I was standing at the grocery store checkout line when the small realisation hit me that I may be underestimating the coming blizzard. For weeks people here had spoken of little else, and from the looks of it New York was preparing for a siege. Behind me a mother of four was pushing a cart containing the entire contents of the canned food aisle, while her overweight husband was dragging two-dozen giant water bottles per hand. Each of the children had smaller shopping baskets laden with frozen pizzas, batteries, milk, and wine respectively, sporting tiny arctic jackets and sullen faces (except the one dragging the wine who looked rather pleased with himself).
My basket, by comparison, had six eggs and a box of matches, which is when I wondered if I should be doing more. All around us there were panicked shouts of “Get the poptarts! THE POPTARTS!” and “They are out of bread!” and “Do you think we have enough cheese, Janet?” (The answer to which is is always No, Janet: there is never enough cheese.) People were stocking up on everything they could lay their terrified hands on and vast parts of the usually overstuffed shelves of the supermarket now stood empty. It was like a zombie apocalypse. Some people were even wearing those flashlights that are attached to headbands, as if any minute the electricity were going to go off and we would all be plunged into arctic darkness forced to camp where we stood to avoid the, you know, zombies.
Idiots, I thought as I paid for my six eggs and tissue paper.
The media anywhere tends to be hyperbolic when it comes to impending natural phenomena (recall our floods), and the Americans, keen to be distracted from the Trump-Palin hellscape, were super happy to be able to talk about Hurricane Jonas. Listening to the news here it was easy to be convinced that you will end up like an extra in a big-budget, plot-derived hurricane movie in where your best bet for survival is hiding in the sewage pipes next to a turdy but sturdy drain grill. The forecasts were really not so bad if you listened to the facts: the government was telling people that the East coast would get two or three feet of snow at most. That didn’t stop everyone who was opining on the best way to survive in snow drifts and making lists of what to do, should your genitals freeze off suddenly and without warning. I don’t have TV here and so I gathered all this from brief dips into the internet, happily spending Friday night out at dinner in the city.
By the time I came home that night the first flakes of snow had blanketed the city; little children were building snowmen and young couple were making snow angels on the ground and I leaned against a wall and smiled that way you do when life looks like a painting. (It’s the first time it has snowed here, and I confess I have been looking forward to it)
When I looked out the window the following morning I couldn’t see the next building. Giant whorls of snow and ice were whizzing past the window, great gusts of winds were making strange noises in my cavernous building and several times the window panes rattled so loudly I thought they would crack. Right, I thought, six eggs probably won’t cut it. I’ve lived in Montreal where the snow drifts would sometimes reach as far as eight feet high, so a few gusts of ice weren’t going to keep me inside. I padded up and went outside where immediately I felt like I was in Doctor Zhivago (you may have noticed that rather than deal with life, I cast myself in an appropriate film roles through which to channel my complex and often unexpressed emotions. My therapist thinks this is transference but I think it’s just good manners).
I trudged back up to the grocery store and there were perhaps one or two other people walking in the middle of the road, since all car traffic had been banned. The roads were the only place you didn’t have to wade through two feet of ice and after what felt like an hour I finally reached my destination. I brought down my iced hood and squinted through the flying ice to see the words “Closed” on the grocery store doors. I stood there about a minute, holding back my tears as I thought ruefully of that fat family and the many, many frozen pizzas they still had. The wine store next door was open and I took it as a karmic sign that I should keep my head down and my hopes up, pop some Chianti and launch into Dr. Zhivago on the telly because why not.
It was a glorious night.
The storm howled on for the next twelve hours. By Sunday morning there was a note in my door explaining to me that the building’s door had several feet of snow in front of it so my apartment building was, in essence, trapped shut. We were told to stay indoors and share food if we could. The last time I went to my neighbours’ house, it ended with a police interview so I bolted my door shut and decided to wait it out, having extravagant egg-based meals to keep my spirits up.
