A Flood of Memories
North Carolina was among the 35 states hit by an ice storm one week and a snow storm the next. What I found most endearing was just how incredibly well prepared all of us Helene survivors were this time around. We already knew who had the generators. We advised the neighbors to get their bed-bound mother into a medical facility before the ice. Yancey County opened heat shelters in advance of the storm so that families living in trailers using electric heaters could get out and stay warm, ahead of any power outages and subzero temps. And while most of us parents were going bonkerballs after two weeks without a full day of school, at least we got some incredible memories out of it all. River, his besties, and his middle-aged parents braved zero degrees and sledded for hours, then warmed up with a campfire and s’mores.
I even had an utterly surreal moment when I put on my Smith ski goggles for the first time in thirty years and the orange-tinted lenses transported me in an instant back to my 16-year-old self standing in line for the snowboard lift at Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood. The flood of memories was so powerful and extended that I stood still in the middle of the kitchen, physically frozen. “Whoa, whoa! Whoa!” I kept saying, as Brad and River worried something had gone horribly wrong with some part of my body or mind. But I was perfectly fine—I could smell the diesel exhaust from the ski buses, feel the soggy carpet in the equipment rental room, feel the bruises on my hips from falling, smell the pages of cheap paperback books from English class as I read and did my homework on the lift between runs.
Between storms, enough ice melted that I made a point to go on long walks while it was easier to move around physically. It’s been so long since Helene, but it also feels like it just happened. The photo of the river and downed trees in the collage is just our new “normal” but when I walk past it, it still blows my mind just how absolutely devastating it all looks. And the newly created trailer park just half a mile from our house that has about half a dozen residents following Helene, looked mighty frigid throughout both storms, despite the county-sponsored trailer-winterization program.
What can I say? We’re entering a new lunar year, the year of the fire horse, and these final days of the year of the wood horse are galloping with contradictions and risks and unknowns. All the while, the sun rises and sets, rises and sets. I can see the ridgeline of the Black Mountains from my porch; see the snaking lines of snow where a dozen landslides scar the slopes, post-Helene. The white pine trees in our yard sway and snap. We borrow a chainsaw again and roll the trunks out of the way. The neighbor’s dog chases our cat. My son goes to school and comes home; my husband drives to work and comes back. I cook and cook and cook and clean and clean and clean.
In between it all there’s an open notebook and a pen, or a blinking cursor. My novel is now fully reverse outlined (see scene cards shown in photo collage, above) and I’m picking my way through my second draft literally one line at a time. I’m on page twenty-four. Last week I was on page twenty-one. It doesn’t matter. When I’m in it, there is no time or word count. Just the slow and steady devotion of artistic practice, one stroke at a time.
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