Linda Rochester - A Love Affair with Place: An excerpt from her story Snowflake
The nurses were friendly and they let us hold the baby. She never whimpered. Everything seemed to be going along as expected until suddenly people began to move through the halls at a different pace. A nurse from down the hall came in to warn the nursery nurse that we had better step on it, a winter storm was headed our way and it looked like a big one. The nurses rushed the paperwork, and we were on our way to the foster home in a flash. We laughed at the dark sky and the few snowflakes falling when we left the hospital. The baby lay quietly in my fellow worker's arms. I gazed over at the bundle every once in a while. She stretched and stretched and yawned and yawned, then settled back for another nap.
In the South, snows come only rarely and, when they do, they are slow to arrive and quick to melt. I didn't worry a bit about driving until the snow started coming down hard and fast. I watched the landscape on each side of the road go from brown to white and suddenly the road began to ice. I was driving my aunt's red El Camino for some mysterious reason. What a car for this occasion. An El Camino was maybe the ugliest car ever invented. It was supposed to be a cross between a car and a truck, but instead it looked like a redneck version of the Batmobile. The safety record of the El Camino was probably what did it in in sales, even though it is hard to believe that it could have been around for long based on its looks alone. I understood quickly how reckless the automobile industry had been in designing this freak car. The back end was light as a feather. Every little slide seemed to doom us to hell. I don't know how I could have picked this particular day to be out in that, but the devil car became a problem all its own.
The radio announcer was going crazy. People were advised to get where they were going and stay there. We watched a car run off the road and land in a ditch. My back tires slid, but I inched along slowly and deliberately toward the DHR office.
Ann was waiting at the office when we arrived. She begged me to go to her house until the conditions cleared. I assured Ann that the foster home was not even two miles down the road. We would have to drive that far to get to her house and who knew how long the office would have lights and heat if we remained where we were. I was sure that I could make it with no problem; I could even walk that far if I had to. Since there didn't seem another avenue of escape available, Ann reluctantly went along with my plan. I deposited the worker and proceeded to the foster home with the baby in the front floorboard.
The worker nestled the baby into the open space and moved the seat up to cradle the baby. She said goodbye without ever knowing the danger. I hadn't faced it either until I started thinking about a turn and a hill that I would have to get past. I began the journey laughing a nervous laugh and then I began to cry. Very little traffic was on the road, but I saw a car against a tree that looked like it had been abandoned. I started to pray and pray hard. I began to plead. Suddenly when the God that I had forgotten seemed to be my only hope, I was once again a sinner sitting at the foot of the cross. I found out something important about myself: I'm never more religious than when I'm in a tight. Lord knows I was in a tight.
I am not a bad driver, not bad at all, but I do drive like a little ole lady. Cautious. Overly attentive. My whole body gets into the task. I'm right up under the steering wheel. Sometimes, for effect, I move my seat back and rest my arm on the window. I just try for cool, and even that is work. This day I wasn't trying for cool. I embraced the ole lady like nobody's business, yet my body, in a state of complete attention, seemed to take over for me. My feet didn't stomp on the brake, they seemed to glide with the slide, and my hands didn't sling the wheel to the left or to the right, but just slowly steered the course between and beyond the danger points that seemed to multiply with the minutes.
It seems an odd time to look away from the road. I'm sure that I didn't do it for more than a moment, but that moment was the longest look I've ever gotten at any one thing. I looked dead into the sleeping face of Snowflake, all nestled into her little nest. I saw all at once another frightening presence. Suddenly Snowflake disappeared into a thousand faces. She became people that I thought I had forgotten, and people that I didn't know yet. She became a nightmare and a redeemer. I stared at her in fear beyond belief. My legs went limp. My arms became jelly. I had endangered all the faces, all the children, all the families, and there was no relief from that. I wore the sweat-soaked tie the size of a handsaw. I flipped out solutions and scoffed at the pit falls.
My mind moved to a little gossip about Ann: she went home every day from work and closed her blinds. She holed up and came out again with the daylight. She lived for this job. It really wasn't the job. It was each person. Ann gave her life to the responsibility. What about me?
I managed to deliver the baby still sleeping-thank heavens she didn't cry-to the smiling foster mother. Sandra Burke took the napping infant and asked me the baby's name. I said, "She doesn't have one." I knew Sandra would fix that. Sandra was a fixer, and she immediately began to fix me: "Stay here Lin. I've made a big pot of soup. We'll cuddle the baby up and wait out the storm."
"No," I said. "I just want this whole thing to be over. I know Johnny will come and get me if I get stuck. He can drive through anything."
I had a feeling that I wouldn't make it in the El Camino. I probably wouldn't have made it in a snowplow. I called my husband Johnny from Sandra's house just in the nick of time, because the phone lines snapped right after my call. We decided that I would drive as far as I could and then park the car on the side of the road and wait. He had a four-wheel-drive Jeep and would come to rescue me.
I made it as far as Big Foot's Barbecue and pulled into the parking lot with all of the other traffic. Trucks. Mostly trucks. I got out of the El Camino and waddled down the road to look beyond the curve. I knew I wouldn't see anything. I guess it gave me something to do to move about. A group of truck drivers had the same idea. One large man with a protruding belly and a red face came up to me and said, "Little lady, where was you headed?" I began to cry and point. He looked embarrassed and began to assure me that I would be all right. I wasn't sure. Somehow I seemed quickly to understand the obstacles. For what seemed like hours, no cars came, and then my husband's Jeep appeared out of nowhere. I felt safe momentarily. I thought my baby and me might somehow get to crawl into the bed some time. I braced for the ride home.
The next time I went to see the baby I shepherded through the storm, I found out what Sandra had named her: Snowflake, because she came with the snow. Snowflake remained Snowflake until she was given her real name by the adoptive parents. For once, I got to live out the dream: I delivered Snowflake into the arms of loving parents who were as delighted as I had always hoped with the bundle that I gave them.
From "Snowflake" 2002
