It Takes a Village (to get me through a rural Xmas storm)

From the start my planning didn’t go smoothly. I fell off the list of my dear friends Richard and Todd’s annual Christmas Eve party in the rural Vermont community that has been the home of my heart since 1968, but got myself reinstated. They even invited me to stay at their place after the party, which I have done several times in the past. Then I received the offer of a cottage in the neighborhood where I could stay for 4 or 5 days to write and so I cancelled my overnight at R&T’s. Next I get a call that there are problems with the cottage so I ask R&T if there is still room at the inn, and luckily there is. So a simple overnight it will be.

The day before I leave for the party, Nan and Jeremy invite me to join them for Christmas dinner and to stay at their place that night, extending my trip by 24 hours. I’m thrilled to be included and for the chance to spend time with them together. Each is a friend of mine, but since they got together I haven’t hung out with them. Yes, yes, I will.

In my defense before we go further, I will remind you that I have many skills. I write, I dance, I cook tuna stroganoff (well, I used to), I love my friends intensely. I have lived in five different major urban cities in three countries, and visited many more. You can drop me in Riga, Latvia or Nairobi, Kenya or Istanbul, Turkey, and I find my way around. I have located the Dollar Store (or currency equivalent) in probably a dozen or so countries. But put me in the countryside and I am simply no good to anyone until I’m sitting in a living room. I don’t have confidence. I don’t have the goods. I’d be hard-pressed to keep a fire going; to relax when a kerosene lamp was the only illumination; to chase out a skunk that has come into an enclosed porch; to grow food; to tramp through brambles; or to identify an edible mushroom. But slip me into a charity shop or a bookstore and I’m good to go.

On the day of Christmas Eve, on the way up the Hill where all my friends live about 2 ½ hours from my Boston apartment, I pass by N&J’s place and they are outside. Nan tells me a big snowstorm is coming. I don’t even have a scraper for my car. After all, at home I park in a basement garage in the building where I rent. I never deal in snow except to get out of my car and into wherever I’m going. Nan lends me her scraper and tells me that while the road has been sanded from the last storms, the driveways are all icy.

My first stop, always, is to see Verandah. I’m glad to overlap with a visit from her daughter Emily, who knows me as Uncle Katz, as do several of the community’s younger generation. V has a long icy driveway, so I park at the street and gingerly make my way inside. I am wearing the hiking shoes I bought for my visits to Vermont, but realize that while they’re good for the spring, they won’t work in the winter. V lends me a pair of magic metal grippers that go over the soles and for the rest of the time, I am safe walking.

At the marvelous party, full of scores of old friends and strangers, and tables laden with culinary riches, I accidentally get a bit too wrecked about halfway through the evening. Valerie informs me that if I mean to move to N&J’s, I ought to do it this night because my car will be buried by the storm. I’m too discombobulated to deal with the ramifications, but before we all go to bed, I get permission from R&T to stay the next night with them. This turns out to be a godsend.

In the morning, the Hill where all my peeps live in different homes is covered with deep snow and there is a power outage. This is not unusual during Vermont storms, but this time it will be out for more than 12 hours. R&T’s incredible generator kicks in and runs their house until the juice returns. Other friends make do with wood stoves and kerosene lamps. Of all the houses where I stay (and I have several generous friends on the Hill), this is the place to be on such a day for a city girl with no boots and cotton slacks. I am warm, fed, and showered. My computer and phone charger work, I can make tea, and my friends pamper me.

The road gets plowed and sanded on Christmas day, but each homeowner has to hire someone to plow their own driveways. My hero Todd goes out to free my car once their driveway is cleared and I watch through the window as he guns it and my wheels spin and the car goes nowhere – over and over and over. After a long time, he hikes back down the driveway, lashed by freezing blowing snow, to fetch a bag of sand and a shovel, and returns to my car. Still the wheels are spinning. There is a break for a minute or two, and suddenly the car shoots backwards and is free. Turns out that no one in the countryside uses a hand-brake and I neglected to tell him mine was on. I learn later from Nan that hand-brakes are forbidden in Vermont because they rust out from the salt and cause problems. How little I know about surviving out here.

I’ve received conflicting advice about going out to the restaurant which is on the other side of a formidable mountain. Some say that I’ll be too anxious on the ride, which may well be fraught in the stormy conditions. Others are themselves setting out down the Hill for Christmas dinners in other places and see no problem. All day I observe that when the wind blows, it’s like being in a snow globe: there is an immediate white-out and when it settles, the landscape has drifted and changed. I will be peeing in my pants with terror when that happens on the mountain road, even though N&J have a big truck with four-wheel-drive, studded tires, and lots of experience navigating storms. In the end, I convince Nan that I will be a bit of a bummer, being all white-knuckled in the truck, and we agree to make plans for another time. I stay home at R&T’s writing and reading. The next day when I run into Jeremy on my way down the Hill, he says that the winds were, in fact, fierce and the drifts many. I understand that I made the right decision for everyone concerned.

On Boxing Day I get up and, thanks to the shoe grippers from Verandah, I am able to easily take my goods up the driveway to my car in two trips. This includes a big bag of leftovers that Richard packed for me – from meatballs to cookies. I worry about my car slipping and sliding, but the road down the Hill is nicely sanded. When a huge fat sanding truck comes up as I’m descending, I back up to a driveway and it gets by somehow, and I continue safely home, knowing that it takes a village to get me through a rural storm and that I’m the luckiest girl ever to have just such a village in my life.

Comments

[Doug Ridley]

Wonderfully written, as always. Polymath that you are, it is good to know that there is at least one area of your life in which you strive, at best, for competence. Memory still burns bright of the time you pulled a can of air freshener from your voluminous bag while on a walk through the Oxfordshire countryside because a cow had the temerity to poop within ten feet of you...

[Sue Katz]

You're making that up, Doug!!

[Kay Bourne]

A winter memory wonderfully captured which I will ponder as I content myself by gazing out my windows.

Love,
Kay Bourne

[Marj]

Priceless. I thought *I* was bad!

[Verandah Porche]

Katzela,

I notice you did not mention the schoolhouse critters.

Enjoy your spikes. Were you not called Spike in London.

I am sure you can find your footing in the sticks, if you wish. xoxox

[Robin]

Had lots of fun with you at T & R's. Glad you made it through. ❤️

[Tc]

Katz you are a gem! From a girl with strong buffalo, NY roots...I can relate to all that mother nature’s winter wind blows...and then some...basically it is about hunkering down with those comforts near and dear....and then being able to talk survival tales....hugs to ya for an early spring....and survival...xoxox

[Charles Light]

Nice story. Sorry we missed you, but we spent xmas up in Portland with Travis and Hope and our two little grandsons, Elias and Damon.