Adversity vs. Maturity

One good thing about being "older" is having the perspective not to freak out (too badly) when things go wrong. Especially when multiple things go awry, all in one strange series of events during the course of one weekend...

Case in Point: Saturday Jon was working on his Bobcat at friend Derek Johnson's garage. I was home, sitting in the living room, looking out the window as I fed baby Leila. It was windy out, and I was watching our trees blow back and forth while an unusually big gust of wind swept through our woods. And what do I see? One of the trees blew back and forth a bit further than the rest, until it broke off about ten feet up and fell all the way down. ONTO OUR VAN.

Actually, it bounced off of the van, landing beside it. The roof, door, and hood are now dented and scraped, and the window shield cracked. This is the one vehicle we don't have full coverage on, but we're going to see if it might be covered under our homeowner's insurance.

I called Jon, and he had a suspicion about which specific tree had fallen on the van. He said that brother Don had pointed out a dead tree during his recent visit, and had observed that it was within falling distance of our vehicles. But don't get too excited, Don-- as it turned out, it wasn't that particular tree, but another (smaller) dead tree.

Jon has purposely left some dead trees up around our property, in an effort to be eco-minded and help out small animals and birds who like that kind of habitat. In fact, just the day before, another small dead tree from our land had fallen into the road, and Jon moved it aside so traffic could get through. I'm starting to think that dead trees fall down pretty easy around here.

Anyway, think we had our quota of bad luck for the weekend? Nope. The next day, on Sunday, I went to town for some errands while Jon watched the kids. They were all downstairs watching TV when they heard a big crash and the sound of shattered glass upstairs. They rushed upstairs to discover that a partridge had hit one of our dining room windows, broke through the screen and two panes of glass, and was lying dead on our floor.

We've had at least four occassions since we've been here when other kinds of birds have hit our windows, and we had joked about what would happen if a turkey hit a window some time. Well, I think we have a better idea of what would happen, now. We're just glad no one was sitting at the table!

Jon called me on my cell to let me know what happened, and make sure I was on my way home. I was nearly back when he called, so pulled up the driveway a few minutes later and parked in the garage. As I walked up to the house, I thought I heard the garage door hit the ground rather sharply, and looked back in case I had accidentally left the back end of the car hanging out of the garage. It looked like the door had shut without landing on top of the car, so I continued on my way up to the house.

When Jon was outside a few minutes later, wrapping up the broken window in cellophane, he discovered that the garage door cable had snapped and the door had fallen down to the ground. Luckily that didn't happen until after I walked out from under it!

Now, this morning... what do we wake up to? Snow-!! Sigh.

The funny thing is, while all of these wierd things were happening, we remained calm. We joked about it and I instantly recognized what an interesting blog entry this might be.

It also made me feel appreciative that Jon is able to roll with the punches as well as he does. A lot of guys would rant and rave and take their frustrations out on their family, under similar circumstances. And I'm not sure... maybe a younger Jon would have done that. But when a partridge flies through the window of 45 year-old Jon Hurlburt's house, he picks up a broom and starts sweeping. Then he buries the partridge (so the dog won't eat it), removes and wraps the window, and nails up plywood where the window used to be.

There's a lesson in that, somewhere.