The North American Blizzard of 1996

Alert to the world, running on the fumes of childhood wonder, thinking about his father, the blizzard, what this coming Sunday will bring—a six-year-old boy lies in bed, fluffy comforter up to his chin, in the dark early morning hours, thinking. Please let me be, please go away, I am NOT going to get up today. Snow falls heavy and fat with hope. Shinshin. Two inches per hour. The radiator hisses. A snow-laden branch from the cherry tree sags and brushes the window. His G.I. Joes are dangling like militant ornaments from fishing line he strung across his windows. Articulated arms cradle elaborate toy weapons aimed in every direction. Is the world really so violent? So scary? The outside wants in, the inside looks out, the convergence zone of a double-pane window—G.I. Joe is there! The dark branch of the cherry tree strokes the window, a skeletal finger. Snow falls.

Atmospheric water vapor freezes into unique ice crystals which fall and, with the right conditions, accumulate. Each flake catches, then scatters, the light. The clear perceived as white.

The father, a program manager, stayed in a hotel in Midtown Manhattan working late, the snow, the news never stops, the cameras must roll even on Saturday, the public demands to be informed, the show goes on and on. The subways are still running but will they close the bridges? The city might be forced to finally sleep. He drank too much bourbon, missing his wife, his home, even missing his street in Rochelle Park, the town of shopping and strip malls at the hub of four highways, 17 and the Parkway cut by Route 4 and underlined by I-80, a congested jewel in the crown of New Jersey’s consumption. The gaffer’s head is on his pillow, her bare foot sticking over the side of the bed, its sole facing him. His coworker and former mistress. Formerly a former mistress because tonight, again: loneliness, drinks, the privacy of snow, accidents happen. A dead-end cul-de-sac in Rochelle Park. As a city kid, son of a cabbie from Queens, he’d feared the street initially—what the street symbolized—when his wife dragged him to see the ranch just on the market. Taupe vinyl siding. No sidewalks. A quarter-acre yard with neighborhood rules about how tall the grass is allowed to grow. Fine, fine landscaping with tasteful ornamentals, a cherry tree, a Japanese maple, two scraggly spruces. Engulfed by a placid suburban middle-class calm. You’ve come up in the world now, boychick! Home: a roof, a hearth, a family. The city at night is bright and dark. Empty bars beckon in neon. Sodium orange streetlights float like suns muted by an atmosphere of ice and snow. Alleys in shadow. Overhead, the vast grayscale of a light-polluted sky. While in college, I drove my father’s cab down these streets. Took regulars from Queens to Wall Street. Tourists to Central Park. One leggy blond from Chelsea to the Upper West Side. An art critic. Red pumps hitting the grimy pavement. Tiny ankles. She looked like a movie star. Charlotte Rampling. And I felt like Popeye Doyle behind the wheel, angry, reckless, confident. He’s sensible now, husband, father. Manages the camera crew. Stays in hotels. Lives in Jersey.

Yeltsin is drunk. A vodka stupor. Vomit stains every Persian rug in the Kremlin. Reagan’s morning has come and gone. It’s a Clintonian high noon in America now. Not a shadow in sight. Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow. Leaded gas has just been banned. Goods are flowing. The markets are up, free and open, except an executive order calling for more severe sanctions on Iran. A new web is being spun for the next generation to get caught in like a fat suicidal fly eager to be devoured. Been spendin’ most their lives. Jordan is back. Spacious skies. The Juice is found innocent. Goodbye, Calvin. Adios, Hobbes. Twenty inches of snow in New York City. Fifty-mph wind gusts. Eight-foot drifts. Yesterday’s gone.

Commuters are trapped in the Trenton Transit Center, queuing up to use the payphones, to hear or be a familiar voice crackling through the emergency. The Northeast Corridor is choking, clogged. Snow obstructs the passage. Snow on the tracks. Snow, I want to wash my hands, my face and hair with snow. Christmas is over; 1995 is over. The turnpike is closed. The East Coast shivers. When the snow melts, floods. After me. One hundred and fifty-four fatalities all told once tallied. Get over here. Conflict in the Middle East. A Nor’easter. Cold Canadian air colliding with the warm, Gulf Stream current. Mexico and Canada shaking hands in Manhattan. A rating of Extreme. Trenton Makes The World Takes.

