The Christmas that almost wasn't

The day before Christmas dawned bright and cheery, with barely a wisp of vapor in the sky. It was Saturday, and the fields surrounding our house were white with days-old snow. Temperatures were just low enough for the undisturbed snow to remain but high enough for the streets to be clear, or at least as clear as they ever get during a northern Pennsylvania winter. Everything pointed toward a beautiful Christmas Eve. We should’ve known better. I don’t remember how old I was that year, but my sister Becky was old enough to have a serious boyfriend and my brother Ron and his wife Patty were planning their first Christmas Eve in their new apartment. That means I was somewhere in my mid to upper teens, plenty old enough to be left to my own devices.

In the morning, my parents announced that they were going to do some last-minute shopping in a city about 30 minutes away. I could’ve joined them, but I opted instead to help Ron and Patty clean up the church. He’d been doing that for years for a little extra money, and I never minded helping him for free because I loved spending time with him and his wife.

By the time we finished at the church, clouds had begun to roll in. The temperatures felt cooler, but nothing beyond the norm. Ron and Patty took me home and offered to stick around a while when we realized that my parents were still gone and Becky was at her boyfriend’s house, but I could tell that they wanted to get back to their apartment and their Christmas Eve plans. I assured them I’d be OK and watched with only the slightest of misgivings as they backed down the driveway, waving, and drove away.

For a time, it was nice to be home alone on the most promising day of the year. Christmas itself qualifies as my favorite day, but Christmas Eve is the culmination of all the weeks or months of build-up. My family opened presents on Christmas morning. We still do. But the problem with unwrapping gifts, as I saw it, is that eventually there aren’t any more left under the tree. All of the holiday’s potential is expended, and there are 365 more days until the next set of possibilities bloom.

Left to myself on the final day before all those presents hatched, I lit the tree and set a stack of Christmas albums on the record player. I nosed around the kitchen for something to eat, figured no one would mind if I helped myself to a couple chocolates and made some hot tea. Then I perched atop a heating vent in the living room and wrapped myself in a blanket so I could read in the twinkling glow of the Christmas lights. Sitting on the register was one of my favorite things to do in the winter. I’d perch there with my tea and books, sometimes getting too hot. For the most part it evened out; when the furnace blower kicked on, the hot air inflated my blanket and warmed, and when the blower turned off, I’d savor the reservoir of heat it left behind.

At some point on this day, though, I realized that I was cold. I wish I could say I was puzzled by that, but our house had a troubled history with its furnace, and I knew at once what was

wrong. Several years earlier, a distant relative had approached my parents about drilling a gas well on our property. We were sitting on a potential gold mine! If he drilled one well and it worked out, then he’d drill a whole string of them on our land. My dad could quit his job. All our bills would be paid. And he knew the gas was there, just under our feet. It was all but guaranteed.

So my parents, seduced into thinking their dreams were about to come true, signed some paperwork and watched as this guy’s drilling company carved a dirt road through our hilly land and cleared out a bunch of oldgrowth trees, then erected drilling equipment and spiked a hole into the earth so the gas could come out. After a month or so of production, my parents got a check for about $2,000. We bought new clothes for Easter, switched our furnace over to natural gas … and never really got paid again. In fact, the well was so unproductive that the drillers tried several times to prime it with soap sticks. The good news, at least, was that we wouldn’t have to pay for heating fuel anymore. The bad news was that the well often played out, leaving us without any fuel at all.

After I checked the thermostat in the living room and set about turning on an electric space heater, I noticed that it was snowing, and not just a little bit. The snow we get in Oklahoma tends to be rather flimsy; they’re small flakes that seem to take forever to hit the ground. Lake effect snow like we got up there, in the snowiest city in the U.S., is like a barrage of tiny comets, each one big enough to trail more snow in its wake. You’re lucky if that stuff plunges straight to the ground; what’s worse is if the big snow comes with a matching big wind. That transforms a heavy snowfall into a blizzard.

I’d been caught out in blizzards before. Oklahoma’s tornadoes are horrible; there’s nothing I like less than the terrifying spring days here on the Plains, when we all play the cosmic lottery to see whose homes will be destroyed and which lives ended. But blizzards bring their own horrors, among them

whiteouts, which sound more innocuous than they are.

One time, years after this event, I drove a girlfriend to Cleveland, Ohio, to catch a plane. The forecasters had issued warnings, but I figured I could make it back home before the worst of the snow arrived. I was wrong, as usual, and found myself on an interstate highway in the teeth of a blizzard. At its best, driving through a blizzard is like flying the Millennium Falcon at hyperspeed. Your horizontal movement through the vertically falling snow makes each white spot appear to fly at you as if it’s attacking. You drive through endless columns of snow, trying to see through the spaces between flakes.

At worst, you encounter a whiteout. One moment you’re driving through that wintry starfield, and the next you are rendered blind by the swirling frenzy of the snow. For a moment you see only whiteness, like a giant blank canvas. Then you realize that you can see details, but not very far away. Maybe you can see the front of your car. Maybe you can look to the sides and see the dark silhouettes of empty trees. But for a time you are cocooned and alone in a soft white room, your vision narrowed as if you are locked away in a padded sanitarium, your eyes unfocused by drugs.

On that trip back from Cleveland, I entered a whiteout and emerged from it just in time to see a snowblind tractortrailer driver unknowingly force a red sports car off the road and into the steep median. It may have been a serious or fatal crash, but I couldn’t stop to help; you can’t in those situations. Go too slow and get rear-ended. Too fast and hit a car from behind.

