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2-15-2007

We plowed through our first Nor’easter

Elizabeth Trever Buchinger

The day before Nor’easter 07 (cue dramatic Weather Channel-style music), Posey and I were on Main Street running errands. Posey is going through a serious charming phase right now. She has mastered the word "Hi," and she uses it liberally. Coming from her, it is not a single, bright syllable. It’s more of a song. It’s a little aria: HI-iiii-III-iii! She sang her greeting song to a woman reading Valentine’s cards in the drugstore. She sang it to a dog sitting in the backseat of a parked car. And when we stopped for lunch, she sang it to the woman sitting in the booth behind us. My girl is melting hearts and taking names.

And while she was busy holding Cute Court with the lady behind us, I was eavesdropping on the conversation between the restaurateurs and a delivery person. The man behind the counter asked the driver if he was ready for the storm. The driver shrugged his shoulders and said he guessed he was. He relayed a story about driving the part of his route that is more north and west of here, and how the drifts along the roadside were taller than his delivery truck. Everywhere Posey and I went, people were speculating about the storm or talking about preparations.

I listened eagerly, as this is my first Nor’easter. It’s Posey’s first, as well. She has been through at least one typhoon, but they don’t have nor’easters in southern China. Although I’ve never weathered a nor’easter, I have been through an ice storm. The winter when I was 9, my family lived in Virginia, and we were without power for a week. We cooked in our fireplace and the whole family slept in the living room, where it was warm. My dad let me help him fetch wood for the fire. I trundled along behind him to the corner of the lawn where the wood was neatly stacked. I would carry back one or two pieces of wood at best, and surely just slowed him down more than anything. My only other experience with fierce winter storm is viewing the Ang Lee-directed film "The Ice Storm," and I can tell you that didn’t look like any fun at all. However, I am from Florida; I know all about waiting for weather.

I know about gathering water and flashlights and the kind of high quality sugary and salty snacks that will carry a person through a tempest.

I know about turning on the TV and realizing - with a great sinking of spirit - that the Weather Channel’s storm stud Jim Cantore is just a few miles from your house.

I know about moving all the mattresses in the house to the hallway, as though it would be possible to close your eyes and rest when the wind is banging on all four walls like the biggest, baddest wolf.

I know what it is like to be a child, sleeping through a storm with the vague awareness that my mother was awake, reading a magazine by flashlight.

I know the gratitude of watching your kids sleep peacefully because they believe you are powerful and magical and always able to locate a lost shoe.

So settling into my Nor’easter 07 vigil was not an unfamiliar sensation, even though the precipitation was unpredictable to me.

We checked all our favorite forecast models. I tried to visualize a layer of 20 cold inches covering everything. I wondered if it would be loud. I wondered if there were preparations we should have made, but in our ignorance, overlooked. And then, somehow, I managed to fall asleep.

Maybe it was all those salty snacks.

Elizabeth Trever Buchinger is a freelance writer who was glad to see Jim Cantore wasn’t in Cooperstown. She can be reached at VillageWordsmith@hughes.net.