Last week at this time I left the house on some errand or another. It was early afternoon, which is typical for me. The sky a dusty light blue, the shade it turns as the sunlight shifts after the fall equinox - not that you could tell with the temperatures in the low nineties, even though the trees were showing off a few bright colors among the still-green leaves and branches made bare by the brisk winds of the previous week. The only way I could tell it was October was by checking a calendar.
Today I woke late, but my apartment was still dark; the kind of dark you get when the skies are clear and the only light is a full moon peaking in through the open window. At noon, I was navigating blindly (having not yet put in my contacts after a shower) by the weak light of the nightlights we have scattered around for my husband’s safety and the shine of his computer screen that the cats kindly turned on for me by playing with the mouse.
Oklahoma is under the earliest winter storm warning on record. Freezing rain is falling, and even the occasional thunderclap is heard in the deluge. I bundled up in my warm black wool winter coat, as the temperature is thirty-two, with a wind chill in the teens, slid my hands into my deer leather gloves with the silver fox lining, and, glad for my flannel-lined mask stepped out into the wind, rain, and ice to head to the store.
My car was covered in slush, which the windshield wipers could handle - hallelujah! - but as I drove the half a mile to the grocery store, the thin coating of water they left behind froze instantly. I hadn’t used by defroster for almost a year, so I couldn’t easily find the control. Luckily, I found a parking spot before it became a problem, or even before the car warmed up enough for it to have helped.
I quickly rushed in, feeling like some sort of mythic adventurer braving the elements, danced a shuffle across the carpets laid against the wet to dry my flower-embellished black sneakers, and grabbed the two items I came in for. The cash registers had lines several people deep, so I was prepared to wait. The lady ahead of me notice how little I had, and offered to let me go ahead, as did the small family before her. Okies might panic a bit at the first big winter storm, but no one can fault their manners.
I hurried back home, stopping in my parking spot long enough to take photos of the tree there, soaking my pants to the knees in the process. The poor trees are bent with the weight of the ice accumulating on their leaves, still green, or red, or tipped with color. Branches have already come down in my neighborhood. Friends have checked in reporting power outages in my city. This storm system is going to stay for about three days.
It’s a good day for making barley beef soup, don’t you think?
