yep.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAU5a8RYQc0&w=300&h=200] [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA9twB7UsYU&w=300&h=255]

i will not have a junk drawer.

Hi blog. This is just a post to say that I will no longer have a junk drawer because they are ridiculous and take way too long to sort through. I will not have one. I like to be neat, but I've always had one drawer that I put random cards or whiteboard markers or weird little nick knacks like sock monkey key chains and the Xacto blade that the janitor gave all the girl RAs to cut the hair off of the bottom of the hall vacuum. Not only does this drawer take too long to clean out, but you can forget about finding anything you need if you stick it in that black hole.  I'm not going to have one anymore.

You may now start placing bets on my success.

will be canning soon.

I think when I was younger, I always wanted to grow up a bit faster because it represented freedom. People tell me that when I'm older, I'll want those years back and wish to be younger because it represents a different kind of freedom. Right now, I feel fairly in the middle - that's why the college years are some of the best, right? Much of the freedom of an adult without the added responsibility of seven different types of bills, plus the sweet blessing of dorm life and a tightly knit community. There are still many days when I wish I was settled with a family in a home of my own. But right now, this is what the Lord has for me. I'm excited to get really involved with my church this summer and grow richly in that community, and I am excited for all the time I will get with my family in the next few months. Aunt Molly and I are in the beginnings of planning a canning party with Mom, Grandma, and some of the other women on the Bernhagen side - I just received an email from Grandma B this morning about how Uncle Ron planted lots of tomatoes, and we will have cukes around the first part of August to pickle. We might do some jams too. Also, as of late, Seattle plans are coming together nicely, and we might spend some time up in Banff and Calgary in Canada for part of the trip as well (shameless plug for Bon Iver's new album: download the early release song free - Calgary).

From where I'm sitting, if I crack the blinds on my window about two inches, all I can see are different shades of green from the pines and the old trees next to the refurbished farmhouse. The new puppy, whom I suggested we name Andy Warhol or Devotchka but is now tritely named Paityn, is curled up in a ball on the fluffier part of the white duvet. I have a mug of Good Earth tea beside me, and the whole house smells like rain.

Some days I feel overwhelmed because I thought I had this whole growing up thing under my belt already, and often, I don't. Learning to trust truth over emotion each day because the heart is deceitful above all things. There was a group started by some men on campus last semester called the Unfading. They wanted to encourage the women on campus regarding the world's lies about body image and work through other struggles while also helping fellow men make war on pornography addictions and a range of other issues like these. We discussed the verse that talks about "the beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit" and how this doesn't refer to a woman being shy and literally quiet. It means that before the Lord and, consequently, before others, that spirit is at peace and rest because this woman is finding her joy and strength in God.

This was a great encouragement for me. Being peaceful before the throne is one of the best feelings in the world.

This summer in the Cities is filled with hope.  Looking forward to what it holds.

That's all for now, lo

a grief observed.

It is stormy this morning. I'm sitting by the big windows upstairs and watching the mass of vibrantly green trees in the field next door shake. It is a 10am storm, yes it is. I wonder if the aspen (now growing in the wooden plot that was once our vegetable garden) knows it is being fed or if it just is frightened by the loudness of the sky. I know that God needs to water the earth, and intricately, this is how He does it. An ordinary trend in all aspects of life: pain produces fruit. I finished A Grief Observed a couple days ago whilst sitting by the fire/tightly zipped in a blue, nylon sleeping bag at Wild River State Park. It's pretty short, really it only takes a day or so to read. The book follows the thoughts and emotions of C.S. Lewis after his beloved wife died of cancer in 1960. I highly recommend it to anyone who has known any sort of grief of any kind (not just a death). He nails the strength of feeling and conversely, the promises God has laid out in exactness. The book opens with this:

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me." 

Pastor Steve preached a message on grief at HopeCC a couple months ago and explained why grief feels so wrong, so confusing. He described us as how we first were, in Eden, and clarified that we were not created for mourning or despair or any of those numerous feelings that fit in the black bag of suffering.

Elisabeth Elliot says in Passion and Purity: "The most deeply taught Christians are generally those who have been brought into the searching fires of deep soul-anguish. If you have been praying to know more of Christ, do not be surprised if He takes you aside into a desert place, or leads you into a furnace of pain."