By Monday morning residents were creeping out of their houses like woodland creatures, and slowly life commenced again, albeit slowly. My first act of freedom was to buy a lot of canned food, grateful to have survived Snowmaggedon 2016 but hopeful that the next time I have to, I’ll have more than just eggs to keep me company.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com
My basket, by comparison, had six eggs and a box of matches, which is when I wondered if I should be doing more. All around us there were panicked shouts of “Get the poptarts! THE POPTARTS!” and “They are out of bread!” and “Do you think we have enough cheese, Janet?” (The answer to which is is always No, Janet: there is never enough cheese.) People were stocking up on everything they could lay their terrified hands on and vast parts of the usually overstuffed shelves of the supermarket now stood empty. It was like a zombie apocalypse. Some people were even wearing those flashlights that are attached to headbands, as if any minute the electricity were going to go off and we would all be plunged into arctic darkness forced to camp where we stood to avoid the, you know, zombies.
Idiots, I thought as I paid for my six eggs and tissue paper.
The media anywhere tends to be hyperbolic when it comes to impending natural phenomena (recall our floods), and the Americans, keen to be distracted from the Trump-Palin hellscape, were super happy to be able to talk about Hurricane Jonas. Listening to the news here it was easy to be convinced that you will end up like an extra in a big-budget, plot-derived hurricane movie in where your best bet for survival is hiding in the sewage pipes next to a turdy but sturdy drain grill. The forecasts were really not so bad if you listened to the facts: the government was telling people that the East coast would get two or three feet of snow at most. That didn’t stop everyone who was opining on the best way to survive in snow drifts and making lists of what to do, should your genitals freeze off suddenly and without warning. I don’t have TV here and so I gathered all this from brief dips into the internet, happily spending Friday night out at dinner in the city.
By the time I came home that night the first flakes of snow had blanketed the city; little children were building snowmen and young couple were making snow angels on the ground and I leaned against a wall and smiled that way you do when life looks like a painting. (It’s the first time it has snowed here, and I confess I have been looking forward to it)
There was a note in my door explaining that the building's door had several feet of snow in front of it so we were trapped shut
When I looked out the window the following morning I couldn’t see the next building. Giant whorls of snow and ice were whizzing past the window, great gusts of winds were making strange noises in my cavernous building and several times the window panes rattled so loudly I thought they would crack. Right, I thought, six eggs probably won’t cut it. I’ve lived in Montreal where the snow drifts would sometimes reach as far as eight feet high, so a few gusts of ice weren’t going to keep me inside. I padded up and went outside where immediately I felt like I was in Doctor Zhivago (you may have noticed that rather than deal with life, I cast myself in an appropriate film roles through which to channel my complex and often unexpressed emotions. My therapist thinks this is transference but I think it’s just good manners).
I trudged back up to the grocery store and there were perhaps one or two other people walking in the middle of the road, since all car traffic had been banned. The roads were the only place you didn’t have to wade through two feet of ice and after what felt like an hour I finally reached my destination. I brought down my iced hood and squinted through the flying ice to see the words “Closed” on the grocery store doors. I stood there about a minute, holding back my tears as I thought ruefully of that fat family and the many, many frozen pizzas they still had. The wine store next door was open and I took it as a karmic sign that I should keep my head down and my hopes up, pop some Chianti and launch into Dr. Zhivago on the telly because why not.
It was a glorious night.
The storm howled on for the next twelve hours. By Sunday morning there was a note in my door explaining to me that the building’s door had several feet of snow in front of it so my apartment building was, in essence, trapped shut. We were told to stay indoors and share food if we could. The last time I went to my neighbours’ house, it ended with a police interview so I bolted my door shut and decided to wait it out, having extravagant egg-based meals to keep my spirits up.
By Monday morning residents were creeping out of their houses like woodland creatures, and slowly life commenced again, albeit slowly. My first act of freedom was to buy a lot of canned food, grateful to have survived Snowmaggedon 2016 but hopeful that the next time I have to, I’ll have more than just eggs to keep me company.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com