Silver Thread

It was January, 1998. I was home, visiting my parents. We got hit with a major ice storm. It was brutal, a real doozie. Everything was covered in nearly an inch of ice. Power lines were down. Trees snapped in half or were bent to the ground, where many of them stayed, even now, a testament to the long-lasting effect of the power of snow and frozen water.

I was stuck at home with my parents with no power, no heat, no phone, no nothing. At first, we didn’t know what was going on. Sometimes, when the power goes out, it comes back on after a short time. But one look outside in the early light of morning proved that this wasn’t a flash in the pan power outage. The world beyond the frost-coated window was a war-torn, ice-laden, post-apocalyptic wasteland.

We didn’t even attempt to go anywhere. We just hunkered down. My father fired up the generator so we could have coffee. We raided the fridge, eating stuff that would soon spoil. We bundled up and waited. Part of it was fun, an adventure, like camping out inside.

The day wore on. It got dark and cold again. We put sleeping bags and extra blankets on our beds. My father gave me a hat, a beanie I wore to bed. We all hoped the power would come back on the next day.

It didn’t. We went four more days without power. By that time, we’d heard by cell phone from a lot of people. Everyone we knew was safe, but in various stages of storm damage. My brother was shacked up with his fiance and surviving on Mrs. Dunster’s donuts. But the state was a war zone. The power company was working hard to restore it. Some people didn’t have electricity for weeks. We were lucky.

We didn’t feel lucky. My mom resorted to singing all day to keep herself sane. My father and I played endless games of cribbage. When one beat up too much on the other, we’d quit and play solitaire for a while. We lit candles and ate out of cans. We couldn’t shower. The bathroom was a bucket in the garage where my father had a wood stove going for warmth. Eventually, we found ourselves huddled around that stove, sitting amongst the tools and wood shavings of the workshop. When night fell again, we retreated to our chambers and prayed that the madness would end. The twitch in my eye kept me from further sleep.

It was bad, the stuff of horror movies. I couldn’t imagine if there was an alien threat or a body snatcher or a nuclear attack to go along with the ice and isolation. The Thing. Dreamcatcher. 12 Monkeys. I think that would have pushed me over the crumbling edge. I really would have lost my mind.