Mom Took on a Blizzard

We rumbled along in the coolest family car ever - yellow and brown with tailfins.

My sister and I, about 9 and 10, were old enough to know mom was upset.

Mom and dad often fought, and we’d learned to hide in our bedroom. Dad would go to the pub. Mom would go to work on a project.

On this evening, we were delighted when she said we were going to see friends.

Things were a bit unusual.

It was late, dark, and minus 25. The single yard light did not reveal the raging blizzard. These friends lived farther away than others. But, to a kid, a sleepover in a house full of toys, five miles over, meant fun. My sister and I giggled in the back seat and noticed trouble only when the car lurched to a halt.

“We’re stuck,” mom said. She preferred actions over words.

“Stay here – Alice’s place is just a mile up.”

She disappeared into the whiteout. We started the car now and then to run heat, just like she showed us. The blizzard blasted me awake when mom whipped open the door, said something, and was gone again.

Later - an hour or two - headlights woke me up.

An adult bulked in a parka, togue and a fur lined hood, herded us into another car. We got to our friend’s house too late to play but at least we had a sleepover.

Days later I overheard mom talking to a friend as she yanked up a pant leg that showed a jagged 12-inch gash.

“Figured we were real close. Thought I’d hop out and run up the road. But ended up ass-over-teakettle when I ran into that dang barbed wire fence,” She laughed. T

he puffy wound oozed pus.

“Yep – real whiteout. Thought that was the corner. Guess not.

Nobody ever spoke about that night.

As an adult, I wonder what drove mom from our farmhouse under those conditions. What was she escaping? Was there a threat of violence? Was she tired of being alone with the kids? Was the local bar emptying out to continue drinking at the house? Did she fear for her daughters in a house full of drunken men?

Like all women of that era, societal norms and archaic laws trapped her. Men controlled the money. Laws allowed physical assault within marriages.

Before 1964, women needed a male co-signer to open a bank account. Women could not get a credit card until 1974.

Prior to 1989, non-owing spouses (male) could sell the home out from under their family. A woman needed to prove adultery to file for divorce. Women who simply walked away from a family farm became penniless, no matter how many years she had toiled at the yoke.

As a kid I knew that mom and dad had problems. As a teen I was baffled by why she did not just leave. As an adult looking back, I see that mom was more empowered than her contemporaries.

She had a driver’s license, and demanded dad buy a family car.

She had the confidence to drive anything, anywhere.

She knew how to Stand Tall.