Laurel Fork

When you move away it’s always hard to pick and choose what events warrant a six-hour round trip and someone always thinks you should’ve come home when you didn’t. Birthdays, church homecomings, reunions, weddings, etc. As we’ve gotten older and busier we go home less but we try to choose those prime events where we can see the most people and get the most bang for our buck. Some holidays win out over others.

For us, Christmas has always been the constant. We’ve never skipped it. My mom’s entire family is always in Pound for the holiday and both of my dad’s brothers along with their closest cousins are there too. One Christmas, as often happens during holidays, my dad started romanticizing his younger days. His brothers and cousins soon joined in waxing poetic about the Laurel Fork trail near the Pound dam. They hadn’t been up there in years and truth be told it’s entirely possible that not a one of them had ever been there sober. The days when they ran through the hollers and trails of southwestern Virginia were long gone. They got it in their head that come spring when they were all back in town for Easter they’d get on that trail again.

The cold months passed and April arrived, cooler than expected. Easter was never a given for us, we remained non-committal until the last possible minute and always made a game-time decision. This particular year we packed up the dogs in the Subaru drove South on I-81 until we reached Abingdon where the dogs know it’s time to lay down because nothing but curves lay ahead for the next hour while we trekked as far as one can go into southwestern Virginia.  The Pound. 

My husband went ready to hit Laurel Fork with both dogs and some of my dad's family. When it came time to put their money where their mouth was only one of my dad’s cousins and my husband were going to make the trek. These men had hunted, fished, camped and carried on in places like these and maybe they didn’t want to relive it.

I had, personally, never been on the Laurel Fork trail and were it not for the events that transpired that Easter weekend I likely never would have. After not hearing from the husband for several hours I knew something was up and when I called he informed me he'd lost one of the dogs. 

Our Dolly is a rescue who had been a part of our family for only a few months. She’s part hound and part demon, her heightened energy and penchant for whining make her a lot of work. Word soon spread through our tiny town and when family members learned that the closest thing I’ll ever have to a child was missing in the woods it didn’t take long before they rallied to me. Relatives showed up in droves, some of them simply to sit in my car while I cried and threatened to divorce my husband if we didn’t find her.

My dad hiked up on one trail and his brother, Tim, drove up and to walk back down in from the other side. For hours we all traversed the trails and former trails of Pine Mountain. Night fell and still no Dolly. Cut to resurrection morning and my family in the woods calling for a dog instead of at the sunrise service. After a break for Easter dinner, night fell and still no Dolly.

Monday morning held a happy ending for us and Dolly. She'd had her fun and waited to be found in the parking lot at the Laurel Fork trail. Still wearing her hiking backpack and a bit worse for the wear she was ready to go home. 

I like to believe her antics were a ploy to get my daddy and his brother in those woods again but maybe she is just ornery. 

Mamaw's Yard pt. 2

Mamaw never knew what she had bought us for Christmas. After opening gifts on Christmas morning she’d often say, “Let me see what I got you.” She’d give mom the money for us and trust that mom would get us what we needed. This particular year she’d bought me a pair of American Eagle khaki pants and I was pleased as punch.

Another of our family talents is our penchant to make Christmas last as long as possible. Growing up I always enjoyed this tradition of making the holidays last longer. First of all it gave me more opportunities to wear my new Christmas clothes over the holiday break (hello new khakis!)  But also I loved holding my relatives hostage in Pound at Mamaw’s house, once they all left I’d still be there and I appreciated the company. Therefore, Osborne Christmas dinner is not held until December 26 each year.  

No one gets to sit around waiting on dinner, everyone’s given a job. In the last years of Mamaw’s life she’d encourage me to hone my domesticity around the holidays. For example, the year I got married when she pronounced this would be the year she would let me make the chocolate pies. But in my middle school days the tasks entrusted to me were much simpler though still never anything I looked forward to.

On the third day of Christmas and no doubt thanks to the confidence I possessed in my new pants I was sent to the dairy on the hill to fetch two jars of something I couldn’t be bothered to remember the name of. Chow chow? Kraut? Whatever it was I knew it would not make its way onto my plate.

The back yard is a hillside with 5 little rinky-dink steps on the steepest part. I carefully took the steps up and opened the creepy door to the dairy, ducked my head to enter and pulled the chain so the single light bulb could illuminate the spider webs and mystery jars. I retrieved my treasure swiftly and with jars in both hands headed toward home.  

Although disgusted by their contents I knew that much like pimpin’, cannin’ ain’t easy. So when I missed one of those pathetic little skinny steps and began to fall my priority was securing the jars! Unfortunately, this made a casualty of the Christmas khakis.

The only thing injured was my pride, Christmas dinner was served (complete with the mystery canned goods from 1980) and Mamaw patched the knee of my pants with a stiff piece of fabric that never gave the way the knees of pants should. A sobering reminder of my clumsiness each time I wore them and attempted to sit down.

Even now, grown and with a garden of my own, I’m still a disappointment to her (she is a mountain mamaw after all).  I haven’t learned to use the sewing machine she left me so that I can patch my own clothes. I’ve never mastered pie-making and my canning recipes come from Pinterest. But each time I use my water-bath canner, gather eggs from the chickens or slice a cucumber I’d like to think she notices and is proud. 

Holiday Hurts

"There are a thousand ways you can suffer brave.

An no one knows.