While we as humans were not fashioned for bereavement, the beauty of it all is that God still uses pain to produce good, in fact even marvelous, things (This seems like an obvious, cliche statement, but is in fact a very difficult thing to grasp when in the midst of it). The fight occurs when our flesh desires to ease the searing ache with worldly tools. Our souls are too eternal for this ("He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart..." Ecc. 3:11) - everything we try to fill this gaping in our hearts with falls right out, our souls are bottomless. Only He, who is eternal, can fill something fashioned with eternity in its rims.

I think this grief-manufacturing-hope is beautiful in a different kind of way than any normal, pretty thing generally is. I find it complex and mysterious and grand. It is like the night birds that I heard in the tree by my window two nights ago at 3AM. It is like the conversation with Jessie, yesterday, downtown, when she told me about hurts and grace, and her words were like jewels on the air. It is the "letting down of wings" (Ezekiel 1:25) and the changing of dust.

I am grateful for this. All of it. Praying for fresh, new, healing things.

tukutendereza.

The Kenyan woman, Anna, who lived in my hall this semester flew back to Africa today. Two nights ago, she had Els and me over for some Kenyan rice, meat, bread, and some vegetables. She was drinking something that looked like hot chocolate but had the consistency of Malt-O-Meal. Somehow, it was very comforting...like drinking porridge. She was also playing Kenyan music videos and explaining to us that Africa is a culture of dance, and no one would buy a song that you couldn't dance to. Each and every time I interacted with this woman, she blessed me with the love of God and spoke directly to my heart. More stories to come.

In this video, Anna said that the woman is saying when Satan calls, she isn't available to answer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KSEU_N2q8s

jealous arm.

And where are they now?Our silent golden cows? His swift and jealous arm has thrown them down.

Lift up your eyes, little ones. Rejoice chosen sons.

[Sojourn]

manna.

But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked....But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end...When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you. Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever...But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works. [Psalm 73:2-3,16-28] Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men." And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him. [Mark 1:16-20]

hymn.

If to distant lands I scatter, If I sail to farthest seas, Would you find and firm and gather 'til I only dwell in Thee?
[BF]

jane.

I haven't had many years like this one. Its been pretty fiercely bittersweet in its revelations, intensity of emotion, etc. But I have had many moments, seconds, days that are very long, times where I was walking down the sidewalk and looking at the trees with all their interlocked branches like antlers and lengthy patches where my fleshly self simply craved the approval of others. Daily, I am venturing to throw this part of myself out and rely more heavily on the Lord for any and all of these gut reactions. I read Gwen's book, When People Are Big and God is Small, last year, and that was the first time I soundly grasped how this fear of man had been shaping me and how beautiful it could be if I only feared the Lord instead and let Him shape me. I'm reading Jane Eyre right now and there is this portion where Jane, as a ten-year-old child, is sitting before the fire late at night and consulting her fellow classmate and dear friend, Helen Burns, on the trials of her small life. Helen, a prudent thirteen-year-old, pours forth wisdom: "If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt," Helen spoke, "you would not be without friends."

"No; I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough; if others don't love me, I would rather die than live - I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Helen. Look here; to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest -"

"Hush, Jane! you think too much of the love of human beings; you are too impulsive, too vehement: the sovereign Hand that created your frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you. Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere...God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress?"

And so, through a child's wisdom (or rather Charlotte Bronte's and more largely, the Lord's), I am attempting. This is a daily declining that I have to do, unmanageable only if I make it that way. Trying to "lay down these crowns" I constantly "clench with fisted hands."

"Who, then, are those who fear the LORD?  He will instruct them in the ways they should choose. They will spend their days in prosperity,  and their descendants will inherit the land. The LORD confides in those who fear him;  he makes his covenant known to them" Psalm 25:12-14

If you're going to walk on the white.

I've been seeking truth in several areas regarding the Lord and His love as of late. I've felt pretty cushioned by the Holy Spirit this last month, like I have pillows on all sides of me. There's really no other place I want to be right now. I know this poem is loosely tethered, but my heart is very much in this place. Trying to aim for truth. If you're going to walk on the white side of the curb, by the gutter, and search for deader plants behind the sewer grates, slowly, then I will wait. I guess. I halted in this frothy glasshouse, damp before it was silent, but still deadening in the weight of its sliding sheets of pale or thin light. I sat between the vines to be in the state of the glorified libraries and the tilting cathedrals with their fallen doors, the basilicas that have torn down their own wallpapers and repainted curious images of antiseptic gods on insubstantial sanctums. We could always see through the fake beams the modern chaplains innately rooted like boorish trees that snake through the Amazon. Looking up the curved, impressionistic dome toward the keynote core that leveled the force of the angels, you told me of how it used to be, how it really is - deep - rumbling down through the stratums of the ocean and latching on to both sides of the continent (and we are covered still). It is an exquisite following. The smell of the hickory pew and melted candlesticks is what I remember the least.

