A TREE BY THE SEA

Snow had been falling all day. The forest was heavy in soft folds of white. The little cabin was nestled in the blanket of winter with grey smoke winding up from the rooftop. Plastic windows were stapled tightly against the cold with the glow of lamplight sifting through. The little family inside was warmed by a wood stove. A steaming pot of water rested on it’s iron surface. A little boy coughed a thick coarse rattle that shook his small chest. His mother had him lying naked in a tepid bath. The metal tub was situated in the warm loft of the little home and she used a rag to sponge his face that was hot under her touch. His eyes were closed in feverish rest and his limbs hung limply at his sides.

The little sister stood behind her mother. She silently listened to her pray. A plastic doll was gripped tightly against the girls chest with her toddler frame clothed in footed red pajamas that were rough and itchy against her skin. She especially hated the tightness around her ankles where the worn elastic clung to her.

Her brother was her best and only friend. They had played most of the day in the first snowfall of winter. The thrill of seeing white flakes tumble from the sky exhilarated them. They were bundled tightly against the cold with their cheeks chilled to a dark pink, but the wet snow seeped into their clothes. The little girl went in and sipped the hot cocoa her mother had boiled for them on the stove willingly. Her brother, however, begged to stay out just a little longer. “Please, I just have to build you now mom,” he wanted his snowman family to be complete. When she finally was able to coax her young son into the warmth of the home he was wet through his flannel underclothes.  He stood shivering by the stove as his mother peeled away the soaked layers of clothing.

By that evening his fever continued to climb and he lay listless under the covers of his parents bed.  By the time their father hiked through the draw from where his car was parked on the road it was dark and the mother had grown worried. The cold her little boy fought had settled in his chest. His body had lost some ground in the battle while working to keep him warm. “I should have made him come in sooner,” a statement lost in a long episode of coughing as the mother picked him up from the bed. The father touched his head, “Did you give him tylenol?” “Yes, but the fever only came down a little bit.” That’s when they filled the tub with slightly warmed melted snow and begun trying to evaporate the heat from their son’s exposed skin.

The little girl slept bundled on a mattress on the lower level of the cabin next to the big stove. She was woken to the noise of her parents. There was worried discussion about lack of snow tires and an ability to make it into town. Her brother was wrapped in a thick dark blanket. His glazed eyes were unfocused peering out over his fathers shoulder, and his cheeks were deeply splotched with the flame of fever as he was carried out into the cold dark of the morning.

Broken images. Fuzzy memories of a childhood seldom dwelled upon yet these are the times that formed us. A little girl watching her brother being carried out into the snowy morning bundled in his father’s arms felt the fear and uncertainty of her mother who was unsure if she would see this child alive again. The little girl soaked in the emotion and it printed a moment into her psyche. Her father walking out the door with her brother. Her earliest memory.

The little girl witnessed her mother release her only son into the hands of God. She knew that he was very ill and needed medical attention, yet the nearest hospital was over snow-covered roads that required her husband to hike through the forest to even make it to their unreliable transportation. She stood outside on that dark morning and thanked God that she was able to experience the love of her son. She knew that the gift given to her could also be taken back. Her heart released her son into the arms of God with the hope and prayer that he would be returned to her.

Late that afternoon she was able to hold tightly once again to her child. After receiving an antibiotic injection his body was able to stand against the on slot of pneumonia. Precious life coursed through his fragile humanity. An image though had been burned into the family’s consciousness. A son given. A son taken. A son returned. We are not our own. This message sunk into their minds and settled deep with in them.  Their lives traveled on from this point in time with a new hope and clarity. As the snow continued to fall and the family worked to survive the cold of winter it was with the knowing that though death had crouched at their door they had been delivered.

Many may wonder why a man would risk so much to live this way. The roads that resembled dry creek beds in the summer and that were thick with deep drifts of snow in the winter were not just an obstacle out, but they were a barrier in. The men that settled in these mountains were hidden away in their rough cabins. There were no phone lines or power poles to link them to the outside world. They lived in a pocket of a society of their own choosing. They clung to a place where their wounds could be soothed by the voice of God speaking to them from the forested landscape. Survival here was not easy yet without this mountain some of these men could not fully live. It was a place for their souls to rest and they knew it.

My family grew in the dust and beauty of this place that sought to heal and destroy them. The memories are like the fine dust that powdered the roads of the mountain and settled on hair, skin, and clothing in a thin layer. The dust remains in my soul and reminds me to look under the layers of dust on my fellow man to ask what did they work to survive? There is a constant graininess to my vision. I look at the world from they eyes of a little girl whose first memories are of the hardships that her parents and others faced. I see the person covered in sores from drug abuse and wonder who is she and how did she get here. I know that life doesn’t happen equally. Some have greater measures of pain. I know that some children never make it back to the arms of their mothers. Some people are broken under the harshness of life, but from my earliest memories I have the constant realization God is in the midst of me. There is a presence that defines who I have become that dwelled in that small cabin with a struggling family. This presence answered a prayer. Deliver us from evil. We not only survived those days but we now have a richness to our lives that can only be explained by a Father in heaven who is deeply concerned for His children.