Wind racing through bare trees late Sunday afternoon insisted on being heard. The chorus made for an absolutely glorious backyard  evening. Whoosh and whisper suggested passages from great American literature. There was Huckleberry Finn reveling in a thunderstorm over the Mississippi. “Whirr” said one chorus and I remembered the  Emperor Yuan in Ray Bradbury’s “The Flying Machine” as he marveled  at the miracle of a sunrise from his garden close against the Great Wall.

I had entered the back yard on an errand from Grandma Nancy. She wanted some hedges planted and had set her potted prayers at strategic intervals along the fence. And so as I dug holes, stacatto of the shovel’s steel biting the earth below seemed like brass punctuating  murmurs from the  wind section above. I paused to listen. And to feel. Like Ishmael atop the Pequod’s mast, I felt “surely, all this is not without meaning ….”

The first of a series of predicted weather fronts had arrived right on schedule and threatened to fulfill a most incredible prophecy: Those who monitor such things had broadcast warnings of impending blizzards. Blizzards? But was it not a lovely evening? Did I not till the earth in my shirtsleeves?

“Surely, all this is not without meaning,” Ishmael had mused, and I smiled as the latest whoosh seemed to pack a little chill. “Blizzard, really?” I thought. “Wouldn’t that be fun?” And so I dug holes and planted shrubs until my bruised ribs stabbed hard enough to make breathing painful.

The forecast blizzard was still hours away when I took tools for unclogging drains over to Jake’s house, but the temperature had fallen to 42 on its way to 25. Weather people continued to insist the snow and blowing snow would arrive sometime after midnight, and we went to bed wondering if that was really thunder we were hearing off in the distance.

We awakened Monday to telephone alerts from the university saying the campus would remain closed all day; there would be no classes on the 25th. A quick look out the front of the house revealed a blanked of snow thick enough to cover everything in sight. All schools were closed. Early morning Seminary was cancelled. Then right on schedule at 6 o’clock, the next wave of snow and wind arrived.

What a glorious setting for singing praises to the Lord of all creation!

Southwest Airlines Flight 7 leaves Lubbock at 6:55 a.m. and stops in Dallas before flying on to Houston. Its 9:30 arrival at Houston Hobby Airport makes same-day appointments at MD Anderson feasible. But today something unusual happened on the way to Houston.

The flight leaving Lubbock was oversold, so the automated voicemail I received from Southwest at first seemed to be a consequence of that circumstance.  I became aware of the voicemail shortly after I turned my phone back on after landing in Dallas. The message said that portions of my flight had been canceled, and suggested that I might want to call Southwest to get details

Now that seemed strange, because there I was sitting on the plane, in Dallas. The flight attendant had just announced that passengers continuing on to Houston should remain seated until the crew had counted noses. So I wondered, was this a ploy to deflect people from and oversold flight? Was it a message I should have had before I left Lubbock?

So there we sat on the taxiway while I pondered the message. Just as we pulled to the gate, the announcement came that there had been a change in aircraft for those going to Houston. We were supposed to check in at Gate 6.

There was a long line at Gate 6. The board at the gate  said the Houston flight, Flight 9, would be leaving at 9 a.m.  The gate attendant asked if I had a boarding pass. I repeated I had just come in from Lubbock and that they had taken the boarding pass in Lubbock. She looked incredulous. I said “Flight 7.” After she did something on her computer, she told me to talk to the agents at Gate 8.

I was beginning to worry about my first (11 a.m.) appointment at MD Anderson as I stood in line at Gate 8. There I received a boarding pass – position B51 – for Flight 9, back at Gate 6. Now it was 8:30 a.m. As I took a seat at Gate 6, I soon realized there was no plane at the gate. The plane arrived at 8:45, and I thought, “now we’ll see if Southwest can turn this thing around in 10 minutes.  They did.

Plane arrived in Houston right at 10. At 10:08 I was putting my bags in a taxi. At 10:11 we were leaving the airport. I told my driver the dilemma. He said he could have us at the Medial Center at 10:35. He beat that by 2 minutes; I dumped my bags at the hotel and got to my first appointment at 11 a.m.  It’s now 7:39 and I am waiting for my last procedure.