© Lauren Bernhagen 2011

this.

Let this goodbye of ours, this last goodbyeBe still and splendid like a forest tree... Let there be one grand look within our eyes Built of the wonderment of the past years Too vast a thing of beauty to be lost In quivering lips and burning floods of tears. - Alice Meynell via Elisabeth Elliot

wordpress.

Anyone want to learn me on how to switch over to Wordpress? It is time.

the fire escape on the old schoolbuilding.

This was written for my ENG2205 class. I sit towards the left, backhand corner of the large classroom at the end of the hall, generally. The room is blue and white, flaking with age, Victorian colors. In the afternoon, I scratch a tree in the faux wood desk, Do you know you are not real maple? Do you know? I smudge the branches out by three o'clock, so I can leave nonchalantly.

There is a fire escape, too, out the window, which I watch with careful eyes. The casing on the frame always makes me think of the crude ivory elephants from India. The staircase itself is of a hidden meaning, green and blistering iron, otherworldly. It's thirty-foot skeleton sways somehow, sways with suggestion, to keep them alive and me involved. The steps themselves rasp beside the brick wall, branching this year to the other century and its deep water, with a movement that is, I would assume, strangely familiar. But the stairs still scare me like ghosts when I see them shifting up and down in the wind.
The wrought metal seems to be for thinner scholars, those lettered intellectuals with blue monogrammed sweaters, and narrow ties. There is also a solid crank, several decaying leaves musty and feral, and a severe unrest, disabled and forgotten and blank, a severe unrest that I must go stand outside underneath and see.
Four hours ago, the getaway swelled and wrinkled, what was left of it: a reedy expression of railing and lattice, and a hard shell of uncertainty by which I've always seen it move. Tomorrow, if the other buildings turn and notice, the palisade will melt to the wall. The frayed establishments bordering the iron are impish and well informed of skies, a belt of calculated systems.
When the undergrads pack up and leave slowly, like tourists or troubadours, I mostly close the curtain, and after I go the fire gate never is fully there.

crows & locusts.

The fields are bleeding.It's been seven years, they say. The foxes ran through and set the wheat on fire after the ruling and the tribes melted into their armor. I drop this pottery in the dust by my feet, and it breaks and scatters before I can gather the blue-hewn chips into neat, small piles with my hands. The burnt powder on my forearms was always red and dark, ready for hotter deserts or a more sacred harvest, so I will stand under this tree even if this tree doesn't want me. The women are still there with their baskets. You told me my hair was like rain or looked like I had stolen something in the afternoon light, and I vended the rocks you left just so you'd tell me to stop. Even so, you unhitched the smoke-dried knots and pulled down the fastened arches between the mounts. Everything was flooded then. Now, we walk on brittle land and crack whips without thinking.

The fire is coming down.

© Lauren Bernhagen 2011

"I could have stretched forth My hand and stricken you... and you would have been effaced from this earth. Nevertheless I have spared you for this purpose in order to show you My power..."           Exodus 9:15-16

lit for the sum.

In an effort to remember the books that I keep putting on my to-read-in-the-summer list in my head, here is a listing of what I am reading and what I fully intend to go through as soon as I'm done with Studies in European Lit. I would love more recommendations though.My list includes:

1. A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 2. A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis 3. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers - currently reading 4. The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis 5. Bleak House by Charles Dickens - currently reading 6. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

the weight.

Somewhere inside of me is a place that hopes that heaven isn't like the pictures on my grandfather's wall in the old, mustard-colored den. The room was a restful place: a mahogany davenport against the side wall, old books, and a small black and white television in the corner. But I will never be able to fully separate the wispy light and the transparent garments of the youthful angels on the wall from that spot. Baby sheep, a twinkling staircase, and a Jesus with a halo disc around the back of his head were smattered over different size paintings on several different walls.

