bare branches in winter are a form of writing*

I'm in my parents' house in Virginia, and the trees outside sound like they're performing some sort of wild, frenzied dance in the force of the wind. It's a bit hard for me to wrap my mind around being in Virginia. That it's Sunday. That it's evening. I just woke up an hour ago, actually, having driven the entire night from Western New York to avoid getting caught in a tremendous blizzard.

As of this time yesterday I was still thinking that I would sleep normally, get up early today, and drive carefully out of the city, heavy snow or not. But the forecast kept getting worse and worse, and by 9pm last night, my father was calling me with frantic ultimatums: "Either you leave now or you'll be stuck there until Tuesday morning." This situation, while feasible, would have been unacceptable for me personally, since I'm leaving for Denver on Wednesday to spend Christmas with April and her parents in Canada (more on this in another post--our travel plans are too confusing for me to explain at the moment). So, I packed and cleaned double-time, fielding bi-hourly phone calls from my father (to the point that I was yelling into the phone every time he called, "Every time you call me it slows me down! Stop calling. I'm working on it!").

At about 10:15pm, I estimated my time of departure at T-30 minutes (keeping a countdown in my head). This is when my mother calls: "We think you should just stay there. It's getting too dangerous." I'm mid zipping up my suitcase. I look out of the window. The snow is coming down fast, but the flakes are small, icy.

"Um. No. Now I'm leaving. I'm almost ready to go. I need to just go. It doesn't look so bad outside.” This isn’t a lie. Not really. My mother acquiesces hesitantly and I hang up.

I call my pet-sitter. Ask her if she can feed the cats in the morning. Of course she says “sure,” wishes me luck.

I pack the car frenetically in a sweater because I’m so over-heated from bustling around my house for two hours. By the time I’m done, I’m covered in ice and snow. I say goodbye to my cats and bird, all of whom look at me with deeply perplexed expressions. I know they’ll be in good hands while I’m gone, but the rushed departure has made these rather simple pet-goodbyes much harder.

Once I start driving, I realize that it’s going to be slow, but not awful, as long as I drive south as expediently as possible. My parents talk to me on my cell phone for a while, dispensing helpful advice and informing me of road conditions, much like Lara Croft’s team of computer experts in Tomb Raider.

We chat while I drive until I realize that, in my haste, I forgot to charge my cell phone. I’m at about 35%. Enough for emergencies, but not enough to talk all night. And I can’t find my car charger anywhere. I reluctantly hang up, promising to call again in two hours. I call April, tell her I’ve left and will call her when I get there.

The drive is challenging and slow, but I don’t really feel unsafe until I’m in the Pennsylvania hill country and I suddenly think that I’m alone, no other cars, driving in a combination of sleet and snow and freezing rain between huge rocky crags. What if something happened to my car, what if I end up in one of those made-for-tv disaster/horror films about highway murders or starving to death while trapped under ten feet of snow? Actually, starving to death doesn’t concern me as much because I packed enough food and water for ten car trips.

I eat snack food compulsively for the next few hours, driving slowly through snow which turns to freezing rain, stop to buy some Vault soda at a 24-hour supermarket at 3am and keep driving until I hit a rest area just south of Carlisle, PA. It’s only raining here, no more snow. It’s 6am and I’ve been driving for 7 hours, so I stop and sleep until 8:30am.

The worst part of the drive has to be the half an hour after waking up but before I get coffee. I can barely keep my eyes open and focused on the road.

Finally, I veer off the interstate for my favorite part of the drive: the last two hours through rural Virginia. It’s a gorgeous morning and the landscape is stunning, like waking up to find the whole world has changed while you were asleep. Everything is glistening. The trees are covered from trunk to branch in ice—coated and smooth and gleaming—and I imagine for a moment that I’m driving through a field of huge snowflakes, shimmering in the hazy sunlight.

April calls me, worried, because I’ve been on the road for twelve hours with no word. I assure her that I’m fine and, since I’m so close to home, we talk until the battery of my phone is almost dead.

When I get to my parents’ house at noon, my mother calls down from the balcony, “You’re here!” and comes out to help me unpack. My father, who’s been up all night monitoring my progress, comes outside in a shirt and no pants, hugs me and proclaims he’s going back to bed.

I drag my suitcase upstairs, change into pajamas, climb into my childhood loft and sleep for five hours. When I wake up, my parents have gone to their weekly Sunday afternoon tango lesson and I’m alone in the dim, empty house with the trees performing their harried wind-dance outside.

I make a few phone calls, check my email, still in a daze.

My parents come home. I greet my mother and look at her plaintively, bare feet on the hardwood, my sweatshirt hood pulled over my head.

“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” She says.

I nod, pleased she knows me so well. She laughs.

“We’re glad you’re here.”

Me too.

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* NOTE: The title line is from an incredibly germane Billy Collins poem, Winter Syntax.

Winter Syntax, by Billy Collins

A sentence starts out like a lone traveler
heading into a blizzard at midnight,
tilting into the wind, one arm shielding his face,
the tails of his thin coat flapping behind him.

There are easier ways of making sense,
the connoisseurship of gesture, for example.
You hold a girl's face in your hands like a vase.
You lift a gun from the glove compartment
and toss it out the window into the desert heat.
These cool moments are blazing with silence.

The full moon makes sense. When a cloud crosses it
it becomes as eloquent as a bicycle leaning
outside a drugstore or a dog who sleeps all afternoon
in a corner of the couch.

Bare branches in winter are a form of writing.
The unclothed body is autobiography.
Every lake is a vowel, every island a noun.

But the traveler persists in his misery,
struggling all night through the deepening snow,
leaving a faint alphabet of bootprints
on the white hills and the white floors of valleys,
a message for field mice and passing crows.

At dawn he will spot the vine of smoke
rising from your chimney, and when he stands
before you shivering, draped in sparkling frost,
a smile will appear in the beard of icicles,
and the man will express a complete thought.