No rush is needed, now how shall I say?
No need to flit by like hobble-de-hay,
No call to race through the garden today.
Slow by the roses and bend to their blooms,
Notice the lilacs that waft their perfumes,
And smell how the daffodils sweeten their rooms.
You’ll get where you’re going so soon anyway,
Get there perhaps a bit too soon, I’d say.
Happier be if you don’t rush today.
I stood with my back to the sudden blizzard that seemed to come out of nowhere and began to blanket the silent field, trying to get my bearings. When I turned, punishing gusts of icy wind whipped new pellets of snow across my face and stung my eyes. I was shaking, breathing in short gasps of the bitter cold, but I couldn’t imagine why. Something had happened, that much I knew, and apparently little else. How did I get here? I couldn’t remember. Where am I? I didn't know. I panicked.
Glancing about for whatever short twists I could endure, I saw only frozen stubble in every direction, and the field quickly filling from the heavy snowfall. I’m in shock, I guessed. Far off to the left I thought I saw a car—not the one I was drove—with its tires facing the sky. I couldn’t see mine. My God, I thought, I’ve had a wreck, a terrible wreck, and I can’t even remember it! Was anyone hurt? Killed? Was I alone? Am I injured? Surely I must be. Am I dead? I didn’t think so, but reality seemed beyond my ability to think.
I tried moving my feet and legs. Aha! I exulted, I could walk! Well of course you can, you idiot, I countered, how do you think you got here from the wreck? My hands were bare but not yet hurting from the cold, and nothing else hurt--not even a headache. My neck seemed a little sore perhaps, but that was all. Yet I could remember nothing. I thought I was somewhere familiar, but didn’t know where. What is this place?
I felt a strange calm stealing over me. I may be freezing. I have to go back, I thought, turning to face the wind and gingerly stepping through the crusted, crackling field in the direction of the car’s underbody I could just see over a distant rise to my left. It appeared to be about a quarter-mile away. The light was fading. I had to reach safety soon or I was afraid I’d pass out and freeze to death. Few had been on the roads; no one knew where I was or what had happened. Barb would probably be home from work by now and waiting, but she would have no way of knowing my life was in danger.
Slowly my memory seemed to return in waves, then fogs of confusion and panic would again flood in. I was on my way home from the campus, I remembered, driving alone on north five, outside the city by a couple of miles. I never even saw the driver of the van—the white van--yes! It was partly off the road, spun around and facing right at me in my lane when I rounded the turn. I had no chance to miss it, but its door was open. Its driver had abandoned it when he couldn’t get it back on the road, and was long gone before I had even hit it. I could remember that clearly now. Thank God, I thought, it was just me. At least I didn’t think there was anyone else in the van.
As night approached, the angry blizzard raged with even greater fury and slowed my progress, blinding me and forcing my eyes to wince against tiny spinning knives of sleet. It was becoming impossible to fix the horizon. The yellow-gray wreckage seemed to recede the closer I advanced.
Then it disappeared beneath the horizon altogether. I realized I was going down. My ankles and legs sank nearly to my waist in deep soft drifts as I half-tumbled into a ravine, and I grabbed onto a tree to stand up. The fading light left little detail to recognize, and I had to blindly trust my sense of balance over the uneven ground. Finally the ravine seemed to level out. Suddenly I slipped on ice under the snow and fell to one knee. I knew I was at the bottom, and the ice was mostly uncovered. I worried for a time about water underneath the ice and feared breaking through, but the small creek was frozen through, and I inched my way across it cautiously.
Finally I reached the other side, which was steeper. But I managed to climb up the slippery bank by grasping some saplings that held firm. The frozen ground held blessing as well as curse; had it been spring the soft mud would have loosed them from my weight as easily as pulling off candles from a birthday cake.
As I gained the top, I approached what seemed to be the top half of a wire fence, a few yards beyond which rose dark firs and large stones. In the gloom I couldn’t see an end to it in either direction. I tried to scramble over the it and managed to get my first leg over, but as I tried the second leg the wire caught my shoe in its irregular rectangles just as I cleared it, and again I fell, pitching forward onto a bank of snow that had drifted up against something hard, cold, and white, and I hit my head with a thud.
That’s the last I remembered till I was dimly aware of an owl plaintively screeching its night call. or was it a child’s or a woman’s voice? “Blaine,” the voice whispered.
I opened my eyes. Had I dreamed it? The blizzard had ended. The moon shone bright in a clear, starry night.
Raising my head, I saw dark roman letters carved into the white stone directly in front of me. As they slowly came into focus. I read my name. Underneath the small glyphs were dates: “Born-- July 10, 1939.” To the right of that, “Died—“ the remainder was covered by the drift. Gasping, I knew at once where I was.
“Blaine,” again I thought I heard my name faintly in the wind. “Blaine!” it was a female voice, louder this time—Mother? No. Mother always trailed down toward the end of my name,”
“Barbara?” I cried. "Over Here!"
With a trembling hand and my heart in my throat I reached out and scraped away the snow. “Died--. . . .” That's all there was. To the right, the stone was as smooth and unmarked as it had been when my parents first placed it a half-century before. Roger, my brother, had died of cancer when I was ten, and his was the first name the glyphs had completed. Mother had told me then that there was a place for me there as well if I ever wanted it. "Here! Over here!" I sobbed.