I would sit on the burnt orange shag carpet and wonder, Is heaven really all pastels? Will everything just glare, too clean to touch? I don't think I want to stay for all of eternity in a chalky temple that looks hard, lonely, and like an ancient Greece emptied of all its people. I'd feel guilty as a child, as heaven was supposed to be the place where there was no suffering or tears, but everything there seemed very singular and lonely to me. In my heart, I'd secretly decide that I would stay on earth where there were warm rooms with roaring fires and family and comfortable, cushy chairs thank you very much. Hopefully God would change something up with heaven by the time I got there.

As of late, these pictures in my mind of celestial beings and glory have been challenged, and I am now understanding that heaven (a word that has consistently had a gold glow around it in my head) is not simply a place with white bunnies and a pale yellow sky. The word "glory" in the ancient languages actually meant "weight" or "substantial." In glory is where the actual weight is. What is on earth is the see-through, and everything in this eternal place will be so much more potent. God is not some wispy, metaphysical thing...He is more substantial than anything in this world and quite different from the Renaissance art found in most museums. In a place where that kind of Being eternally dwells, food and fragrance and color will be so contrasting, so intense and thick.

I take comfort in these images that the Lord has started to reveal to me. I don't very much understand it yet, but it is so reassuring to know that heaven isn't simply up above the ceiling and sky but beyond. Which means that it could be in a pocket of air that I can't quite see in the corner of my room or somewhere else that I can't quite interpret (a wardrobe?). Makes me think of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time. I remember being in about the fourth grade and trying to understand the complexities of Meg's "tessering."

There are so many impressions of God in this world: the different realms of art and beauty and music and emotion are brilliantly wrapped up and entangled in everything. I see this in the way C.S. Lewis describes creation in The Magician's Nephew and Dicken's illustration of wine and twilight on the window seat in Bleak House. I'm seeing now that the devil has sought to flip our view of heaven upside down - he is clever that way, and in response, the church has cheerfully charged into acceptance of these theologically incorrect and simplistic paintings of the eternal.

David Wells has suitably captured this issue in culture today: "It is a condition we have assigned Him after having nudged him out to the periphery of our secularized life. . . . Weightlessness tells us nothing about God but everything about ourselves, about our condition, about our psychological disposition to exclude God from our reality.”

hearth.

I am home, sitting by the fireplace upstairs. The brown afghan on the couch is warm but not too warm, and Mom just made lemon tea and went downstairs. I have my Bible and Bleak House on the pillow, and Addie's staring out the window at the big field and the pine trees next door. The rest of the family is downstairs, about to start a movie, something with Claire Danes I think. I feel so peaceful, and so full of thinking. I've been writing on the backs of napkins and Mapquest directions for the last couple of weeks, and Els gave me the idea to write unplanned thoughts on note cards (carried in my bag of course) like Anne Lamott talks about in Bird by Bird. I try to write in a little notebook, but it always gets left behind on my desk or in the living room. I think I'm going to need to sort for awhile.

Today we went out to western MN to visit Alex, and when we got there, we drank hot chocolate made with Dutch cocoa from some Mennonite farmers, and then we went antiquing. I fell asleep on the way back because the sun was hot on my cheek and my arm, and Els has always been a good driver.

Also, last night I dreamt about an ocean that was rushing into the sky, and we were singing to the Lord and it was echoing everywhere. I think I know what it means but I'm not sure...I'm open to discussion if you have a special knack towards dream interpretation and want the details.

As soon as I got home, Dad mentioned that we might take an impromptu trip up north to stay in a cabin on the north shore. We might just sit and watch the boats in the frozen wharf or hike in the woods (snowshoeing?). What I'm wondering is if it's possible to stay in a lighthouse...If you have any special information or know of any peaceful places near Duluth or Ely, let me know.

Trying to slow down the time, learning to love solitude.

Snow by Tove Jansson

7a6bede0e49b3cd90832b8eeb92719ebWhen we got to the strange house it began to snow in quite a different way. A mass of tired old clouds opened and flung snow at us, all of a sudden and just anyhow. They weren’t ordinary snowflakes – they fell straight down in large sticky lumps, they clung to each other and sank quickly and they weren’t white, but grey. The whole world was as heavy as lead. Mummy carried in the suitcases and stamped her feet on the doormat and talked the whole time because she thought the whole thing was such fun and that everything was different. But I said nothing because I didn’t like this strange house. I stood in the window and watched the snow falling, and it was all wrong. It wasn’t the same as in town. There it blows black and white over the roof or falls gently as if from heaven, and forms beautiful arches over the sitting-room window. The landscape looked dangerous too. It was bare and open and swallowed up the snow, and the trees stood in black rows that ended in nothing. At the edge of the world there was a narrow fringe of forest. Everything was wrong. It should be winter in town and summer in the country.

