Light A Candle

I’m fixing to have to light a candle.

Mother Nature has been showing off lately in ways that leaves no doubt in the minds of we mere mortals of who is in charge of the condition of the weather. Recently it has been her three daughters, Frigette, Dampi and Wendy, who have been sent to pay us visits and laud their Mother’s majesty by bestowing misery upon we unfortunate humans.

Frigette came among us in the form of sub-zero temperatures, catching us without enough firewood or enough candles to get us through the power outages.

Dampi wasn’t far behind her sister, bringing with her the freezing rain, wet snow, sleet and ice.

No sooner had she departed than Wendy came gusting in, swirling, huffing and puffing, using the power of the wind to scatter and break any and everything which fell in its path.

Reminiscing the severe periods of weather we have had so far this year, I suddenly realized that the three sisters had all arrived at separate intervals, that we had experienced freezing temperatures unaccompanied by dampness or wind; other occasions we had been the recipients of deluges unaccompanied by cold or wind, and it seemed as if Wendy had been arriving after her two sisters had departed.

This observation confirms that no matter how bad conditions are, they could always be worse. Imagine the misery, destruction and havoc we would experience if the three sisters all arrived at the same time, and lingered for a few days!

The three mystical weather sisters referred to above remind me of three real sisters who happened to be great aunts of mine, ancient great aunts. I can’t remember if they were all widows or had never been married. I supposed it was the latter because they all retained the same last name, and were never accompanied by a gentleman. There was Aunt Coleen Snawley, Aunt Delilah Snawley and Aunt Fanny Snawley.

I don’t think the sisters had a home, but since they were so well advanced in age, they had an abundance of nephews, nieces, great nephews, great nieces and countless cousins, so what they did was “visit” with relatives for a while and then move on to another one. They usually visited separately so as to ease the burden, but on some occasions they would all arrive at the same time, and that’s when the trouble would begin.

I remember an occasion when Aunt Coleen arrived at our house for a “visit.” The temperature dropped 20 degrees when she walked in the door. It got so cold that the pump froze up for two days and we had to melt icicles on the stove to have cooking water.

A few months later Aunt Delilah appeared for her “visit.” A deluge commenced the moment she stepped under the protection of the roof of the front porch and continued for three days. My daddy’s truck got so bogged down in the mud until he had to hook up two mules to it to drag it out. But once he got it out, he gladly transferred my aunt on to her next destination.

A few weeks later here came Aunt Fanny. The wind commenced to blowing the moment she set her foot on the front doorsteps, and before she could get across the porch and in the front door, it blew so hard that it blew her hat off. It blew so hard until it blew her hair off. And I was the one who had to dash out, leaning sideways against the gusts in order to keep my footing and retrieve my aunt’s hat and her wig.

Later on that night the wind howled and whistled and we heard crashes and clattering and banging all about us in the dark. The next morning we saw that the barn doors had been blown down and the mules had run away, and that a big slab of tin was gone from the roof of the house.

Several weeks later my daddy and I were relaxing on the front porch one beautiful afternoon. He was whittling himself a smoking pipe out of a piece of briar while I had my head down taking an inventory of my collection of marbles.

Suddenly I heard a gasp of terror come from him. I thought he had seen a snake on the porch, but when I asked, he pointed straight down the road leading to our house and said, “Lord have mercy, look a yonder coming!”

I looked up and got fear shivers when I saw the three sisters, walking abreast together, walking briskly together, straight towards us!

The next thing I knew, my daddy was dragging me out the back door, mumbling something about us fixing to be gone before they got here.