Barbara J. Hamby

Still Snowbound

Somehow being shut in and surrounded by snow, ice, and now melting slush, did not inspire me to write up a storm. Who needs another storm, anyway? But a couple of times I got in the mood to work on my memoir stories. Today I decided to add some pages to a short chapter that needs expansion. Maybe that’ll get me going again—to do more work on the weekend.

Our next-door neighbors managed to get out of our messy parking lot and shop this afternoon, so I’m quite sure we’ll be able to do that tomorrow. We can get to two grocery stores by driving on streets fairly heavily traveled that should be navigable. I made a long list yesterday and have been adding to it occasionally.

This has been a challenge: to create nutritious and palatable meals out of odds and ends in the cabinets, refrigerator and freezer. We could make it for one more day without reinforcements, but I’m hopeful we won’t have to. Maybe we’ll even have lunch out.

Today I received a book in the mail that I ordered a week ago. There’s a long story that led up to my buying this particular book. Ten years ago I went to South Africa with a group of women writers from all over the United States. We were ambassadors in the People to People program started by former president Eisenhower. We gathered together in New York for an orientation and flew directly to Johannesburg.

At breakfast in the hotel dining room the first morning after our arrival, a group of us got into a conversation. Somehow the talk brought to mind a good friend of mine in Oregon who sold real estate. I mentioned she had been a neighbor in Vancouver, Washington. I said she had moved to a small town in Oregon and, in a senior moment, the name of the town slipped my mind. A woman from Maine asked, “Corvallis?”

Shocked, I asked, “Yes, how did you know?”

“She’s my sister,” she replied.

I asked for her sister’s name and, sure enough, it was my friend. We were all amazed at the coincidence. The sister and I got fairly well acquainted in South Africa and were roommates in Kruger Park. She loaned me some tennis shoes to walk on the beach in Cape Town.

Since then, the Maine sister and I have exchanged Christmas cards with little notes every year. This year she told me her daughter has written a series of books and the most recent is titled, In Cold Pursuit, a mystery based in Antarctica. I’m looking forward to reading this latest work by Sarah Andrews.

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