Everyone Remain Calm by Megan Stielstra

Author:Megan Stielstra
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2011-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

Initially, meteorologists called it a fluke. No one much minded: no snow meant no shoveling, no bitter winds, no staggering gas bills, but when spring arrived without a snowfall, scientists kicked into gear. There were speculations, action plans; they spoke of increased environmental risks: tsunami, hurricanes, national crisis. Nick and I decorated our synthetic Christmas tree and went on with our lives: work and school and growing up. Snow became more of a memory, like an extinct species. You see photographs in encyclopedias, but you’ve learned to live without it.

Until today.

From the window, I watched Nick make snow angels in the front yard, his bright red body a line, then an X. A moment ago the snow had been falling gently, but now the sky was electric white and the wind whipped with increasing violence. At least two inches layered the windowsill and it didn’t take long for that to double. Double again. I grabbed clothes for Nick and an afghan for me, then went out to the porch.

“Mom, it’s snow!” Nick cried, almost buried, his bare chest red against the white.

“I know, baby. Put these on,” I said. The snow came up to his calves and he forged a path towards me. As he dressed, he talked excitedly about this moment, his first remembered snowfall. There’s a kind of joy in watching someone experience a thing for the first time. I thought of my own firsts: first kiss, first paycheck, first time I saw my son.

“I’m going to the park,” Nick said, and I pulled out of my head and looked at him. My boy, the red hat pulled down over his ears, blue eyes shocking under its rim. His chest pushed at the knitting of his sweater. His jaw was strong and square. He was grown, and this was another first: first time ever in my own life. What would I do first?

“Have fun, Nick,” I said, and he took off, struggling to open the front gate almost buried under a snowdrift, then giving up and vaulting over it. I watched him disappear into the white, his red hat bobbing as he ran towards the park. Out in the street, people held their palms to the sky, needing to touch it to believe it, verifiable proof of this wholly impossible thing, and that’s when I saw another red hat coming from the other direction. It stopped at my gate, trying to push it open through the snow, and suddenly I didn’t feel the cold. I didn’t feel anything. There wasn’t any room for feeling. There was only Joe, standing before me in the big empty hole my son had just vacated.

“Hi,” he said.

That was it.

Hi.

Twelve years had passed and in my mind I’d played this scene a thousand different ways, but in that moment, none of them seemed right. I just sat there and looked: he hadn’t changed at all, and everything about me felt new.

“Can I see Nick?” he asked.

“Not my call,” I said. “Nick’s his own man.

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