Stepping on Snakes

Snake in the tobacco barn--can you see it on top of the window frame? The barn was torn down this year.


Derek needed to borrow a truck last night. His old faithful pickup was exhibiting signs of trouble and there was no time to fix it before he deployed for Iraq. So he came over with his girlfriend Tiffany to borrow a vehicle for the next couple days.

As we sat out on the deck, talking in the half-dark, Tiffany started out the walk to the driveway. We heard a sharp, sudden squeal and by the time we turned to look, she was about four feet in the air and moving fast.

"What's the matter?" Derek called.

"Snake!" was the reply. "I almost stepped on it!"

It turned out to be a young milk snake, brightly colored and moving faster than Tiffany had. It slid off into the woods and we went back to the deck.
We all now knew one fact for certain: white women can jump.

That incident led to "remember when" stories. One person's tale led to another person's memory, story to story for the rest of the evening. Remember when I stepped on that black snake in the chicken house? Remember when Aaron stepped on the copperhead in the tobacco patch when he was barefoot? Remember when the black snake got into the canning jars? Remember that black snake that went from bird house to bird house? Remember when I carried in the little green garter snake in the basket of cabbages from the garden? Remember that copperhead you pinned with the shovel and then couldn't move because he was still striking?

(Writing this I realize that we have a lot of snake stories in our family; fortunately only a few involve poisonous varieties.)

The stories helped us relax. Remembering funny times, strange times and family times reinforced yet again the bond of family and the roots of home. We shared the richness of our lives, acknowledging without so many words that these memories are important and define us as a family. Not our ancestry or bloodlines, but these shared stories and memories are what tie us irrversibly together in time.

Though there may be many snakes to avoid and a few stepped on in the year to come, they will become the stuff of future stories, adding to the security that we know who we are and where we come from. We're not scared of them or anything else that might come our way. We're ready for the next challenges, looking ahead to when we'll all be on the deck again and someone will say, "Remember the time Tiffany stepped on that snake?" And we will remember and laugh, and move on to the next story.