All Creatures Here Below

It snowed here again in Confluence. It seems like every time the town clears off the streets, gray clouds come in and blanket our little valley with bone-chill cold. In a matter of minutes, all of that tiny human progress is quietly, steadfastly returned to its bed and covered once more in white.

Life goes on, however. No matter how hard it snows through the night, morning's sun rises, and with it comes the early stirrings of the hardiest stock. If you live up on the hill, you can look down onto Confluence proper to see smoke wisps rising from the neighborhoods below, and soon you'll hear shovels' metal scraping sidewalks--nothing carries sound like a fresh snow. Neighbors call out to each other, checking in, offering a cup of coffee. Later, when we're all huddled around plates of steaming eggs and bacon, we all hear the heavy rumbling of the snowplow as Nate guides it 'round the curves and up the road to free us.

Then, our stomachs full with breakfast, we go back out, shovels in hand, to clear some more, making little tracks in our driveways, clearing off the pansies, carving out a horseshoe around the mailbox. So it was this Friday morning, when I looked up to see my neighbor, Aldus, his heavy coat wrapped around him, his bright aluminum shovel bouncing light about his yard.

"Aldus," I said, "good morning!"

He smiled and walked toward the pin oak that cleaves his yard from mine. He has kind eyes. "Tired of this winter yet?"

"Tired indeed." I reached out my hand to shake his. "I ought to offer you my formal congratulations!"

I should mention that Confluence, though paralyzed by three long weeks of snow, participated in a successful special election. One of our school board members, Cpl. Thomas O'Brien, respectfully resigned when he learned his unit had been activated. He would leave for Afghanistan in just a few weeks. Aldus was elected to replace him on the board of education.

Perhaps it was that civic duty has long been ingrained in the citizens of this town, a trait that could be traced back to its involvement in the American Revolution. You may or may not know that Confluence quartered reserve forces for General Greene's army and contributed eventually to Cornwallis's defeat. There's a historical marker on the highway out to Harold's Peak that tells the story quite nicely.

More than likely, though, voters braved the snow and ice out of supreme respect for Cpl. O'Brien, a young man who'd joined the board of education at the ripe age of 22. He ran for the post to honor his grandmother, Mrs. Helda O'Brien. Helda always told him to serve his country and uphold his responsibility as an American, and this was his way of doing just that. She held the Bible when he was sworn in at the city courthouse.

So many of us watched Helda raise her grandson here in this valley. Helda's only daughter left Thomas with her one January morning to watch him while she went to the store. She never came back.

If it broke Helda's heart to lose her daughter, she used whatever strength she had left to mend it with the unique bond between a grandmother and her grandson.

It was the kind of bond that overcame shame or embarrassment. The first Sunday after Helda found herself in sole custody of her grandson, they both arrived together at St. Michael's Episcopal, and they both collected the offering and brought it to the altar while we sang the Doxology. He was awfully shy then, hiding behind Helda's church dress, her hand clasped over his.

She raised him in her own quiet manner, hushing him when he talked too much, calling for him to sit up straight when his posture slouched. He might have a 60-something year-old grandmother as his only guardian, she seemed to reason, but he wouldn't have an excuse for appearing in any intolerable way.

When Thomas was in the second grade, Helda slipped off the back porch steps and broke her hip. Dr. Williams operated on her, and she wound up with a metal replacement and needed a cane to walk after that.

I remember some years ago running into them both at the grocery store the day before the weatherman was calling for snow. The stores were crowded with people overwhelmed by silliness, buying every loaf of bread and gallon of milk with the conviction that they might be entrapped for weeks by the approaching blizzard. (I always speculated that, come the next morning when we found ourselves surrounded by only a few inches of snow, we should host the world's largest French toast party in order to expend all our supplies.) Anyway, I pulled into a parking space at the Constellation General Store across from Helda's old mini-van. Thomas might have been in the fifth grade or so by then. He got out of the passenger side, shut the door (still dented from when a deer ran head-first into her car, but that's another story), and ran around to help his grandmother climb out.

I watched from the warm cocoon of my car, breathless, as the young boy, his eyes wide with simple honesty, reached his hand out to her, her gloved hand barely covering his, her other hand leaning on a hickory cane.

They turned, hand in hand, Thomas stepping slightly out in front as they managed the corner between our cars' bumpers, and I saw her, and the way she looked at him, the way his static hair floated up and over his head in impish electricity. She smiled, a smile she knew he'd never see. He was leading her, as if it were always that way.

"I'm more than twice that boy's age," Aldus said, snapping my mind back to the blinding white of the snowy yard. "But Lord knows, he's got twice the heart. It's an honor to take his seat."

"I'll probably use that quote in next week's Spectator," I said.

"No," Aldus said, digging his shovel into a crust of snow to lean on. "I'd rather you write that I'm just watching over his post until he gets back."

So it ran that way, just as Aldus corrected me, under a picture of Thomas in his uniform shaking hands with him after he'd been sworn in. And later, the last weekend before he reported for his tour of duty, we said our prayers for Thomas at St. Michael's, blessing him with our hands and thoughts and words. Father Jack, our priest, asked Thomas to join him as they recessed at the end of service, and we joined hands and sang again for him,

Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
praise him all creatures here below,
praise him above, ye heavenly host,
praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost