Lots of Facebook traffic about frozen water pipes during this extremely uncomfortable winter weather. These below zero temps remind me of my lifetime of winters living in Iowa. Weeks of this crap along with lots of snow and blizzard conditions was common so while I wish it would warm up, this Missouri weather is nothing in comparison. I’m in retrospective mood today because 17 years ago this morning, my dad passed. I decided several years ago that sending myself down the rabbit hole of grief on January 2 every year was not the way to celebrate and love my dad. I decided instead to honor him and our life together.

I remember it being every winter, but possibly not, the water pipes froze at the sidewalk junction to our house. As a child, I remember this being an extremely catastrophic event….not because we didn’t have water but because ‘what to do’ upset the rhythm of the household. I realize now that I was a kid and I should have been able to just trust the adults to work this out as they did…but the way they raised me, I felt responsible to help them work it out. Or was it just because I was an overly sensitive child? I may figure this out one day but today I’m going with memories of being a caretaker at an early age.

The one major frozen event occurred when we were visiting Grandma in Muscatine. We were not home to get a stream of water running in the sinks so it was frozen pretty solid through winter. I recall my dad buying heated hose to run from my friend, Lennie’s house next door so we would have water. I also recall that we ….. or my parents….payed their water bill that winter to thank them for helping us.

This post is more of a Documentation of memories for me but while I was typing it, I realized that it was an analogy of life. When our inbound pipes are frozen up with grief or anger or hate, we must work through a solution…sometimes the solution is going within and other times it is being open to the mental or physical help from others.

Until next time….