Saturday, May 3, 2014

Many Waters Revisited

A letter to my daughter from 27 September 1998 (a year or so before I purchased my first computer)

Hurricane season on the home front / All the weak of heart are leavin’ town / Baby an’ me ain’t up to goin’ just yet / Maybe we’ll just drink until we drown / Me I freshen up a pot of coffee / Baby puts the chain across the door / And pretty soon she’s seein’ things that I don’t see / Like alligators on the bathroom floor…
Tom Russell, Hurricane Season

With news of the worst gangin’ up of tropical storms since ’92 (that’s 1892 so they said) — and frenchies à that: GEORGES, HENRI, ISIDORE, JULES ET JIM (the last possessing two eyes!) — we lashed our possessions to the faithful Avalon & took the Back Route to the Northland with Holly & Cam sleepin’ off the previous night’s carousin’ while blasting back subliminal doses of Smashed Pumpkins & Dar Williams on disc & walk men…
            We arrived…had an uneventful lunch…and started a new cycle of activities when Momma spotted some Eyres clearing brush suspiciously close to our property line & went out to casually question them about their intent…when that mighty oracle- Ann Eyres herself — came out modeling her latest bathing suit and announcing that a TORNEDO WARNING was in effect (& had nothing to do with the beef Tournedos she planned to serve her brood that night before returning to practice her puts on the green that was being clear cut even as she spoke…
            Momma switch’d to immediate PANIC BUTTON PUSHIN’ MODE & commanded that I cook dinner before the inevitable power outage (she being somewhat of an oracle herself)…I sprang into action, don’d my chef’s hat & apron & rushed the Shaken’n’Bake white trash ’taties into the oven. As I cooked, the sky became ominously dark & the power began to waver…SUDDENLY! The power was out and Momma screamed “OVER TO WENAWAE’S!”
            I have to backtrack. Momma’s second reaction after sending me to cook dinner (a scant 1 ½ hours after that uneventful lunch) was to start phonin’ around (whilst she still could!)…Grandaddy suggested we get back to Toronto pronto (I pointed out that I didn’t feature a 3 hour drive through lightning, tornados & whatever else Ma Nature had up her voluminous sleeves…this being hurricane season an’ all)…Rita the Rockette spoke of her plans to spend the night in her basement with her red slippers and her little dog, Toto…I mean, GINGER… Momma finally called Wenawae (on Wen’s own phone!) to see if we could shelter in the crawl space which Michael (who had also been phoned) had let slip existed next door.
            So now we had fantastic winds (the likes of which hadn’t been seen since that Prout’s Neck holiday above the post office). Momma rushed about gathering all the candles. I gathered up all the puppies as the power went off & lightning thundered fast & furiously…
We didn’t stay in the crawl space all that long (tho’ long enuff for Pippa the claustrophobic puppy) as the wild breeze calmed down somewhat and I went over to bring over the food. We dug in & I braved the outrageous bolts of lightning one more in order to get the chocolate pudds that I’d missed in the darkness.
            The power never came back on so we slept at Wen’s…Momma slept with one eye open ready to shepherd us all back underground if things got really bad…we were awakened briefly by a bolt that seemed to be in our (make that Wen’s) bedroom. My theory was that since Wen’s place had already been wasted once (page 5) Momma figured we were safer there than at our own place. Next morning…still no power…I cooked a vestigial breakfast on the barbecue and then started lugging buckets of water from the lake in homage to days gone by…we had twice as much cleaning to do as a result of spending time in two domiciles…we left at around noon (lunching at McDonald’s to avoid dirty dishes!) & drove home wondering why we had bothered to go to the cottage at all…maybe it was just to supply a theme for this little letter.
Love,
Daddy

P.S. The number motifs are snapshots from Momma’s mind of the fate that inevitably awaited us!