The January Thaw

In the days when my grandparents, Levi and Edna Latty, were on their 300+ acre farm at Etta, Pappy Latty always looked for the January thaw, those few January days when winter paused to take a deep breath and remember that spring would soon be on its way. During the January thaw, Pappy would hitch his team of mules, Barney and Jude, to the plow and go down to the river bottom to break up his fields. This was good, to turn over the soil and expose any pesky insects that might be sleeping there, waiting to wake up and chomp into corn stalks or cotton plants. It also made the rich, dark earth looser and easier to plow again later, when it was planting time. Yesterday, the temperature was fairly moderate; at least the sun shone, so when we get a reprieve in the middle of a frigid winter, I think of it as the January thaw.

Though they are all gone now, my family who once lived and worked their farms at Etta, I still remember. I never had the privilege of meeting Ma Latty’s parents, Ben and Tep Willis, but I’ve certainly walked on the farm where they lived, admired the gnarled cedars which line that long-ago walk, sifted through ashes of their fireplace, and gazed down at the indentation of their basement. Until a few years ago, Tep’s jonquils would come up and bloom every spring, bright, sunny reminders of the lady who planted them there.

And, of course, I’ve tramped all over Pappy’s farm at Etta, looked at the over-grown spring and wished it were cleaned out and free-running like it used to be. I’ve even collected a few of the giant acorns from the burr oak tree that guarded his barn. I’ve seen the spring branch, the river sparkling down at the bottom of what was Pappy’s corn field, and wished that when change comes, it would always be for the better.

I wonder if my great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents realized they were making memories and building a heritage for generations to come? Or were they too busy living life, working, laughing, enjoying each day? I wonder what kind of lasting legacy I’ll leave for my grandchildren? What memories will they have? Seems to me that when I was younger, I didn’t think much about those far-off, nebulous days called “the future”. But now that I’m older, I do.

The weatherman says we may be directly in the path of another “frigid blast.”  But, during a warm reprieve from the cold, I think of a long ago farmer who used the brief respite to prepare for spring planting. Right here in the middle of the technological tangle of the twenty-first century, I hear the echo of “January thaw”  and remember.