Into The Blizzard

My mother is petrified of snow. Like an old lady, she gingerly picks her way across frozen patches of pavement, head bowed against occasional flurries.

It doesn’t snow much in England, at least not on the coast where sea salt strips the landscape of stray flakes before they have a chance to settle. You’d need a really strong extended blizzard to achieve anything like a winter wonderland. Still my mother steps cautiously, just in case.

Always, just in case.

It’s early morning and I’m ten and Barbara Walters is on the television. I see her mouth move but I don’t hear what she’s saying. I’m too excited. Outside there’s been a record snowstorm and everywhere is white and thick and quiet. Yesterday, my mother was crying, on her knees, in front of my father. There were telephone calls and closed doors and then my father was crying too. The snow fell, kept falling, piling ever higher during the night as I slept, half-scared, half-dreaming, listening for clues.

But today is white and thick and quiet and Barbara Walters' mouth is moving. I will build snowmen with my friends. I’ll skid down the hill on a cardboard sled and make angels with my arms outstretched. White and thick and quiet.

I see my father loading the car and my heart begins to pound. We have snow tyres for the first time ever instead of chains. Chains always break and we can’t go into the mountains. But now we have tyres. Snow and mountains and no school. I watch him load the car. There are suitcases, lots of suitcases. I heard them talking last week, my mother and father: a new home, a new baby. Can we move in the snow?

I watch my father load suitcases into the car.

Then we are driving, past the tall orange “W” of the Woodward’s building, down through Stanley Park, over the Lion’s Gate Bridge. I look up at my two lions. Snow spirals around their heads, manes dusted with ice sugar. We drive.

The airport is busy and warm, so soon after Christmas. There are signs everywhere, electric letters that say, “delayed”. For the first time I realise that my parents haven’t said a single word since yesterday, and I notice my mother’s eyes are red. My father looks ahead, presses on, pushing a cart with suitcases.

We stop. We are in an airport lounge. Grey seat, blue seat, grey seat, blue seat all along in rows beneath a sign for Detroit. My aunt lives in Detroit. My favourite aunt who makes my mother blush with her jokes and never pats me on the head like the other grown-ups do.

My father turns to my mother and she slaps a hand up, smacks him away. I have never heard her raise her voice, never seen her lose her temper, never known her to strike out. But she snaps at this movement. Turning to me she grabs my hand tight, too tight and starts to walk a little too fast under the sign that says Detroit.

“Keep walking, “ she says. “And don’t look back.”

We walk out into the blizzard, under the sign that says Detroit.

My mother is petrified of snow, although it doesn’t snow much in England, at least not on the coast.