Ice Over

Change drives our lives forward; our emotions fuel the trip. 

BY JULIA ROBINSON SHIMIZU

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WE ARRIVED IN THE AFTERMATH of the ice storm. Our home on the hill was dark, the driveway a sheet of ice, the trees encased in glittering ice gowns, limbs clattering like castanets in a piercing wind. 

The city was frozen, fraught with trauma. Roads and businesses closed. Stores shuttered. Shelves bare. Trees down. Power out. Hypothermia, electrocution, injuries, and death.

We had hoped to start our new life in calm and comfort. We had both retired, after ambition and careers faded. We had hoped now to sleep, simply to sleep, after days on the road. We had traveled a thousand miles with a yowling cat who spat out her prescribed tranquilizers and eyed escape at every opportunity. We worried the journey would be difficult, neither of us fond of road trips, both unfamiliar with winter storms. 

But there was beauty along the way. Rainbows materialized from fog and rain. Snow parenthesized mountain passes. We snacked on chips and offered the cat salmon treats.

At the first ‘pet friendly’ hotel, the cat disappeared. We found her burrowed into the base of the bed. With check-out time looming, we hurried to lift the mattress, heave the base up to the ceiling and slice open the mesh under-layer to rip the trembling cat out as if by cesarean section. We drove on, pressing to arrive before nightfall. We were only hours from our destination when the weather forced us to stop. 

The next hotel had an odd smell and was serving as a temporary haven for the storm-displaced elderly and their pets. There were a lot of chihuahuas. And a green parrot with a hearty laugh. “He gets every joke,” his owner said as she rolled an enormous cage down the hall. Finally, thankfully, our cat was at last quiet. As exhausted as we were. She napped as we tiptoed across a snow-covered street to get a take-out dinner.

The next afternoon, we retrieved the key, drove up the hill, and walked into our new home and our new life, as dusk was turning to darkness. Without power, heat or furniture. The truck with our things left before we did and would arrive after. Something about saving us money. So we spent our last days in our former home, huge in its emptiness, sleeping on a futon on the bedroom floor. We laughed at the thrill of camping indoors. An adventure. We planned to send the futon with blankets and pillows to arrive when we did and planned to camp again for those first few days in our new home. 

We had packed the cat in her carrier, brought the boxes of bedding to FedEx at dawn, ready to set off on our journey. But it would cost $2,000 to send all of them. We repacked, tossed out the extra books and pots and pans we’d tucked in and crammed the futon into the back of our tiny old car. FedEx accepted the smaller box of blankets and pillows. $75.00. Next day air. 

Three days later, the box was still storm-delayed. Power had come back, but heat had not. We huddled on the bare floor on our thin futon, wrapped in layers of clothing and a narrow nap-blanket. The two of us and the cat. We shivered, talked about the future, and tried to sleep.

Our new life was not developing as gracefully as we’d hoped. Silly thing, hope. It keeps us afloat then evaporates against the truth of everyday stuff.

While we waited for our bed and our blankets and our sweaters, we opened closets and cabinets and threw out things the previous family left behind. Puppy shampoo. Framed family photos. A decorated Christmas tree. And … everywhere, everywhere … drops and plops of melted chocolate ice cream. In the freezer a glob of chocolate ice cream swam in a ‘Skinny Cow’ brand label. Why was the former owner of this lovely home on the hill self-medicating with chocolate ice cream? In the empty waiting hours we had time to imagine all the possible, terribly tragic, scenarios. 

We had time to imagine what this new home, this new life, might become for us.

We had survived our own losses and tragedies. We had celebrated and stepped through goodness and grief. We had decided to sell our home of nearly 30 years and move north to a climate and a culture we knew almost nothing about. Both of us had grown to love the shimmering sun of Los Angeles. We imagined we wanted a change. We felt ready for the drama of clouds and rain in the Pacific Northwest. 

We knew it would be different, difficult. We had forgotten, in all our dreaming and planning, that we would be starting this new life with our old selves. We had forgotten how awful the storms of discord could be. In the quiet evenings when the trucks and workers had gone and we sorted through boxes piled high around us, there came those tensions we had hoped to leave behind. And there came the bickerings that followed us these thousand miles. Why did we pack all this stuff? What were we thinking?

And yet. The sun came out. The ice was over. 

Even in our imperfect selves, we start over. 

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