Sunny Pathway

Friday, March 13, 2009

A Special Blizzard Memory

A meteorologist from CBS visited Fargo this week to experience our blizzard. He was impressed and he called it a spring blizzard, but I’m not sure it qualifies. This is early March! We live where winter lingers.

I enjoy a good blizzard. They carry good memories.

My favorite revolves around a special time with my father on Easter Monday, the day after Easter Sunday of course. A day of school vacation.

Dad was a pastor. For reasons unknown to me, he traveled quite often to the headquarters of our denomination in Minneapolis—a two hour drive from our home.

After arriving home late from an extended family gathering on Easter Sunday, Dad said, “Who’d like to go to with me to Minneapolis tomorrow?”

When I think about it now, I suspect he was tired and wanted someone to help him stay awake. As a pastor he’d just completed a busy Holy Week followed by extra services that morning.

But at that age I didn't think of my dad and tired in the same sentence. What I did think was that one of my brothers was going to have a fun trip with him. Before they could say a word, I yelled, “I want to go.”

Everyone laughed, but go I did. I think I was in fourth grade.

We were up by 6:00 and on the road shortly after 7:00 on a gorgeous spring morning. The snow had almost all melted. Grass was greening and trees were budding, the sun was shining, birds were singing, and I had a whole day ahead with my father.

During his meeting I read from a library book, never a hardship. Then he took me downtown to Dayton’s (before the existence of even one mall) where he found a department specializing in clothing my size. I only wish I still had the yellow sundress with stars arranged in a Big Dipper motif that he bought for me that day. And as if that wasn’t enough, we ate in the lunchroom on the top floor with huge windows overlooking downtown. I noticed the sky had turned gray, but only because I missed the sun.

On the way home he stopped at a friend’s. Arnie was a fishing buddy and a confidant. I finished my book while Hazel prepared a light supper of herring, cheeses, and her homemade bread. When we left, it had started to snow.

Weather forecasts then were not what they are today. Dad had no idea a blizzard was in the works. It wasn’t cold, and the snowflakes were huge lovely affairs. Very soon they whipped across the windshield and swirled along the sides. Within a short time, we couldn’t see the road. A total whiteout.

Dad inched forward, occasionally felt the edge of the road and steered ever-so-carefully back toward the center. And then we went in the ditch.

If he was concerned, I didn’t catch on. After all, I knew my dad could handle anything, and he knew just what to do. He unlatched the trunk to retrieve blankets and we settled in for the night.

But before we went to sleep, another car came inching along, almost bumping our rear end. They stopped, Dad let in cold air when he got out to talk to them.

Hearing them did stir a bit of concern in my little girl’s consciousness. They were local and knew where we were; Dad did not. With blankets and assorted other items I transferred to the other car while the men pushed our post-war Chevy further into the ditch. And we inched along again, this time toward shelter in a small hamlet less than half a mile away.

One business serviced the hamlet—a bar.

I’d never been in a bar.

Going into a bar, let alone spending a night there, would almost eclipsed all the other events of this huge day.

But everything about it disappointed. People we knew milled about waiting to use the one phone so they could tell family where they were. One couple had already talked to their son-in-law who drove a jeep. Before Dad made his call, the son-in-law came, telling us we were in center of the storm—that snow was falling only lightly just a short distance away.

So Dad and I joined the other couple for another scary ride. The son-in-law’s account didn’t quite match reality.

After midnight Dad and I trudged through deep snow from the street to the house where Mom waited. It was an anticlimatic end to a perfect day.

Well, I grew up, married Ken, and we moved south for a few years before returning north and settling in North Dakota.

Several years later, Dad died a slow, painful death from prostate cancer. On weekend visits about midway through his struggle, I would sit up with him during the long nights. Once, during the total silence of the early morning hours, I reminded him of the Easter Monday blizzard and all the events leading up to our trip home.

“Did it all happen on one day?” he whispered. He remembered each event separately—but couldn’t quite put them together.

Was I mistaken, an adult who combined her little-girl memories into one huge collage?

It doesn't matter. It was a wonderful spring blizzard. And my daddy made me feel special.

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