Get out and you can be erased by an errant car. You just grip the wheel in two hands, try to see tracks in the snow ahead of you and continue charging through the growing pile of snow on the road.

On that day before Christmas, I flicked on the TV and heard a local meteorologist talking about a surprise blizzard. I stood by the front door and stared outside. I could see the maple trees in our yard, at least 30 feet away, but the snow was heavy and steady, and the house was growing colder. I called Becky, who said she was going to stay at her boyfriend’s place overnight. I called Ron, who’d made it home and didn’t want to head back out in it. We didn’t have cell phones. This was too long ago. My biggest fear was for my parents. They’d left early in the morning. It was now midafternoon, and they were still gone. That worry grew in me as the day passed. By the time I tried calling hospitals to see if they were injured, the circuits were jammed. So many people were trying to make calls that the system couldn’t handle it; all I got were recorded messages saying that my call couldn’t be completed.

By 4:30 p.m., the power went out. Now I had no heat from the natural gas furnace and none from the electric space heater. We had a kerosene heater in the living room, but it was dangerous to use in an enclosed space, and I didn’t want to risk it.

My imagination ran wild with nightmare scenarios. Dad lost control of the car on one of the snowy hills, and it toppled down into a valley. Dad drove too slowly and lost traction; they were stuck out in the blizzard, freezing. He and Mom were killed in a collision. They got hit by a snow plow. They drove onto

downed power lines. As my desperation grew, the trappings of Christmas seemed cruel. The unlit Christmas tree. The presents that would never be opened. The turkey thawing in the refrigerator. All the glittering ornaments and cheery decor mocked me.

Night fell. Our old house lacked sufficient insulation. Snow dropped. So did the temperature. I’d donned three layers of clothing. Finding that inadequate, I put on my winter coat and climbed into bed, huddling beneath a heavy quilt. I prayed. God, I prayed. It seemed as if I’d been praying all day, making promises I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep, asking favors I didn’t deserve, begging that Mom and Dad would make it home intact, although by now I didn’t believe that was a possibility.

I fell asleep. I don’t know how long I slept, but it was pitch dark when I heard the back door come crashing open. I ran toward the sound. My father, a tall man, stood hunched in the doorway, exhausted, the back side of his brown corduroy coat mounded with snow. His hat bore a similar burden. I didn’t know if he was injured (he wasn’t), but before I could ask that question I was struck by the more obvious one. “Where’s Mom?”

“She’s … she’s hurt,” he said, breathing heavily. His words sent a ripple across my ocean of worry. Hurt is bad. But it’s not dead. Or is it? Is he trying to break the news gently?

“Help me out of these clothes,” he said. I pulled off his heavy, wet coat and assisted him in stepping out of his boots. “It’ll be OK.”

Finally I got the story. They’d gone to the city to shop and enjoyed a rare meal out without any of their children. They lingered in the mall too long and emerged to find their car all but buried in snow. Their journey toward home was slow. Some of the country roads were all but impassable. The 30-minute trip turned to hours.

Finally, long after dark, they had made it almost to our street, only about a mile from our house. That’s when they drove into a whiteout. Dad tried to keep motoring through it to avoid getting stuck in the drifts, but he veered off the road and crashed into the deep ditch off the right side of the road.

My mother probably would’ve been fine, but the whole time I’d known her she was a bad passenger. If she looked up and saw a car braking, she’d try to grab the wheel. If Dad stepped too hard on his brakes, she’d brace for impact. That’s what she did this time. As the car shifted off the road, she grabbed a handle on the passenger side console and locked her arm. The crash impact sent a line of force through her tight arm and broke it.

Immediately, she jumped out of the car and thrust her arm into a snowbank. I don’t know why. I don’t know if she realized her arm was broken. But there she stayed while my father set out a reflective triangle and tried to get help. Eventually a snow plow came along. The driver radioed for an ambulance, and Mom returned to the city she’d left hours ago, this time to stay at the hospital. Dad made his way home on foot.

“So she won’t be home for Christmas?” I asked.

“No. She might not be home for a few days,” Dad said.

That was OK. In fact, everything was OK. The next morning, we managed to get to my eldest sister’s house for Christmas. Some of my other immediate family members made it there, too, but if we opened any gifts, I don’t remember it. Instead, we decided to postpone Christmas until Mom got home, which she did either the next day or the day after that. Her arm was in a cast, but she looked bright-eyed and happy, and I couldn’t have been any more pleased to see her.

The day before Christmas had been terrible, but— I know this sounds cheesy— it awakened in me a new sense of what the holiday is truly about. It’s not the baubles glistening on the Christmas tree or the presents wrapped with gaudy ribbons. It’s about celebrating those we care about while we’ve got them in our lives— something we should strive to do every day of the year. I got my Mom and Dad back. That was the greatest gift I could’ve received.

In some ways, the Christmas that almost wasn’t became the best Christmas of all.

This year, my wish is that you and the ones you love spend precious time together, talking, feasting, playing games and making memories that will last longer than any other gift. Savor each moment.

Happy holidays!

Oklahoma’s tornadoes are horrible; there’s nothing I like less than the terrifying spring days here on the Plains, when we all play the cosmic lottery to see whose homes will be destroyed and which lives ended.

But blizzards bring their own horrors...”