The week before Christmas my three months of 7/7 were reaching their pinnacle in a paroxysm of effort. And I’d thought that week would be a wind-down.
Making, giving, grading exams, writing comments, hopefully thoughtful, for three dozen students, and calculating final term grades. Winding down, hmmm. Yet so convinced was I, I’d also scheduled a face-to-face meeting for one of my freelance jobs, 40 minutes up the road, post-snowstorm as it happened, in the interest of getting a languishing website revision into launch mode before Christmas.
Well. I was grading round one that Tuesday when the dogs went into alarm mode: pickup outside. It was the couple who’d brought me wood the past three years, but this year before Thanksgiving they didn’t have, so I scrambled and found another source. Wood is scarcer this year as people went through so much last. But I am jittery about going to new sources because it’s a trust thing– is it really aged? Not infested? Is that a full cord? Hard to tell when it’s in a huge pile…
Now my couple had wood, apologizing for no notice; did I want? I hesitated. Money I hadn’t budgeted, check. No time to stack, check. General discombobulation, check. Sure, I said, all reason to the wind, because plenty of wood and thus warmth trumps the rest. Over the fence it went.
The next afternoon, I took two hours I didn’t have to stack it. This involves piling loads into a wheelbarrow, wheeling across the front of the house, and dumping and stacking on a slope. We had a thaw into the 40’s but a hard freeze was returning; the wood would freeze stuck. Had to get to it. A cold drizzle became steadier rain, but I was in the zone loading, pushing, dumping, stacking, and at first I didn’t notice. Then I didn’t care.
There is something about stacking wood, it feels like a 3D puzzle. I’ve had stacks fall over, so I’ve learned a little through the years. Some people love to split but hate stacking. I’m not much of a splitter but I don’t mind the stacking, and right then I needed it. It cleared my head.
The year I lived in Maine, after leaving Paris for the second time, trying to extricate myself from that whole thing, a friend who knew us both used to talk to me about stirring the oatmeal. M. Grand was not into stirring the oatmeal, she said, and what a relationship needs at times, especially with a child, is willingness to stand at that stove and stir the damn oatmeal. It’s not sexy but someone’s got to do it.
This metaphor came to me as it grew dark and I finished. You put the time in, sometimes hard labor. No guarantee about what’s on the other side. You hope, you sweat, you stir, you aim true– for a good stack, a steaming bowl, a relationship.
And always, always– grace in the effort. 
Now, where in the stack is Clarence??