Everything was topsy-turvy. The house was big and empty, and there were too many rooms. Everything was very clean and you could never hear your own steps as you walked because the carpets were so big and they were as soft as fur. If you stood in the furthest room, you could see through all the other rooms and it made you feel sad; it was like a train ready to leave with its lights shining over the platform. The last room was dark like the inside of a tunnel except for a faint glow in the gold frames and the mirror which was hung too high on the wall. All the lamps were soft and misty and made a very tiny circle of light. And when you ran you made no noise. It was just the same outside. Soft and vague, and the snow went on falling and falling.

I asked why we were living in this strange house but got no proper answer. The person who cooked the food was hardly ever to be seen and didn’t talk. She padded in without one noticing her and then out again. The door swung to without a sound and rocked backwards and forwards for a long time before it was still. I showed that I didn’t like this house by keeping quiet. I didn’t say a word. In the afternoon, the snow was even greyer and fell in flocks and stuck to the window panes and then slid down and new flocks appeared out of the twilight and replaced them. They were like grey hands with a hundred fingers. I tried to watch one all the way as it fell, it spread out and fell, faster and faster. I stared at the next one and the next one and in the end my eyes began to hurt and I got scared. It was hot everywhere and there was enough room for crowds of people but there were only two of us. I said nothing.

Mummy was happy and rushed all over the place saying: “What peace and quiet! Isn’t it lovely and warm!” And so she sat down at a big shiny table and began to draw. She took the lace tablecloth off and spread out all her illustrations and opened the bottle of Indian ink. Then I went upstairs. The stairs creaked and groaned and made lots of noises that stairs make when a family has gone up and down them for ages. That’s good. Stairs should do that sort of thing. One knows exactly which step squeaks and which one doesn’t and where one has to tread if one doesn’t want to make oneself heard. It was just that this staircase wasn’t our staircase. Quite a different family had used it. Therefore I thought this staircase was creepy.

Upstairs all the soft lamps were on in the same way and all the rooms were warm and tidy and all the doors were standing open. Only one door was closed. Inside, it was cold and dark. It was the box room. The other family’s belongings were lying there in packing-cases and trunks and there were mothproof bags hanging in long rows with a little snow on top of them. Now I could hear the snow. It was falling all the time, whispering and rustling to itself and in one corner it had crept onto the floor. The other family was everywhere in there, so I shut the door and went down again and said I wanted to go to bed. Actually I didn’t want to go to bed at all, but I thought it would be best. Then I wouldn’t have to say anything.

The bed was as wide and desolate as the landscape outside. The eiderdown was like a hand, too. You sank and sank right to the bottom of the earth under a big soft hand. Nothing was like it was at home, or like anywhere else. In the morning, it was still snowing in just the same way. Mummy had already got started with her work and was very cheerful. She didn’t have to light fires or get meals ready and didn’t have to be worried about anybody. I said nothing. I went to the furthest room and watched the snow. I had a great responsibility and had to see what the snow was doing. It had risen since yesterday. A thousand tons of wet snow had slithered down the window panes, and I had to climb onto a chair to see the long grey landscape. The snow had risen out there, too. The trees were thinner and more timid and the horizon had moved further away. I looked at everything until I knew that soon we would be done for. This snow had decided to go on falling until everything was a single, vast wet snowdrift, and nobody would remember what had been underneath it. All the trees would sink into the earth and all the houses. No roads and no tracks – just snow falling and falling and falling.

I went up to the boxroom and listened to it falling, I heard how it stuck fast and grew. I couldn’t think of anything but the snow. Mummy went on drawing. I was building with the cushions on the sofa and sometimes I looked at her through a peephole between them. She felt me looking and asked: “Are you alright?” while she went on drawing. And I answered: “Of course.” Then I crept on hands and knees into the end room and climbed onto a chair and saw how the snow was sinking down over me. Now the whole horizon had crept below the edge of the world. The fringe of forest couldn’t be seen any longer; it had slid over. The world had capsized, it was turning over quietly, a little bit every day. The very thought of it made me feel giddy.

