REINFORCEMENTS

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
 
I was sorry when 2011 came to an end, for it meant my 1994 calendar of Indiana nature pictures in the basement would no longer be accurate. The whole of 2011, whenever I walked by it, I knew that the 1994 days coincided with the 2011 days. A Saturday was a Saturday in either year.
 
Then, oh joy, I discovered that my 1995 vintage baseball calendar’s days are the same as 2012 days. I can still know what day it is, even in the basement. [Spending money for a current calendar for the basement is not an option.] 
 
I keep a lot of old calendars on the walls, even the ones that don’t fit the current year. When a new month starts, I turn to it on all those calendars. The pictures don’t go out of date.
 
As I turned the Indiana nature calendar from Jan. to Feb, the calendar fell off the wall. The hole on the Feb page had torn out. No problem. I had the solution in the second drawer of my desk. The solution has been there in a little box for over 50 years now. The solution is called, simply, “Reinforcements.”
 
Ace is the brand. The box says there were 100 # 2 size gummed reinforcements in it originally. There is a picture on the back that shows a 3 ring notebook with pages tearing out around the rings, with a little note that “A Reinforcement Will Prevent This,” and arrows pointing at the tears.
 
They don’t work as well as when they were new. They are yellowing and curling up. The gum doesn’t stick very well.
 
As the calendar pages turn, there are tears in my life. Sometimes I don’t even know what day it is. Through the years, whenever one of the pages in my life story began to tear, there was a reinforcement to paste it back into place.
 
Fortunately I had a box of 100 reinforcements. Well, there aren’t that many now. Some have been used up through the years. Some of them don’t stick to their task as well as they used to. They’re curling up and discolored.
 
I keep a lot of reinforcements in the little box of my memories. They’re called friends. I keep them around because the pictures don’t go out of date.
 
JRMcF
 
The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!
 
You are always welcome to Forward or Repost or Reprint. It’s okay to acknowledge the source, unless it embarrasses you too much. It is okay to refer the link to older folks you know or to print it in a church newsletter or bulletin.
 
{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/