Nineteen Fifty Four Revisited
Seventy-two years ago, on January 29, 1954, the weather, according to my mother, was similar to what it was like today. My father was driving her to the hospital because, apparently, my brother Carl was ready to join the party.
In addition to the bad weather, however, the other problem was the car, which was having issues.
My father was afraid that if he had to stop, he would risk the car stalling, and my mother would not make it to the hospital in time. At one point on the trip from Oceanport to Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, he had to evade a train blocking a crossing, keeping the car moving and finally delivering my mother to the hospital. Shortly after dropping her off at the hospital, the customary practice at the time, the car broke down.
While my father worked on getting the broken car back home to Oceanport, my brother Carl was born.
Now, seventy-two years later, this week’s bad weather is the reason I am spending my brother’s birthday with my mother.
I have been in this situation before.
Like in September of 2023, when I had to contemplate letting my then 89-year-old mother navigate her way alone through Tropical Storm Ophelia.
Of course, I couldn’t.
This week, with record low temperatures, snow, sleet, and freezing rain blanketing the Washington, DC, metro area and the Eastern Shore, I was facing the same guilt.
After days of many phone calls and many requests for her not to leave the house, I finally got some information out of her on a Wednesday evening phone call that seemed to indicate maybe the situation in Woolford was worse than I had previously thought. I decided to go out the next morning.
I arrived this morning to find branches down and everything covered with ice. Ice thick enough to support the weight of my truck as I entered the driveway.
This was a weird storm, and once again a weather event I had never experienced before.
Like my first ice storm when I was sixteen; the Derecho in the summer of 2012; the “Sting Jet” we experienced with Tropical Storm Isaias in August of 2020; this was a new one for me.
Never before had I ever seen accumulating snow change to hours of accumulating sleet which is what we experienced in Northern Virginia, different than the freezing rain event here on the Eastern Shore.
Accumulating sleet is different than snow, it’s slippy, hard to shovel, it’s heavy, and when it freezes, it is almost impossible to remove.
So, Monday, after chopping a few inches at a time with my long-handled ice scraper and removing the chunks with my snow shovel, I managed to clear my driveway and my sidewalks.
On Tuesday however, the snowplow decided to make another helpful pass on my side of road blocking my driveway again, only this time with literal boulders of frozen sleet and snow. The normal implements of snow removal were no match for what was blocking my driveway. So back in the garage I went to get my axe and proceeded to chop the ice boulders up into quarters and eighths so I could pick them up and move them out of the way.
With everything in Herndon seemingly under control, it made the decision to shift the focus to my mother’s ice storm easier. The timing couldn’t have been better. Sharing my brother’s birthday with my mom was nice. And she was quick to share stories.
On a quick trip to the post office on Monday afternoon, I saw a woman attempting to clear her driveway using a dustpan. Yup, nothing but a dustpan.
I guess things could be worse; I should quit my complaining.
I often hear people say, “I can’t wait for it to snow so I can just sit in the house and watch the snow fall and not worry about going anywhere.”
That works, I guess, until you have to go somewhere.
Which is most of us most of the time.
Because just like my father trying to get my mother to the hospital and needing to keep moving or risk having a baby in the car, we feel like we need to keep moving, keep doing, or face some consequences.
Someday maybe.
Someday, maybe we won’t feel the need always to have somewhere to be, always to have something to do.
A day when we can clear our driveways with dustpans and not axes.
And if we feel the need to go somewhere, how about we get there by revisiting stories.
Because stories travel well, they keep us moving.
