Everyone knows by now that a big snowstorm has crippled the Southern U.S. Now that the danger is mostly over, people are saying how poorly everyone with any authority handled the situation, ignoring the fact that no one, not even the weather bureau could predict the exact time or quantity of the storm to come. Everyone made their own choices that day. No one was certain which was the right one, not even the police who were expected to be everywhere simultaneously and are now being criticized for failing to do so even though it was not physically possible; not even the heads of schools; nor the mayors of cities, and certainly not we who felt, nearly to a man, that we would be cowardly not to get into our cars that morning and go to where we normally go. Despite the warnings, despite the knowledge that a storm was coming, very highly likely, very soon.
Not seeing a snowflake in sight, most chose to continue life as normal, which they regretted a few hours later when the snow and ice came swiftly, turning the streets into frigid parking lots, separating children from their parents. It was a sort of Pompeii scenario where people were caught in action and then unable to move, frozen in place for eternity, but most of us in the American South thankfully got up alive from our positions and eventually made it home, eventually were united. Thankfully, above the voices of spoiled brats who expect everything to be taken care of perfectly at all times and complain when mere human beings take charge, we also hear stories of courage and generosity. Those are the stories that will endure.
All of this reminds me of my own story in a long ago January when my grandmother died. We had no choice but to get into our car and venture into the storm because the family needed us in another state. I will never forget the huge, motionless trucks lying on their sides, as we moved perilously through an eerie and treacherous landscape, our hearts already breaking. Here is the excerpt from CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES of our journey through the snow that January:
Part of the selling point of moving over here <to Chattanooga from coastal North Carolina> was that I would get to see snow. I have seen snow only twice in my life—once the canal froze solid! I was told that it snows in Chattanooga a lot more often, but so far, not one single flake has appeared. This is very disappointing and I am wondering if perhaps I was given false advertising.
Christmas comes, and I am still hoping for snow. We open the rest of the presents that Aunt Garnet brought Thanksgiving. We get two long distance phone calls, which are very expensive. We can talk for only sixty seconds before the charge starts doubling and tripling and quadrupling itself. One of the calls is from Aunt Faith and the other is a big surprise because it's from Grandma. She was still learning how to use her phone when we left, and now she is calling long distance! The seconds fly by. We have hardly heard their voices before they are gone again, into the cold winter distance that separates the Green Swamp from Chattanooga.
Then on the twelfth of January, I see a few snowflakes before the sun goes down, but it is so cold that I don't stand around outside trying to call more flakes. In one hour, I can see through the window that the ground is completely covered and it is pouring down sleet with the snow. We are toasty inside the Duplex on Dupont because we have ceil heat. It drifts in gentle waves down from the ceiling all over the house. Always before, we had heaters you had to crowd around to get warm. We had a wood heater when I was little, and then oil. After we came to S. Saint Marks, there were heaters built right into the walls which was pretty nice, but this all-over heat is like a cozy blanket.
About 9:30, Daddy opens the kitchen door and says we have four inches of snow and there is no end in sight.
"Close the door, honey!" shrills Mother when a cold blast flies into the house, and Daddy is glad to oblige. "Brrrrrr!"
It's hard to settle down with so much excitement, but the house rocks gently with the wind, and the walls shift and the floors crackle with the cold outdoors, and it's like bedding down in a warm igloo.
The phone rings at about 1:30 in the morning, waking us all up. It rings and rings, and I can hear my parents stirring and mumbling, until Daddy pads down the hall in his bare feet to the phone.
"Honey, you better come to the phone," says Daddy to Mother.
I can hear Mother struggling with her bathrobe, and she says in a thin voice, "Hello?" And then, "Oh, my soul!"
Suddenly I'm on my feet beside them, not knowing how I got there, and Mother is sobbing. The last time I heard her cry like that was when she got the news that Jacky was killed in Viet Nam. The time before was when Grandma's old yellow cat, Goldie, killed the ten baby rabbits.
Daddy turns to me and says, "Your Grandma Denton is dead."
He has his hands full taking care of Mother who is sagging against him and still crying into the phone, so I creep back down the hall to my bed and sit there on top of the quilt that Grandma made, listening as Mother brokenly tells Daddy that Grandma had the flu, but she has always been healthy and nobody thought it was serious. She had been pretty sick with it, sure, but Aunt Faith was taking care of her and Grandpa was right there—but in the middle of the night she gasped for breath and just died.
Grandma's mother, my Great-Grandma Pearl, lived into her eighties, but Grandma was only just turned sixty-nine years old. She was planning to teach at least ten more years because she had promised God to devote her entire life to teaching. In those ten summertimes, her granddaughter in Tennessee is supposed to come stay with her and Grandpa in their cabin near the canal.
But summer is long gone and far away, and there are twelve inches of snow on the ground in Chattanooga. The ice and snow are still falling, as we throw clothes into suitcases and drive into the storm in search of North Carolina. Finally, after months of longing to go home, after months of dreaming of snow, I am getting both things at the same time. But the snow has become a blizzard, and home has lost its light.
Daddy manipulates our speed through his varying pressure on the gas pedal and avoids using the brakes, so we keep our traction on the snow-thickened highway while other drivers lose theirs. We pass cars that have braked too hard and skidded into snow banks, and we thread through the hulking shapes of tractor trailer rigs which are mostly lying on their sides.
Mother is sobbing about throwing away the last pie her mother will ever give her. She says she would have waited to move out of the Green Swamp if she'd have known that she would never see her mother again. And on and on, varying her weeping with attempts to rest. She has already cried up a migraine headache.
In the back seat, I am silent, chewing my bottom lip until its bleeds, but I cannot cry. Our car is a lone bubble of life, moving through a Salvador Dali painting that mirrors the unnatural landscape of my life.