No one knows that like Habakkuk, your heart quakes a bit inside. At how headlines hit too close, how in a blink on an ordinary day, it could be one you love who is bloodied by the senseless violence, busted in a crash, begging prayers for life, getting chemo pumped through the veins. We all lose every single person we love. There is never another way. Think about tat too long and you find it hard to breathe.......

Olives fail. People fail. Dreams fail. You feel like you fail. A thousand things mount. Some days it's hard not to panic. You can feel it- we are driven by fear of failure. For all our frenzied running around, could it be that we are actually fleeing-trying to escape all the fears? All this pain? All this failure?

We all live these lives of quiet terror. Of soundless, hidden grief. You could just bow your head in the quiet and weep for all that isn't. For all that you aren't.

In the barrenness of winter, Habakkuk offers this gift to always carry close: rejoicing in the Lord happens while we still struggle in the now."


-Ann Voskamp, The Greatest Gift

This is my first year doing advent. That is evidenced by the fact that I'm unsure which verb to place in front of advent. Doing? Practicing? Partaking in? Or is advent the verb? I guess it probably is. The waiting and the rejoicing of the arrival.

Selfishly I've had a bit of a rough few weeks but things like test scores and teenagers being insensitive aren't what matters when there are real hurts in real lives.

Loss. Distance. Disappointment. Disapproval. Hatefulness. Depression. Arguing. Needing. Hurting. Injustice.

I love Christmas more than anything but if I focus on the wrong things I can get sad quickly. If I focus on anything other than the true gift and the waiting and watching for the Thrill of Hope I want to wallow in the ugliness of the world. The grandparents who are no longer here to share in the festivities. The fear of who may not be with us next Christmas. The marking of time. Another year, gone.

 Usually I make it through Christmas and to New Year's Eve before becoming incredibly sad and down. I truly hate New Years. Always.

Advent has brought me so much peace in the midst of a lot of ugliness in the world this holiday season. Between stress personally, and the worrying about the truly difficult situations of loss and lonesomeness of close friends and family I must remind myself to cling to Emmanuel.

So many people are struggling and the long nights of winter seem to make it harder. But we are reminded in this time of loss, hurting and failure that the King is coming. Yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Rejoice.

Christmas in pictures



 

 

 

 

These are all pretty self-explanatory, right?

Another whirlwind holiday with lots of food, family and good times. Hope you all had a blessed holiday. More details to come about how we do Christmas a little differently.

Holiday Hoop-la

Here I am in probably the most hectic week of my entire semester and what am I doing? Oh, that's right I'm blogging. Help me Jesus.

Drew and I very much enjoyed our holiday festivities. We traveled to North Carolina to see some of his extended family for a quick trip. It was a great visit and we don't get to see that family nearly as much as we would like. But it was good to get to sit down and talk with them.

We left from there and headed to the Pound where there was no shortage of events. We watched my brother play 2 basketball games. Had our Christmas card pics done. Two Thanksgiving dinners on Thursday. Drinks with old friends on Friday. Two trees to help put up and we couldn't pass up some baby time with Jackson. Oh and Drew spent most everyday in the woods. It certainly didn't feel like a week off but it was a good hectic. We saw a lot of people and got to do some of the things we love about home.

But after all of the going it's nice to be back home. I get to enjoy my Christmas tree again and spend some time with our friends here for the holidays. We are having our small group Christmas party here next week and I'm very excited for that. Side note: What do you all call a gift exchange you do for a large group of people where you can take gifts from each other? My friend Nicole asked if we wanted to do "white elephant" at the Christmas party. Which I assumed was a drug reference and naturally said "of course!" I'm only partially kidding. My family has always called that "Chinese Christmas" which I'm now not sure is PC. Others have said yankee swap, but I'm not a yankee so I don't care for that. Or dirty Santa which sounds worse than white elephant to me. So I'm on the hunt for an appropriate name and taking suggestions....

In even more exciting news, I'm going to be an auntie to a sweet baby girl in April. Between my Shelby girl, sweet little Jackson and little one to come I could just squeal. I'm in no rush to have one but thank goodness for friends and family members who share their little ones with me. One of my favorite memories from the Thanksgiving holiday was Shelby (who is 2 years old mind you) saying "I've got everybody I need." Oh I could just eat her up. Not to mention getting to see some of Drew's cousins we don't get to see often. They were some of the sweetest most loving little ones. I'll just tell you, holidays are no fun without kiddos.

There was also, however, a sad realization while I was at home. My sister and I volunteered to put up my granny's Christmas tree. On our way to her house it dawned on us that neither of us know how to put lights on a tree. So we just hoped it was pre-lit.

It was not.

So after a couple of failed attempts and a pitiful phone call to my daddy, he saved the day. We still put the ornaments on it but I mean come on, Ike could have done that. The main thing is, the job was done. Nevermind that the two people who volunteered did not do it.

I blame my mother, she never allowed us to decorate the tree. And now I blame Wal-Mart & Target because the 2 trees I have bought have both been pre-lit. So the sad realization is: I'm useless. Plus those branches are prickly.

Be on the lookout for our Christmas card. And if you aren't on our mailing list here is a highlight. Feel free to print it off because honestly, who doesn't want a picture of a damn cute dog and two awkward adults on their fridge? Thanks to Drew's cousin Kacey for making us look halfway presentable, she is a magician I tell ya!