muffled trains

A winter morning for me is usually just a memory. But today in this little Kentucky town, it is real. I sit here with my coffee, looking through this kitchen window. There are two cars in the parking lot and a light layer of snow is on the ground. Candle lanterns are on the windowsill along with an empty Evan William Kentucky Bourbon bottle squared. Two empty wine bottles sit there too, green glass in the sun next to one solitary goblet.

It all comes back, all the silent mornings, the sitting inside with the quiet cold. Lucky for me there is some sun today; my mind remembers these mornings without sunshine too. It is a well-kept memory, not with a story but more in my body, a sense of so many times. All of that settled in on this silent snowy morning. The heat registers are running and I remember the sounds of hot water pipes. I remember dust particles where the sun came through Chicago cut glass windows. These memories of mine sometimes had a baby nursing or laundry to do. This feeling in my ears of them being stuffed, I remember this. A train goes by perfectly muffled.

I’m here now in another winter kitchen, in this little space and time of newborn. This granddaughter who stops time and also settles memories all around me like a winter morning. This child leaves me in that same caught breath of the last song sung; everyone else shrugging on their coats, but I hold my wet eyes shut tight and quiet my face with the hope that people see that I am not ready. That my worship is not quite done. In this time when everything falls and my arms are up or down and the world feels gone and I’m there with my king, with the One who made me. All that overwhelm, along with my dried winter skin, the heaviness, the hurt in my heart, the carrying of others, the holding of myself, and the tightness in my voice, it all falls away when my eyes lift up. I look out this kitchen window and see winter branches and and grey January sky and it’s as though I am watching the sunrise on an ocean. I hear another muffled train and I know that these are moments and memories forever stored.