happy memory at a sad time

This morning I woke up and immediately made pancakes. I was remembering one of my favorite evenings that happened two winters ago while we were renting a house owned by Camm's grandpa only 0.4 miles from the house he lives in.

What sparked this memory is something sad. Camm's grandpa is not doing well at all right now. He's in the hospital on complete life support and they will probably pull the plug before too long. It's a sad time for everyone.

In this sad time, I'd like to remember that happy wintry evening two years ago:

I was pregnant. For me, this meant that I was usually tired and sick. But, this particular January evening was out of the ordinary. A blizzard came and the roads and houses were covered in snow. At around 7pm (which to me when I was pregnant felt basically like midnight) I looked outside and it looked so magical. All thought of the pregnancy sickness and the tiredness vanished and I longed to be outside. I told Camm we were going on an adventure. I got out all the snow clothes I could still fit over my growing belly and kept piling them on. I think by the time I was ready, I had four layers on the bottom and about six on top. I could barely bend enough to get my three pairs of socks and then my boots on. Camm was dressed similarly and we set out on our adventure in the snow.

We went outside and threw some snow balls and walked through the empty streets covered in snow. It felt like we were far from home in a distant land--even though we were in our own neighborhood. We ended up walking to the street where Grandpa and Grandma Clark live. We knocked on the door and I'm not even sure they could recognize us underneath all of our clothes, but they let us in all the same.

As soon as I walked in, I began sweating--I was, after all, wearing enough to clothe a small village. So I started stripping. I remember Grandpa Clark laughing as we kept taking off layer after layer, scarf after scarf. Eventually I stripped down enough that I just had black long johns tucked into my pink knee-high wool socks. Camm looked similarly bizarre and we began to chat with Grandpa.

"Have you guys had any supper?" he asked. I realized it had been about two hours since my last meal so I could use a snack. "Well, let's make some pancakes." He rummaged through his downstairs food storage and pulled out a box. "You make the pancakes," he handed the mix to me, "and I'll get working on the sausage."

I started mixing the pancakes but though I had followed the recipe exactly, the mix refused to thicken. I kept adding more and more of the mix and it just stayed thin. I glanced at the "sell by" date and realized it had expired twenty years earlier. "Grandpa, do you think that this might be old?" I asked as nonchalantly as I could.

"Nah, that stuff doesn't go bad!"

So I kept adding the mix until eventually it was thick enough to cook.

We ate the twenty year old pancakes(no one got sick) and enjoyed the sausage (though I decided to eat mine without ketchup when I saw a little mold--there's only so far you can push your luck).

Grandpa Clark laughed equally as hard when we got dressed up to leave again, and it was a night I will always remember.

As I ate my pancakes this morning I thought of the hilarious, loving, compassionate man that Grandpa Clark is. I will always remember his example.