Slowly, slowly, the world was turning, heavy with snow. The trees and houses were no longer upright. They were slanting. Soon it would be difficult to walk straight. All the people on earth would have to creep. If they had forgotten to fasten their windows, they would burst open. The doors would burst open. The water barrels would fall over and begin to roll over the endless field and out over the edge of the world. The whole world was full of things rolling, slithering and falling. Big things rumbled, you could hear them from far off, and you had to work out where they would come, and get away from them. Here they were, rumbling past, leaping in the snow when the angle was too great, and finally falling into space. Small houses without cellars broke loose and whirled away. The snow stopped falling downwards, it flew horizontally. It fell upwards and disappeared. Everything that couldn’t hold on tight rolled out into space, and slowly the sky went dark and turned black. We crept under the furniture between the windows, taking care not to tread on the glass. But from time to time a picture or a lamp bracket fell and smashed the window pane. The house groaned and the plaster came loose. And outside, large heavy objects rumbled past, rolling right through the whole of Finland all the way down from the Arctic Circle, and they were even heavier because they had collected so much snow as they rolled and sometimes people fell past screaming all the time. The snow on the ground began to slither away. It slid in an enormous avalanche which grew and grew over the edge of the world … oh no! oh no!

I rolled backwards and forwards on the carpet to make the horror of it seem greater, and in the end I saw the wall heave over me and the pictures hung straight out on their wires. “What are you doing?” Mummy asked. Then I lay still and said nothing. “Shall we have a story?” she asked, and went on drawing. But I didn’t want any other story than this one of my own. But one doesn’t say that sort of thing. So I said: “Come up and look at the attic.” Mummy dried her Indian ink pen and came with me. We stood in the attic and froze for a while and Mummy said “It’s lonely here,” so we went back into the warmth again and she forgot to tell me a story. Then I went to bed.

Next morning the daylight was green, underwater lighting throughout the room. Mummy was asleep. I got up and opened the door and saw that the lamps were on in all the rooms although it was morning and the green light came through the snow which covered the windows all the way up. Now it had happened. The house was a single enormous snowdrift, and the surface of the ground was somewhere high up above the roof. Soon the trees would creep down into the snow until only their tops stuck out, and then the tops would disappear too and everything would level itself off and be flat. I could see it, I knew. Not even praying would stop it. I became very solemn and quite calm and sat down on the carpet in front of the blazing fire. Mummy woke up and came in and said, “Look how funny it is with snow covering the windows,” because she didn’t understand how serious it all was. When I told her what had really happened, she became very thoughtful. “In fact,” she said after a while, “we have gone into hibernation. nobody can get in any longer and no one can get out!”

I looked carefully at her and understood that we were saved. At last we were absolutely safe and protected. This menacing snow had hidden us inside in the warmth for ever and we didn’t have to worry a bit about what went on there outside. I was filled with enormous relief, and I shouted, “I love you, I LOVE YOU,” and took all the cushions and threw them at her and laughed and shouted and Mummy threw them all back, and in the end we were lying on the floor just laughing. Then we began our underground life. We walked around in our nighties and did nothing. Mummy didn’t draw. We were bears with pine needles in our stomachs and anyone who dared come near our winter lair was torn to pieces. We were lavish with the wood, and threw log after log onto the fire until it roared. Sometimes we growled. We let the dangerous world outside look after itself; it had died, it had fallen out into space. Only Mummy and I were left.

It began in the room at the end. At first it was the nasty scraping sound made by shovels. Then the snow fell down over the windows and grey light came in everywhere. Somebody tramped past outside and came to the next window and let in more light. It was awful. The scraping sound went along the whole row of windows until the lamps were burning as if at a funeral. Outside snow was falling. The trees were standing in rows and were as black as they had been before and they let the snow fall on them and the fringe of forest on the horizon was still there. We went and got dressed. Mummy sat down to draw. A dark man went on shovelling outside the door and all of a sudden I started to cry and I screamed: “I’ll bite him! I’ll go outside and bite him!” “I shouldn’t do that,” Mummy said. “He wouldn’t understand.” She screwed the top onto the bottle of Indian ink and said: “what about going home?” “Yes,” I said. So we went home.