After years of house shopping, we finally got the keys to our new home – right as the polar vortex was looming. Record low temperatures were projected with the kind of winds that chill your bones. I’m that person that ignores the forecast given its sometimes laughable level of accuracy, so I was unconcerned. Little did I know, that hyped up polar vortex really was going to rock my world.
It started with a night that first shook me and brought tears to my eyes, and then filled me with a resolve that I would definitely need to get through the week. We were heading back from taking our first load of stuff to the new place. I was pulling a big enclosed trailer that was really too much for our Suburban, and my husband was ahead of me with his truck and another trailer.
As we approached a stop sign on a busy state highway, I realized the downhill intersection was covered in glass-like ice. I saw my husband had put one side of his vehicle off the road to gain traction. As he turned, I crept slowly up to the stop sign. My babies were in the backseat, my responsibility to protect. The cars just kept coming and I was so scared to get halfway out in front of a car and start spinning. It took several minutes to get far enough out that I could confidently gain traction and make the turn without the trailer pushing me around.
Apparently, my caution was too much for the driver behind me. As soon as he or she got out on the main road, I heard a long blast of a horn and saw the car fly by me. I was already shaken, so then I was really questioning my driving ability and whether I had taken too long to turn.
In that lies the first lesson: let them honk – I can hear them because I’m alive. The very next morning there was an accident at that corner when a car approached the main road too fast and slid right out into traffic. Too bad for the guy behind me, I’ll be forever cautious and I won’t feel a bit bad about it!
But there was a second lesson that came out of that incident. My husband later explained that when he had been halfway off the road, he was waiting like that to make sure I noticed the ice and had it under control. If I didn’t, he wanted me to hit his trailer, not go into oncoming traffic myself. “Because it was you and the kids back there, and up here… you know… it was just me.”
My husband, the same man that I accuse of not having a romantic bone in his body or not talking about his feelings enough, the man that I sometimes worry is calloused to the world, he was just nonchalantly putting his life on the line for us. Just quietly putting himself directly in between his family and danger. Lesson learned: he would die for us and that is the deepest sacrifice you can make. Remind me to shut up the next time I question his devotion, please!
The next day, we changed our plans in light of the forecast. Instead of going back and forth between houses all week, we decided to hurry up and fill the trailers again. Then, the kids and I would camp out at the new place so I could unpack if we got snowed in. My husband would have to stay at the old house to fill the woodstove and feed the cattle.
Enter our Little House on the Prairie week. You know when Pa goes to town and Ma has that close call with the bear? That’s how I felt. I had to learn to keep the new outdoor woodstove going, not just casually check it like I had done before, but own it.
One late night, I was laughingly telling the moms on the Community + Conversation group how I’d been getting braver about walking by our dark windows that longed for curtains. I’m not even kidding, right after I posted that, one of our horses started whinnying frantically from the pitch black backyard. I know I’m not the only one who is still a little kid inside scared of the dark right? But I put on my big girl panties and my bib overalls and trudged through the wind to see what was going on. All was apparently well by the time I got there, and I didn’t even sprint fearfully back to the house. Lesson learned: we really do just do what we have to do, and I’m tougher than I thought.
As the week progressed, I realized a couple more lessons. First, I am not prepared for a real emergency. There was a point when my phone battery was at 2% and the charger was still lost among boxes, I couldn’t get the new internet to work, and I didn’t have quite enough car seats for all the kids. That was stupid. Laughing about the weather is one thing, but not taking steps to keep a family safe is another.
I learned the final lesson while remedying my mistake. I took the kids the few miles into town to buy a charger. I took a chance by not having my oldest ride in his booster seat. I wanted to avoid having a real emergency later and being stuck with no way to call for help. The wind was vicious, I think that was the coldest day. I bundled each kid and carried them, wrapped in a blanket, to the car. On my fourth trip, my hair was frozen to my sweaty forehead. I was so cold when we got to the car that I lunged into the crowded backseat myself and slammed the door.
Guys, I had forgotten what it feels like to be helpless. To frantically scramble out of desperation for something that you need {in my case, relief from the cold}. To have a basic need {warmth} denied.
That really made me think. How often have I denied my children of things that their little emotions deem as important as warm? We are driving and someone has to pee: you’ll have to wait. I just tucked you in and you desperately need a drink: go back to bed. You want to be held and I just can’t: figure it out on your own.
Do I need to give in to every toddler whim? No, but we moms know when a kid really feels like their world is ending. How cruel not to come to their aid. Lesson learned: remember how it feels to denied something you feel is crucial!
I hope these lessons I learned apply to your life and help in some way. I’ll be back with more helpful content… when I recover!
