Lifestyles

Bramblings: Lucy and the snowstorm

By BECKY NELSON
By Becky Nelson

Snow day! It was very, very rare back in my day. I can’t even remember having a snow day when in school. We may have, but I just don’t remember. I do remember those of my own kids. I dreaded snow days. It made for a hassle to figure out who could watch the kids while hubby went out plowing and I somehow made it in to work. When I worked for the school system, the kids were older and I also got a snow day, but before that, snow days stunk.

I’ve been reading all the memes and letters about how good snow days are for kids, but what about the adults? This past Thursday’s snow day, my son the teacher had anything but a day off, helping out on the plow route, getting stuck in multiple driveways and having his truck heater stop working. My husband had about the same type of day, getting stuck and then rescued by some awesome fellow snow travelers and suffering a horrible day behind the plow. My heart goes out to every plow guy and gal out there.

My day was very different. I was unable to open the store as my plow guys were struggling to plow out customers and then the snow was too thick to move with a plow and a pickup later in the day. While the gents were out plowing, I spent time listening to Christmas carols, decorating the tree and puttering around on projects I haven’t been able to get to because of the busy retail season at the shop. In between projects, I headed outside to walk to the farm and barn to tend animals and then again to get a tractor to help pull one of the plow guys where he was stuck in a neighboring driveway.

The snow was coming down pretty heavy on my first walk to the farm, and the road had not been plowed. It made me think of the story of my great-great-great Aunt Lucy Osgood, who lived in the farmhouse right at the farmstead. She was an elderly spinster lady at her death, which was on a night like the day we were encountering. For some reason, she headed out in a blinding snowstorm, walking up the road we still live on, perhaps heading toward the neighbor’s farm at the top of the hill. She never made it. When plowing the road the next day, they found her body beside the road where she froze to death. I only hope she did not suffer, and just lay down, tired, to sleep in the snow.

We will never know the reason for Aunt Lucy’s last trek in the snow that winter of 1902. Had she run out of wood to keep the house warm? Was she not well? Did she have some dementia going on and was not thinking clearly when she headed out? Her unwed brother, with whom she had lived all her life, had died the year before. Was she just lonely and sad and depressed and figured this was a good way to go meet her maker? We will never know. But I do think of her and what it must have been like to live alone in a cold and drafty farmhouse without help and without much hope. And I think of the story whenever I am out walking in the snow, not with sadness, but with thanks and some caution. The beauty and the underlying danger of storms are flip sides of the storm coin. I worry when my loved ones go out in storms.

When Lucy died, she left the farm to my great-grandfather, who was her sister’s son. I am very thankful for her life and her struggles. Without her and those who worked to keep this farm in the family through the generations and the myriad snowstorms, I would not be here. We found a silver spoon with her name engraved on it in the orchard when we were metal detecting some years ago. I treasure it as a special artifact and tangible piece of history that connects me to those with whom I share DNA. And I carry her name as my own middle name, which was given to my grandmother as well. A whole lot of Lucy going on here.

I used to love watching Charlie Brown specials and read the comics with Lucy plaguing him at every turn. I identified with this powerful girl who thought she knew what was right and what was wrong and didn’t tolerate the mundane nature of poor Charlie Brown. It was a family joke that I was certainly a Lucy. My grandmother was a fiercely independent and feisty gal, and I am proud to carry on the nature — and the name. I don’t plan to go walking in a snowstorm anytime soon, however, and hope I have learned a thing or two about how to treat people even though feisty, independent and very opinionated like the Lucy’s before me.

Becky Nelson is co-owner of Beaver Pond Farm in Newport, New Hampshire. You can contact her through the farm page on Facebook and Instagram, visit the retail store or email her at [email protected].

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