Blizzard of 93
I was six months pregnant on March 12, 1993, the day it began to snow in Alabama. The Great Blizzard of 1993, as it is now archived, dumped two to three inches of white fluff per hour on the cozy upstate cottage that I shared with my husband and our one-year-old son. By mid-afternoon the next day, the field behind our house was covered with three feet of snow.
It was historic, that frosty, beautiful blanket of white. The South, you must understand, was ill prepared for The Great Blizzard of 1993. The State did not own a single snow plow and only maintained a perfunctory inventory of salt. There existed no means by which to clear the sidewalks, the driveways, the roads, as hardware stores in Alabama generally do not carry snow shovels. Of course, the temperature dropped with the cessation of snowfall, so the white stuff stayed on the ground for nearly a week. During that time, there was no traffic on the roads at all – why even the rednecks hesitated to take their four-wheel drive mud trucks into the blind white wonder.
As the week progressed, so did the contents of our refrigerator. Our son ran out of baby food, and my husband was out of beer.
While I was six months pregnant, I was not inexperienced in the glory of the blizzard. Before I moved South and met the man of my dreams in Alabama, I co-owned a cross country ski sales and rental business in northern Illinois/southern Wisconsin. I taught school children to skinny ski and even hosted an unofficial Olympic team training weekend at my rental facility adjacent to a city park, where a track loop meticulously had been laid. I knew how to sail across the drifts of snow on the flats, telemark over the hillsides and hop up the inclines, marching through the snow on the long narrow skis of Scandinavian origin.
I did the only thing a six-months pregnant woman could do. I strapped my idle pair of cross-country skis onto my feet. That pair of skis had sat idle in my garage since I’d moved south several years before, and I was glad to feel the weight of them again. I threw a pack onto my back and charted a route to the Foodland grocery store two-and-a-half miles into town. With a shopping list and a checkbook in my jacket pocket, I set off into the wild white wonder, truly in my element.
My obstetrician strongly advised against my adventurous excursion, but I assured him I knew what I was doing. I would not fall. I would not go into early labor. I would not freeze to death. I would be fine, and the daughter I carried would have fun.
Oh, it was music, singing over the roads in a fast double-pole stride, carrying my baby girl. I felt I had returned to the Northern Woods as I skated on first one foot, then the other through the woods and over the highway into town. I cut across intersections where the stoplights eerily continued to switch from red to yellow to green without the prompting of traffic. Most of the storefronts were dark. The few merchants that were open greeted me at their doorways with wide smiles. I met not a single vehicle on my way to the neighborhood grocery in the center of town.
Only a few unoccupied trucks were parked in the lot, their engines running to keep the cabs warm for returning shoppers. At the grocer’s front door, I unsnapped my bindings and carried my skis inside, where I propped them against a wall near the manager’s office.
Nabbing one of the plentiful empty buggies, I steered it toward the dairy aisle. I managed to stuff my pack with a quart of milk, a six-pack of beer, a half case of assorted baby food jars, a loaf of bread, several cans of soup and two chocolate bars (both of them were for me – I figured I earned them). Then, I donned my skis and sang my way home across the snow.
I did not fall. I did not freeze to death. And I did not go into early labor.
It was one of the best days of my life.
My daughter was born on a hot, humid day in June. She’s got just a bit of an adventurous side, and she thinks snow is God’s most magical creation.
