Part one of this corn story here
“Why do we get stuck with such an ugly tree?”
Malakai wanders through living room, pauses before bare artificial needles, cocks his head in assessment, makes the final proclamation.
I turn from stovetop and the stirring of slow bubble of potato and corn chowder, look his way. He’s got his hands stuffed deep in his Wranglers. I tilt my head his angle, measure up the tree too. I agree with that keen 6-year-old eye. Strands of bulbs sag uselessly, a blown one recklessly hijacking the whole string. A cluster of Jesse Tree symbols hang lopsided all on one bough. The youngest child stands about that height.
“I’ve got a brown paper twist that could be untwisted. We could use it as a ribbon, wrapping it around the tree?”
“Okay!” Malakai grins.
Soup simmering, I help Hope, Kai, Levi untwist ribbon. The brown paper crinkles and wrinkles under our fingers.
Hope says what I’m thinking, “It sounds like corn leaves.”
Like corn leaves rustling in the wind. We know that rippling song. The fields sing it all autumn, dry leaves brushing stalks, like crickets stroking their sad harvest anthem. And now eighteen acres of our corn whisper and susurrate in December wind and snow, stalks and leaves talking long into howl of winter nights.
I unravel more twist. It’s dry paper, creased and furrowed, lined like long leaves of corn, rustling gold. I’m decorating the Christmas tree, listening to the plea of corn, harvest yield snatched up by winter’s icy fingers, imprisoned under heavy hand of snow.
Hope helps me. We wrap the brown twist up and around and through the boughs and it rustles, and it’s so loud, I ring with the anguished refrain: we’re having Christmas though the harvest still cries from the fields.
We wake the 11th of December. The tree lights twinkle, reflecting in black windows. The thermometer reads -19 C in the biting dark before dawn.
Snow crunches under boots as they walk to the barn under a polar blanket glassy stars. They’ll begin morning chores before morning comes. Mittened hands burrow deep into pockets looking for leftover warm.
“Today, Dad?” Levi asks as they flick on the barn light, step in from raw cold.
“Chores first.” Farmer Husband glances at the clock hanging on barn office wall. 4:05 a.m. “And then we’ll try.”
Levi grins, rubs hands together. Today, his birthday, we’ll try to wrest the last of the corn from winter’s fist. Thermometer has to plunge low for snow to blow like sand through combine. Even if temperatures hover well below freezing, snow sticks to combine steel, feeds into that harvest machine and plugs her mouth, her bowels, with winter cemented. We need glacial temps; we’ll go in this cold.
They chore, sows feed, and day creeps.
And when sun inferno burns along blue-grey rim, twig and tree ignite and world lights. Jack Frost’s hoary flakes of lace trace up every limb, down every branch, flaring and sparking in day’s rays.
Every bush blazes.
I unplug the Christmas tree lights.
It’s time to head out, to try. Trucks are lined up for eight.
When I find him at field’s edge, Farmer Husband’s got a shovel in hand. A snow shovel.
He’s digging out what’s sifted in deepest, so combine can wade in. We laugh, our noses burning in cold, shake our heads at the absurdity of all this.
This crazy rescue mission.
The combine puts in.
Engine growls low. She grinds and strains through December’s deep. A plume of fumed blue wisps from her, hangs in numbed morning.
And icy roads dare corn heaped wagons to try; and trucks cough and choke in this heavy arctic air, sputter frozen; and we wonder what we’re doing out here, out in the deep throes of hibernal winter.
But maybe December’s all about the madness of The Wild Rescue?
I stand on the field’s headlands, snow crusted up to knees, and pray the combine can keep pushing through. Pray that we’ll somehow haul the corn up onto glassy roads. Pray that the temperatures stay low enough.
Pray about the absurdity of all this, the craziness of a December harvest and a Christmas tree hanging with the symbols of the wildest story of all: A God pulling on flesh, wading out into the muck of this world, the stench of the barnyard, all to wrench us free from endless winter.
Part two of Advent Deliverance story continues tomorrow, Lord willing….
Related: Part One of corn story here: Waiting Hope
Series on Finding Christmas: Part One , Part Two