The mother sips tea in the kitchen. Sadaf with cardamom. Of course, school is cancelled Monday. The world is cancelled. It’s a historic blizzard. Her husband is trapped in the city. She’s trapped in the kitchen. In this marriage. Her son is her son—their son—asleep. Volvo in the driveway like a snow-coated tumulus. Tehran is thousands of miles, years, away. Her own mother is probably sipping the same tea through a sugar cube in her kitchen in Queens. Her father, dead in a ditch somewhere courtesy of his indecision and the Islamic Republic. The Shah dead. Her country, the way she’d known it—miniskirts, Nazi chocolate, French lessons, night clubs, jukeboxes playing the Rolling Stones—dead. Her father used to smoke opium on their roof in Tehran. Eat pistachios, the shells falling like scales at his feet. Homemade yogurt fermenting in bags hanging from curtain rods in the kitchen. You can’t kill an old eggplant. What would Nasreddin Hodja make of this blizzard? Of New Jersey? Would he dance naked along the parkway until his dick froze off? She runs her tongue along the rim of the mug, feels the tiny chips her husband’s teeth have made in it. Teeth yellowed from four cups of coffee and two packs of Benson & Hedges a day. Because the pleasure lasts longer. She wanted to live in Tehran, have a house on the Caspian, an apartment in a posh part of London. Once there was a man who promised such things. Lives in Dubai now. Or Majorca. Probably both. I can’t get no satisfaction. She never wanted children. She hates the snow. How did I end up here? How does anyone end up anywhere? Between her fingers, she crushes a chickpea flour cookie. Yellow crumbs, dust. Ashes to ashes. I miss my father. Missing and mothering is all I do.

Snow storms intensify into blizzards. Paralyzing drifts. High winds. Low visibility. Thirty-two inches in Edison. Christine Todd Whitman calls in the National Guard. George Washington and the whole Continental Army would have frozen to death in Jockey Hollow. Afterwards, a world reformed, snow and memories sculpted, made, remade in their remembering.

Married with Children. Superman and his new adventures. Home videos of Americans that are supposed to be funny. Hey baby, I hear the blues a-callin’. 60 Minutes. I want my baby back ribs. Thirty million viewers tuning in to hear George catalogue his miseries: I was handcuffed to the bed… In my underwear, (sighs) where I remained… (another story) She was attractive… She was, also, in fact, a Nazi… (another story) The water… that I had been swimming in was… very cold. And, when I dropped the towel, there was… significant shrinkage… With Mentos, fresh and full of life! You give us twenty-two minutes, we’ll give you the world.

5.8 billion people on the planet. Two hundred and seventy million Americans. Eight million in the Garden State. Not counting the dead. The imagined. The remembered. The forgotten. Our surfeit world and its ceaseless growing.

The father calls home. The mother answers on the second ring, picking up the red phone on the wall of the kitchen. The backyard is covered in snow. No telling how tall the grass is. Gray dawn. The city is covered in snow. The same gray dawn. I’m in a hotel. Don’t think I can even get home today. They’re saying the whole region is shut down. I love you too. I’m lonely too. Christ, I’m lonely. And alone. As I said. I know it’s hard. No one ever said it wouldn’t be. Yes, the hotel is fine but it’s a hotel, you know? Soulless. No, what’s a Hodja? Yeah, tell him I’ll try. No, I don’t want to talk about us now. It's early. There’s a blizzard. A State of Emergency. Tomorrow, okay? Tomorrow or Tuesday. Once this all melts.

A family is a basic unit. A household. Parents and children living together. 

The son dons his flannel robe, a miniature copy of his father’s, and finds his mom in the kitchen. The sun is rising. The snow looks downy and inviting, a comforter thrown over a sleepy world. Will Dad come home today, he asks. We’re lucky to have power, she says. There are outages across the tri-state area. Is Grandma okay? Want cereal or an English muffin? A muffin, I guess. With an egg? Did you hear the wind? The tree branch on the window? It scared me, he says. No, I didn’t. But I’m scared sometimes too. You are? Of what? Nothing in particular, she says. Just scared. Show me that branch. He leads his mother into his room. Points past the G.I. Joes to the branch which isn’t so close now that the wind has let up. I spent one winter in Hamadan as a kid. Where Grandma is from. We had to tunnel through the snow. Were you scared? No. I was brave then. I didn’t fear a thing. But you’re scared now, Mom? She places her hand on the cold glass, leaves a trace of yellow dust. I’m all grown up now.

Sunday becomes Monday. The sun burns hot. The world turns. The snow melts quickly, rivers flood and saturate the earth. The freeze and thaw of memory. Days pass. Months, years.

Jon Doughboy is a literary fiction @doughboywrites.

Published January 15 2025