Drives in the Snow

 

I am about six or seven years old.   I am sitting in the back of my Dad’s dark blue sedan, with the light blue, velvety interior.    It is snowing outside.   I tilt my head back to look at the snow falling from the white sky..   It’s coming down pretty hard.   I can see individual flakes land on the glass and for a brief moment I see the miracle that they are.   I imagine that I am on a magic mountain top with fairies and gnomes.   The only sound in the world  is the windshield wipers swishing back and forth.   The world outside is quiet.   I feel so very safe.

 

 

I am seventeen years old.   I am a relatively new driver.   It’s a rainy/icy kind of snow coming down outside.   I am attempting to drive my friend home.   It’s not a long drive but on this night it is treacherous.  My parents had bought a fixer-upper house this year and bought the car I am driving for the sole purpose of bringing things to the dump.   During the week, it’s my car to drive to school, and to use when I go out at night..   It’s. a noisy, heap of metal that has no business being on the road.   The windshield wipers barely work and the defrost definitely does not work.   It is sleeting horizontally so the only way I can see is to open my window and poke my head out.   Visibility is terrible and the roads are windy.   I am literally guiding my way to my friend's house by keeping the headlights of the on-coming traffic to my left.  So far it has been working.   But suddenly I feel a bump underneath us.  A hefty bump.  I look at my friend, and stop the car.  We both jump out to see what I ran over.   My car is in someone’s front yard and inches from hitting a tree.   It turns out the car that was coming towards me had decided to park his car on the wrong side of the street.   In order to keep him to my left, as had been my guidance system,  I had driven over a curb and onto someone’s yard.     I think my friend decided to walk the rest way of the way home.  I don’t know how I got myself home but clearly I made it.

 

I am in my early thirties and I have to pick up my pre-schooler.   The snow has been coming down pretty hard but I have to pick her up.   My mother had been visitng the previous day and had used the girls' car seats but had put them back in my car before she left.    I put my toddler in her car seat and buckled her in.    I had only gotten about a half mile from the house when by car started to skid down an icy hill.   I lost total control of the car, and suddenly the front of the car went over a big rock at the front of someone’s property.   We were precariously perched on the rock with no way to get off without a tow truck.    I looked back at my toddler to make sure she was okay.  She was BUT it turns out her car seat was not attached to the car and had fallen forwards.  The back of the car seat was now held up by the passenger seat, suspending her mid-air   She was facing upside down and crying (but safely buckled).   Everything turned out ok.  A neighbor picked up my daughter from school and a tow truck came and got our car, but my mother and I would argue for years about whether it was her fault for not strapping the car seat back in, or my fault for not checking on it.   In the end, I can finally say it was my Mother’s fault because she in no longer here to defend herself.  I win Mom.

 

I am in my late thirties with my husband and our two children.    We had been at my parents’ house in Connecticut to celebrate my Dad’s birthday and were on our way home so we could watch the Superbowl.   It was already snowing when we left and as we slipped and slid down the half-mile hill from my parent’s house we knew that we wouldn’t be able to get back up it, even if we tried, so onward we went.   The roads were slippery but drivable.   We were on a lesser-used highway between Connecticut and Massachusetts when all of a sudden traffic came to a complete standstill.   We learned from the cars ahead of us that a tractor trailer had jack-knifed about a mile up the road.  Luckily, my parents had sent us off with plenty of leftovers so there was no worry about going hungry.   While we waited we drank the sodas they had given us and munched on the ham.   At some point a little voice said, “I have to pee.”   The snow was piling up outside and there were no woods to hide in nearby.   We weighed our options.    Eventually, I noticed a large tour bus idling next to us. “Hmmmm” I said, “I bet they have a bathroom on-board”.   I decided that there was no harm asking,  so I opened my door, and I don’t remember who came with me, but I knocked on the bus door and asked very nicely if it would be possible for us to use the bathroom.   Luckily, the kind bus driver was amenable.   The passengers were also full of smiles and pleasant greetings, and we were offered more food (which we politely declined).

When hours later the tractor trailer was finally cleared off the road we were sitting in almost a foot of snow.   It was tough driving for the next mile or so, until we were able to catch up to the plows, who we happily, and with empty bladders, followed all the way to Massachusetts.

 

I am in my fifties and am out doing errands when a terrible ice storm suddenly blows in.    It covers the roads in a sheet of ice in an instant. I only have to drive a couple miles home but the route is hilly and slick.   My snow tires and 4-wheel drive are rendered useless in this weather.   My car has become a giant, one-ton sled with wheels.    Every time I crest a hill I come to a complete stop as a line of angry, impatient drivers builds behind me.    I slowly, ever-so-gently push the accelerator and start the free slide down.  I pray that no cars come on the opposite side of the road for me to slide into.   I am rehearsing everything I ever learned about driving in the snow in my head, “turn into the swerve, pump the brakes, etc.”    By some miracle I make it home, I come in the door and announce to no one in particular that “I am never driving in the snow again!”    But, alas, I live in New England so…..

 

 

I am about six or seven years old.   I am sitting in the back of my Dad’s dark blue sedan, with the light blue velvety interior.    It is snowing outside.   I tilt my head back to look at the snow falling from the white sky..   It’s coming down pretty hard.   I can see individual flakes land on the glass and for a brief moment I see the miracle that they are.   I imagine that I am on a magic mountain top with fairies and gnomes.   The only sound in the world  is the windshield wipers swishing back and forth.   The world outside is so quiet.   I feel so very safe.