The ice storm started on a weekend evening. My parents, being the socialites they are, were out having dinner with friends. Mike and I were at my parents house, where I was living at the time, watching a movie. Above the sound of the t.v. we started to hear eerie pops and snaps. They got louder and louder. Eventually we decided to investigate, and discovered that the branches were breaking off all the trees in the yard. Seconds later entire limbs starting coming down, and we called my parents.
Mom and Dad hurried home just in time for the electricity to go off. Their car wasn't in the garage five minutes before an enormous limb fell across the driveway, making it impassible.
There wasn't much to do that night besides feel sick to your stomach, knowing that all the beautiful old trees weren't going to make it through the night. If you walked outside, it seemed like you were on a battlefield. The quiet was puncuated by cracks and booms, unseen trees breaking and falling. We sat in the dark, listening to the trees die, groaning at each new crash.
That night Mike spent the night on the couch downstairs. At first it was hard to sleep through the booms and crashes, but eventually we all got accustomed and fell into a deep, tired sleep. It got colder and colder in the house without the heating, but Mike started to feel especially cold in the early morning. Finally the cold was too much for him, and he got up to investigate. He followed the draft to the next room over, and discovered a 20 foot limb which had crashed through the skylight and now lay on the floor.
We spent the next two weeks without power, working hard every minute we were awake. Mike stayed with us the whole time. While it was a terrible, sad time, the ice storm was also sort of fun. Each day presented new and different challenges, and we worked hard every day and accomplished things we normally would not dream of doing. We used chainsaws. We shovelled ice. We patched a skylight. We learned to wire a generator. We checked on neighbors, family, friends, and animals. We spent lots of time at the fireside, no t.v. or phone to distract us, playing games and talking.
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The five year anniversary of the ice storm brought back all these memories, and Mike and I thought of all the fun nights we had had at my parents' house cooking by candlelight over the gas stove. Mike had the great idea of doing an ice storm remembrance dinner, in which we had to turn off the electricity and reenact an ice storm dinner. Aunt Jan came for dinner, since she spent most of the ice storm living at our house.
One of our first ice storm dinners was spaghetti. This was quick and easy to cook, and since we had been working hard all day and didn't have any time for cooking, it was perfect. We used my Mom's recipe.
The sauce and spaghetti cooked on the gas stove, which was the only functioning appliance in the kitchen.
Dad and Mike worked on making a salad in the dark. Dad goes to great lengths to make salad dressing.
Warming the bread posed a bit of a problem, since the oven used electricity and therefore was against the rules for tonight. Dad and Mike popped the bread in a grill pan and warmed that on the stove.
Our dinner was delicious, and we ate like famished laborers.
Something about the camaraderie of cooking by candlelight and remembering difficult times that have past made us all feel fat and happy.
We loved tonight, and promised to do it again every year. We knew that the trees we had planted to replace those that were lost were growing bigger and stronger each year, and that soon all traces of the ice storm would be erased. We felt safe. We felt lucky. Most of all, we felt blessed to be in the candlit quiet together.
