Flashback: Song for a Winter's Night // September 2, 2007

I had intended to powerwash the deck but since it was stormy (thunder, lightening, rain the perfect trifecta) but since working with power equipment was out of the picture, we chose to do what everybody does on a rainy afternoon on the first day of September - go Christmas shopping!

Yeah, you can imagine my excitement at the thought of running around Savannah spending money on stuff that no one needs. More on that in anther post. I was quite excited however to do my favorite shopping - we were going to at least two bookstores. Ahhh, what better way to spend a rainy afternoon than perusing stacks of unorganized used library overstocks at a bargain bookstore coffee in hand. That's the kind of afternoon I live for...

I had a bit of a flashback last night. On the way home from what turned out to be a beautiful evening of shopping - I even did the Michaels/KBToys/Carter's outlet between bookstores - we listened to Sarah McLaghlan on the way home. I had not listened to her in months, in fact, I don't think I really had listened to one of her albums since, like, last winter or something like that.

At any rate, out of nowhere, it starts. A song that took me back to Camp Striker, the sand, the tents full of soldiers, my little cubbyhole that I lived in, my cot, the broken Bradley (Fighting Vehicle) that I used to sit on when I wanted to be melancholy and miss home while listening to Sarah McLachlan. There is a song that I think I downloaded from limewire or something because I don't have the album nor know which album its even on.

It's a rendition of "Song for  winter's night" by Gordon Lightfoot. Its an airy, female ensemble, new agey, beautiful work that for whatever reason became my reminisce song of choice. Many people talk about what "got them through" hard times and major emotional trials. I hear about worship music, gospel music, preaching and the like - me? I was all about "Song for a Winter's Night." I don't really know why. I can't sing all the words. I just know how I felt when I listened to it. It like a line I read out of Peretti once, "I can't remember the words, but I do remember the feelings."

It's the same. I remember when I would be at my lowest emotional ebb - I would have been counseling all day, working on a memorial service, gone out and had some kind of traumatic experience - whatever it was, I would gather my wits with that particular song.

It would be around 2300 and nothing would be going on. I would slip out of my tent, duck into the shadows and pull out my ipod and sit in the quiet protection provided between whatever vehicles happened to be in the motor pool outside my tent.

I would play the song over and over again. Just to experience the warmth I felt from hearing it.

The lyrics could not be more unlike what I was going through. The lines that I can remember are the first of each verse:

"The lamp is burning low upon my table top, the snow is softly falling." Yeah, it was Iraq in August, not much for cold there...

"The smoke is rising in the shadows overhead, my glass is almost empty." Not much of that either.

"The fire is dying, my lamp is growing dim, the shades of night are lifting."

I would, in those moments, experience all the warm memories of my childhood bound up into one feeing. Memories would tumble into one another, chronology lost in the tangle of emotions.

I would be sitting in the family room at the farm in Michigan - the Stone Rose Meadow - the fire in the woodstove blazing while we would all be under a large blanket while Dad read Tolkein or Lewis. He would get a little horse and stop, midsentence (Aragorn about to be slain on Weathertop or some such awful place) and we would know automatically if we needed to hear the end of the story we had to get him a glass of water. Maybe that happened in Minnesota - who knows, the feeling was the same.

I was in the dining room, watching the snow through the dark window listening as mom played the Turkish Rondo on the baby grand in the living room. I suppose I needed to be doing Algebra homework - I always put that off too late in the night.

I would be in my bed upstairs, the snow again piling on the porch roof outside my window - the air seeping in the old house - getting a chill of another kind reading the Count of Monte Cristo after bedtime.

They are warm memories. They were what got me through those lonely, lonely nights. For that moment, while the music played, I was not in Iraq, I was not at war, I was not responsible for anyone - I was in Michigan, on a cold winter's night, warmed by great literature and my family.

Those are the feelings that came over me every time I heard that song. When I heard it again last night, I thought - not of Michigan - but of Iraq, and new warm memories of... warm memories.

Song for a Winter's Night by Gordon Lightfoot

The lamp is burning low
upon my table top
snow is softly falling
the air is still
in the silence of my room
I hear your voice softly calling

If I could only have you near
to breathe a sigh or two
I would be happy
just to hold the hands I love
on this winters night with you

Smoke is rising in the shadows overhead
my glass is almost empty
I read again between the lines
upon each page,
the words of love you sent me

If I could know within my heart
that you were lonely too
I would be happy
just to hold the hands I love
on this winters night with you

The Fire is dying
my lamp is growing dim
shades of night are lifting
morning light steals across my window pane
where webs of snow are drifting

If I could only have you near
to breathe a sigh or two
I would be happy
just to hold the hands I love
on this winters night with you
And you'll be once again with me