When an ice storm descended on Dallas, it caused power outages, mangled trees, and treacherous roads. Life stood still, a work of dichotomous beauty. The oak in my front yard looked surreal, a psychedelic tree of Lucy-in-the-sky diamonds thanks to the sun and ice. The hackberry from my neighbor’s yard snapped and bowed an above ground cable line into submission to the weather. I dressed for work in stuttering power, raising the garage door when it was on and lighting candles to drink my morning coffee when it flickered off. Aside from the usual inconveniences, the ice gifted me with many things.
I learned I am resourceful and sentient in a bad situation. I got stuck in an elevator for the first time. It was an outdoor elevator in the parking garage where I work. At least there was a window. But that didn’t diminish my fear of acute claustrophobia and the ultimate humiliation of wetting my pants thanks to the above-mentioned coffee I drank. I could have waved for help. However, being compulsively early to work, I didn’t see too many colleagues at 5:45 a.m. I rarely use my cell phone, much less keep it charged. This day I planned. The phone displayed all its bars. I called security and then my supervisor.
“It’s me. Cindi. I’m here, but I’m stuck in the elevator.”
“I thought sure you were calling in. You’d be the second call in.”
I usually call when I leave home and warn if I don’t show up, I’ve been in an accident.
My supervisor told me to call back if security didn’t show up in five minutes and “they,” meaning “she,” and another nurse, would rescue me. Security arrived in a timely fashion and literally pried the doors open with two sets of hands. The cold already numbed my hands and I realized I didn’t own a warm enough coat for such weather. But I hadn’t panicked or raged or cursed. The mishap gave me a story to tell and a reason to laugh at myself. Something I am not wont to do.
I also appreciated, for the first time, the blessing of technology. I have blogged about hating cell phones. No more. They have a time and a purpose. If not for my eighty dollar a year track phone, I certainly would have challenged both bladder and circulation to my fingers waiting for someone to come along, look up, and see me blowing the smoke of frozen breath in the elevator. I am even thinking of upgrading to a device on which I can text. God forbid.
Ironically the snow and ice that blanketed the city in beauty and danger evoked wonderful memories of my father. If living needs a definition, it is he who worked and played and felt more than any man I know. One Christmas dad had tickets to a football game: the then St. Louis Cardinals v. the Pittsburgh Steelers. He couldn’t get anyone to go with him as cold and snow were predicted. Dad bargained. If I went with him to the game, we would go buy the Christmas tree afterwards. Of course I agreed. I was a little girl who knew nothing about football, who couldn’t have cared less, but I had my mental eye on picking a tree out with my dad.
Imagine decades ago. Football played on a grassy field beneath a gray sky of bundled clouds waiting to dump snow on the men chasing a pigskin ball. A tow-headed girl holding the rough, mitt-sized hand extended from her father’s leather coat. The air so cold it blew up into my coat and down my leggings. I sat in the shelter of dad’s arm. He opened his coat and squeezed me next to him. Heavy, wet flakes plopped on the leather, melted, and traced paths down his arms. I watched the snow, wiggled because the cold made me have to pee, and I watched dad watch the men on the field. He asked me if any of the players stood out? A silly question for a little girl whose main concern was the location of the nearest bathroom. But I pointed at one man in an opponent’s uniform. My choice pleased dad. “Big Daddy” Lipscomb. Dad identified the player and mumbled something about the man having trouble with drugs. I had no idea what he meant.
True to his word, we bought the tree after the game.
I also remembered dad, the Good Samaritan. One December night returning from dinner at a friend’s house, we got stuck on a steep snowy hill. Although we had chains on the tires that chinked the ice to announce our progress, they did not provide enough traction to get us up and over the hill. Several cars stopped in a line down the hill. Other cars began to line up behind us. Dad kept the car running. The headlights allowed us to watch him disappear into a swirl of flakes. I only knew he was helping, but didn’t realize until mom rolled the window down and dad stuck a flushed, sweaty face in. “Just a few more. Then we’ll go.”
As with any memory, time distorts truth and intensity. But that night, I sensed a giving greatness in the man who was my father. I knew why my mother loved him. In a snowstorm, I felt safe and secure in the penumbra of my parents.
So on a day when it is almost seventy degrees, I thank the storm. I forsook anxiety and anger and chose rational thinking to problem solve. Verizon upgraded our battery box which blew in the cold. Time Warner upgraded our HDTV when the “cable guy” rehung the drooping cable. And I refreshed memories of my family, my father that affirm the richness of what I usually see as a most ordinary life.
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