On December 23rd I woke to the sounds of eighteen-wheelers rumbling up the interstate entrance ramp outside the cheap hotel where I spent the night. The room smelt like mold and the pillows were lumpy. The furniture was garage sale gaudy and worn, but there was a working toilet and running water. Unlike at my house. A huge leak had occurred in our water line and our pump had frozen, a plumbing double whammy.For complicated reasons, our plumbers won’t be able to get the water back on to our house until sometime in January. I was spending the night in the crummy hotel so I could take a shower.
I spent the next day taking down the Christmas decorations, stripping the tree of ornaments, boxing up the garlands, putting away the beautiful Lenox Christmas china that my mother in law gave me, one place setting each Christmas until I had an entire place setting for twelve. the stockings are sitting in a pile along with the Christmas linens and the victorian Santa music box that sits on the mantel. Christmas was cancelled at my house for the first time since 1980. After I got all the decoration down, I pouted the rest of the day. And then my gas range quit working. No water, and now no cooking. Perhaps Santa had decided to put me on the naughty list.
On Christmas Eve we loaded up the presents and went to our oldest daughter’s house. Her sister-in-law had cooked a turkey, and with the help of various family members, we threw together a fabulous meal. Hoping to steal a shower the next day, we spent the night and got to watch the grandchildren opening their gifts from Santa on Christmas morning. It wasn’t the Christmas Eve I’d planned for, but it was just exactly perfect.
Last year my husband installed a huge tank that collects rain water coming off our barn roof. The plan was to run some PVC pipe down the hill and into another tank that would provide water for the goats in the front pasture. He never got past hooking up the the tank to the barn roof. I’ve grumbled about it a few times, but he hasn’t been motivated to get it working. Since our line to the city water system is STILL broken, we have hooked a pipe to that water tank and now our pipes are flowing with rainwater. We can wash our clothes, run our dishwasher, take a shower and best of best, flush the toilets! The fact that he never completed the line to the pasture made it easy to get the water into the house. That oversight became a blessing!
Just today I was cleaning out the frozen heads of lettuce in the garden beds.The row covers I had used were too light to protect the crop from the freezing weather, and we lost all our lettuce and spinach. Along the walk leading to the garden I found a Ziploc bag full of garlic cloves that I had meant to carry to the compost barrel. They had been hanging in a braid in the kitchen, and had begun to sprout. I must have dropped the bag, or set it down, distracted by something else.Those spouts had been growing inside the bag, so I planted them in the garden where I had just pulled out the frozen lettuce.
Not all my failures turn into something good, in fact, most of them are simply opportunities to learn what not to do next time. Instead of making New Year’s Resolutions about what I want to do more of, or what I want to do less of, I think I’ll just be open to the possibilities of what my failures, or the things that fail around me, might become.
On Walnut Ridge 
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