Motherwise Cracks

Remember…you asked for this!

This is a story of survival. While it may not be as bone-chilling as Admiral Byrd’s or as abominable as what happened at the Donner Pass, it’s about all the excitement my family can handle. We retell it as a celebration of our ability to not only survive a challenge, but to have a good time doing it.

It all began on a December evening when a vanload of us drove 400 miles to visit my daughter who was on an internship in the New York City area. Our plan was to shop and see “Beauty and the Beast” on Broadway. Little did we know, it was also the eve of the “Storm of the Century” that would sock the inhabitants into hibernation. Well, most of them.

Things were fine until we hit the Tappenzee Bridge, about 45-minutes from our destination, and snowflakes the size of Donald Trump’s comb-over began to fall. Within 15 minutes, the clusters of huge flakes had accumulated into a dense mushy slop slowing traffic to a crawl.

The mounds of chocolate and snacks we had eaten throughout the 7 hour drive formed a ball in my stomach as I clutched the steering wheel and pretended not to be concerned. I would pry my fingernails out of it when we arrived 3 hours later.

Finally we met my daughter, finished our remaining snacks and went to bed. The next morning, we discovered Frank Sinatra was wrong. There is a time that the city sleeps. Everything was closed. Trains into the city were not running but might be back on track by 9 a.m. That was all I needed to hear. We came all this way, we were going to the city come hell or high water – frozen or running.

Being from Buffalo, I took the shovel from my van and began to dig out of the 2 to 3 feet of white stuff. A plow had been down the street so I didn‘t see what the big deal was. A man across the street (and I won’t use the term “gentleman” because he wasn’t one) began to chide me for trying to get out. He said I’d never do it and laughed scornfully. He called me a bad name and said I was a stupid one of these. Adrenalin pumping, I swung my shovel onto his imaginary keester around my wheel wells.

No man afraid of solid precipitation is going to disrespect me from his puny 6 foot driveway and tell me I’m never going to get my van out of the snowdrift. I revved the motor extra loud as we piled in and left him in the flurry. Of course it didn’t hurt that my van was so heavy with passengers that it could compress a 4-foot snowdrift into a pancake. “Get a family if you need traction!” I exclaimed as I drove out of sight.

High from my “in your face” escape act, we drove toward the train station and who should appear, but a furry rodent acting like a tiny reindeer. With a huge old bagel, so big and so thick, that we knew in that moment that it must be sign.

Not only did this little guy find a bagel, he found a whole HUGE bagel and was going to have it all. The thing was gigantic (and gets bigger every time we tell this story), and so out of proportion that we busted up. We named him Bushy on the spot and we began rooting for him as we watched his bushy tail dragging that monster bagel over a snow bank and up a tree. He made it. We would too. Honestly, a calm came over us that lasted the whole day.

And the city was dead. So dead that we were able to hold hands in front of the tree at Rockefeller Center and sing “Abu Dares” from “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and stroll through Manhattan in unmatched, clashed, and should-have-been trashed winter clothing without a smidgen of embarrassment. We even went to the play because we knew the show must go on! All through the day, we mused about Bushy and our bond with him deepened.

That spring, while coincidently on yet another shopping trip with the same crew, I spied a statue of a squirrel – well, just his backside – at the mall. Of course, only some kind of nut would pay $14.95 for the backside of a squirrel. Not me. I noticed he was marked down to $9.95 and sealed the deal.

With a bagel perched on his tail, Bushy debuted at the family July 4th picnic that year and was such a hit, that he is now a family tradition. We often reminisce about Bushy, wondering if he’s alright, thanking him for showing us to go for the whole bagel, and wishing that he knew that his tail lives on.

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“A child is beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to throw it further back – it is already so far.“  ~ Alice Meynell