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9:54 p.m. - 2004-02-06
Time and Ice

It�s been sleeting for hours. The ice glaze is thick. I�m praying the sun comes out before nightfall just so I can enjoy my favorite weather phenomena. I know it�s dangerous, this ice, but it is so beautiful in the sun!

I have a memory of ice. It�s the lead-off memory from where my recollection begins its seamless flow to the present. The memories I have from before the ice are scattered and disjointed. Wee snippets of events without specific narrative connecting them. But the Day of the Ice I remember very well. I even know the date, New Year�s Day 1968.

My parents had gone out the night before, of course. It was the Swinging 60�s, baby, and parenthood didn�t slow people down a whit. Especially not my parents. Young, good looking, and plenty of money, they led the crowd. Though not fully connected to Time yet, I always knew when it was Thursday. That was the day my mother went to the salon for her tune-up. Had to get beautiful for the weekend.

Waiting around was kind of boring, but I mostly liked going to the salon. The ritual of beauty was fascinating. What glimpses I could get from my seat in the waiting area sparked my curiosity. Potions and pins. Splashy fancy sinks and vaguely scary equipment which swallowed heads. And that my normally uptight mother emerged smiling from that haze of cigarette smoke and aerosols was such a blessing I would have endured the salon every day. After the salon my mother often treated to ice-cream or even a ride on the mechanical pony outside the grocery next door. Activities she had no patience for on non-salon days.

New Year�s Eve 1967. One of the Pierson kids babysat. An enormous 2nd generation Scandinavian family who lived in an astonishingly small saltbox Cape Cod down the road from us, there was always a Pierson kid available to babysit. A succession of blonde teenagers sat on our couch, ate junk food, and talked on the phone every weekend night for most of my growing up years. That New Year�s Eve was Katja�s turn, I think. It was a good gig, my parents paid double on holidays. Katja earned her money that night. A monster storm ripped through while my parents were out. My sister and I howled and shivered, crunched into Katja on either side, all of us tucked up under a heavy blanket. Well used to crashing apocalyptic thunderstorms in the summer, we lived in the self-same Catskill Mountains Rip Van Winkle found those little men playing at nine-pins making a noise which echoed down the valleys like heavy canon. But it was winter! The storm was out of season and all the more furious for it. A horrible storm with slashing rain and fierce crashes of lightning.

The following morning my sister and I pawed through the goody bag of hats, tiaras, and noisemakers my parents brought home. It must have been a real swank party that year, the hats were heavy and thick with sparkles, and the headbands had real ostrich plumes. The noise makers were varied and more melodic than the usual squeak horns and rattles too. We dressed ourselves in party finery and talked about the scary storm the night before. So scary, even through it was bright day outside, when the phone rang we both jumped.

The persistent ring dragged my father out of bed and he answered with a grumpy, �Ja?� Excited gabble came from the other end of the handset and my father slowly straightened his slouch as he listened. �Yeah, okay. Thanks.� He hung up and told me to put my jacket on and help my sister, we were going for a ride. He disappeared to dress. I doffed my feather hat and scrambled for the coats on their hooks in the mudroom.

A ride with Da was big fun. He took us to job sites and let us get dirty. His truck was full of cool things like folding rulers and heavy wooden levels. Always good when I could get the bubble in the exact middle of the marker window. Sometimes he even let us �drive�. We�d sit on his lap and grip the steering wheel while he worked the pedals. Way better than running errands with Mom. Her orders were for us to be silent all the time and not to touch anything.

Outside, the deep blue sky and fluffy white clouds were a summer mirage, it was freezing! My da started the truck to let it warm up a bit. He got out to scrape the windows. My sister was singing and bouncing on the seat. I tuned her out. Once my window was clear I stared and stared. The trees around the house were bowed under a thick layer of ice. The pines were closed umbrellas. The elms and maples were frozen in grotesque positions. Like witches turned into trees. We backed out of the driveway, fallen branches and slabs of ice broke under the truck�s tires with sharp cracks like the reports of a .22 Daisy rifle.

Down our mountain we went and began to climb the next. The road between our house and town was a thrilling dipsy-doodle roller coaster ride. We didn�t go all the way into town though. At the top of the next rise my da pulled over and parked. Another Pierson, this one was the uncle of our babysitters, had a dairy farm there. For more than 25 years Farmer Lars had patiently cleared the hillcrest of trees and set the land to pasture. He grew feed corn too and those fields ringed the pastures and farm yard. The outer edges of Lars� corn fields were crowded thick with forest. I�ll bet from the air the cleared land of the Pierson Dairy on top of Hawthorne Hill must have looked like the tonsure on a monk�s head.

There were many other cars and trucks parked in the Pierson�s farm lot. There was a nasty smell too and plumes of steam were coming from a charred tumble of timbers some 20 yards off the road. With a shock I realized I was looking at what was left of Lars Pierson�s dairy barn. Lightning had struck it. No mere rod could have stopped that bolt, according to another neighbor who�d snagged my da before he could close the truck door, the barn went up in an instantaneous fireball. All the cows had been inside.

A few minutes later my da coaxed us out of the truck. I held his hand and my sister held mine as we worked our way over the half-frozen churned slop on the ground. Lars was near the stenchy steaming cellar hole talking to folks. My da went over to him. Lars� usually pink cheeked Scandhoovian face was seared red. His fine blonde hair was streaked with black soot. He smiled though when he saw my father. A grimace really, but his voice was hearty enough as he thanked us for coming to his New Year�s Barbeque.

I didn�t understand the bitter humor then, but got it some years later. To this day that�s the most gruesome, yet bravest joke I�ve ever heard.

We left soon after and continued toward town. Halfway down Hawthorne Hill there was another cleared section of land. Not the worker Lars was, that other farmer had left a good crop of hay grass standing. The sun broke from behind a cloud just then and turned that shabby meadow into a fairyland. Not beaten down like the trees, the ice had gently wrapped itself around each stalk in that hayfield. Every timothy stem and shaft of broom grass was encased in dazzling crystal. Crystal so fragile the lightest touch would shatter it. On every blade tip across the whole field a million million diamonds sparkled. The jewels left behind by the frost fairies who had spun this glittering enchantment.

I�d never seen anything so beautiful. Coming as it did hard on the heels of the scary mess back at Pierson�s something woke up inside me. Suddenly I could see. The world had gotten huge. A vast place of both shuddering horror and terrible beauty. It was there all the time, all around us. No telling what was next. I understood for the first time that when other people were out of my sight it didn�t mean they didn�t exist, off in some limbo waiting their turn to be �here� again on my plane with me. They went on and things happened to them. Things which might make them go away forever like Lars Pierson�s cows. And I wouldn�t know until it had already happened.

I sensed, but couldn�t articulate this larger scheme and the wildly capricious nature of it. In the space of minutes I�d seen disaster and heart stopping beauty. The agents of both had come from the same place too. The storm.

I joined Time that day. Mostly it slid past unremarked, but it was there and I was aware of it. Events came and went. Cows and people did too. Some of the things that happen are terrifying and awful. Some so wonderful it knocks you over. There was no hoarding good or avoiding bad. They would come as they will and in their own time. All I could do was be ready for anything.

The sun went to bed while I worked on this and tended my family. It never did show its face and turn my winter weary yard into a magical ice forest. It goes like that sometimes. Wishing can never make things happen, wishing is a sucker�s game. The real trick is to notice things when they do come along. Because they will. That�s the only certainty. ~LA

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