Wednesday, January 3, 2024
How do you see the new year?
“We have a brand-new year!!!”
It’s January 1, 1949, Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Early morning gray.
I run outside.
Looking up at vast sky, I shout out loud—
“Nineteen Forty-Nine, think how big this number is!”
Small, sparse snowflakes sprinkle down.
(So gentle, who would guess it to be
Start of “Blizzard of ’49,” a killer storm.)
Nobody was around it hear my shouts;
Still, I wanted everybody to know
We’d had a big change; a fresh new year!
Stacked on top of
One thousand nine hundred forty-eight years!
That was amazing in itself.
Think of all that time.
I was 9 ¾ years old, and awed.
Somehow it was a Magical transition.
I ran home to tell Mama.
Adult and tired,
“Of course. It’s New Year’s Day.
Just bigger number.”
She wasn’t awed. No faulting her.
I had never had that experience before
And never have again.
I wonder how to view
This New Year
With awe and possibility?
Can I find that 9 ¾-yr-child somewhere
And be infused with her amazement?
Sparse snowflakes, thickened and increased,
Beginning of “Blizzard of ’49.”
Snow fell for days
With the storm recorded as seven weeks.
All that snow and high winds
Created conditions that killed cattle,
Closed travel, isolated people,
Resulted in tragedy for some.
Snow fifteen feet deep in our street,
Hard work, inconveniencing for adults,
We kids thought it fun and amazing.
May we see freshness.
Hugs,
Lin
Limerick:
Picture what you want from this new year.
Is there some adventure, some frontier?
Some dream to please you,
Each step is your clue.
And as you approach, it becomes clear.
The Mammoth Storm, 1949
Hello,
Great story and pictures.
Great memory, snow is so magical, yet, as an adult, I am so pleased to not have the yearly experience of snow piling up for weeks and months.
Perrilee
I know you understand through the years you lived in Minnesota! Thank you, Perrilee!
A lovely post, Lin. (I love the rhyme of “frontier,” especially with your back story.)
The general message puts me in mind of poem by Theodore Roethke that contains these repeated lines:
“I wake to sleeep, and taking my waking slow.
I learn by going where I need to go.”
The first line of this couplet is still mysterious to me. I continue to be guided by the second line. Leslie
Beautiful couplet! Thank you for bringing it to me! Gorgeous…
Thanks for another wonderful post. I love the photo of 10 year old you and those of the deeeeeeep snow.
Hope
Amazing how our 10-year-old selves live on inside our wrinkled skin! 🙂
Wow! The life experiences you have had and still have. I will return to your post in the evening to view the YouTube videos.
Happy New Year, Lin. I will try to look at the coming years through the eyes of my 10 year old self.
Muriel
Happy New Year to you as well, Muriel!