy that we are alive and have the capabilities of surviving even the most major crisis! Maybe, we should take the time to reexamine our lives and decide what is really important and what is just stupid wants and wishes!
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