In Search of Holy Things

In the blank forepages of her hardbound family bible, Margaret Laubscher kept a record of catastrophe. There are none of the usual genealogical notations in that space—lists of births and christenings, of marriages and anniversaries—only a meticulous account of deaths, natural disasters, and unusual weather to visit the Sandhills of North Carolina. If a joyous occasion had ever happened in Margaret’s family, an outsider would never have known it judging by this diary alone. But perhaps she had never read beyond the bleakest messages of the Old Testament to find reason to shift her focus to hope. Perhaps she believed death and destruction were the only holy things.

A.G. Crissman buried March 9th 1951

Quimby Seawell shot himself April 1951

Harry Davis’s boy died 1951

Clyde Seawell’s little girl drowned July 1951

Her records begin here, her friend’s death the first domino to fall in those desperate months of 1951, taking her father, cousin, and niece with him in quick succession. On the very day Mr. Crissman was buried, Margaret’s first grandchild was born, but she makes no mention of it anywhere in her notes. I might have thought this was a superstitious impulse, as if she believed acknowledging joy would only be an invitation to pain. But this was pain she invited into her life, that grandchild the son of a son she had disowned years before, his family line—my family line—already written out of existence. She was not inclined toward forgiveness.

Colon E. Seawell fell dead Dec 3, 1980

3 people burned to death in house fire at Skyline 1980

Kim Laubscher’s trailer burned lost everything but clothes she had on—

Jan 8, 1981 at 9 o’clock. Southern Pines, NC

But then, the world around her was unforgiving, loss at every turn. She recorded these losses to the point of obsession, at the exclusion of all else but the snow.

Snow fell here December 3, 1971.

Calvin Crabtree buried that day.

Though it’s clear she could not bring herself to delight even in this small wondrous thing, magical as it must have been in her part of the Carolinas. Snow was merely a blanket for her dead neighbor’s grave.

Alvin R. Laubscher Jr died February 26, 1981

Wilda Mae Dickens gave his body to the research center Chapel Hill, NC

Snow, freezing rain temperature 32 at 10 o’clock

Or the backdrop for her eldest son’s death.

She was cold. Those who knew Margaret described her this way, as brooding and mercurial, a stark contrast to her mild-mannered husband Alvin, the Chief of Police and beloved servant to their town of Vass.

“Mr. Laubscher was just the sweetest soul,” a family friend gushed to me over the phone, “but his wife was a difficult woman.”

Cold killed all the apples and peaches 1982

Difficult. It has never been particularly hard for a woman to earn this badge, especially in the deep South of a bygone era, with its strict requirements for acceptable womanhood, but Margaret seemed to wear it proudly. I can’t say if sweetness was simply not a part of her nature or if she had reason to dismiss it. According to her journal, she was familiar enough with life’s bitter undertones. And she may have learned early that sweet things are the most likely to be consumed.

March 28, 1984 Tornadoes kill 60 people.

Red Springs was hit very hard.

Though everything will be eventually, subject to the whims of a vengeful God releasing tempests from His fingers. The descriptor difficult seems uncharitable to me. It’s clear enough in reading her notes that little of Margaret’s life was ever easy.

Is anyone’s?

The 52 American hostages released Jan 20, 1981, after 444 days in captivity in Iran

But maybe she tried to find hope after all, to pit her own hardships against those of others who suffered more deeply. On the corner of one page of Margaret’s Bible, she recorded this bit of news from the wider world, the end to the long ordeal for the American hostages in Iran. Such an odd thing to note, and the only entry underlined at that. I wonder if she had been studying the story of Moses, of the Israelites’ deliverance from bondage in Egypt. I wonder if she saw in this news hope for some kind of deliverance of her own.

Snowed March 1 & 2 Sat & Sun 1980

3 inches fell

ten inches fell

Margaret was clearly held captive by something, though by what, exactly, is unknown. At some point, her entries began to focus almost exclusively on the weather, page after page of temperature charts and measurements of snowfall.

Snow fell Dec. 27 Sat. 1980 3 inches fell

Friday, Jan 30, 1981 snow fell about 4 1/2 hrs

3 to 8 inches. Was 28 degrees all day

As a teenager, I spent time with the obituary page of the local paper every afternoon, averaging the age of death for the day. I had come to believe that if I failed to carry out this task, someone I loved would inevitably wind up on the obituary page as well, so I continued faithfully in my self-appointed work for years. Looking through the lens my own of obsessive nature, I have to wonder if Margaret’s records were meant to serve as a talisman of some sort, an offering to appease the angry god she had learned about in the pages to follow.

But tragedy had already visited her family, again and again, as it did mine, despite my rituals. What protection could either of us have hoped to invoke with these endless ruminations on death and the strangeness of the weather?

Dec 26 1983 temp got up to 22

Cold all day

Dec 27 very cold

Dec 28 very cold

Dec 29 very cold

Where we place our attention is not always a choice. I can feel the sharp edge of her anxieties in this incantation, as if she is summoning the cold to numb her, to harden whatever has grown soft. If only she had thought to turn her face to the sun during those cold days. If only the solution were so simple. I recognize so many pieces of myself in her journal that it unnerves me. I know almost nothing about my great-grandmother Margaret, but I know something of the darkness she found herself in. I know it all so intimately, her despair plucked from the sky and fixed into my own genes, passed down through the generations, the same hands putting pen to paper, the same breath fogging the windows as the snow falls and falls.