Because that’s where you are supposed to go for the holidays. Even though my home is more of a pristine masquerade of holiday cheer than the real kind that includes a cozy fire by a Christmas tree strung with handmade ornaments collected over the years, or gifts wrapped imperfectly because little hands had been allowed to use the good scissors and tape to produce a present they were proud of, or cookies piled high to Heaven with frosting because sticky fingers and smiles had decorated them. No, Christmas where I grew up wasn’t the warm kind made with memories that made you want to go back home.
My phone beeps in the cup holder before it fades to black.
“Fantastic,” I grumble, my reality beginning to shake me slightly.
But I will make the best of this situation. I’ll make my way home and have quite the tale to tell in doing so. The Christmas Kate wrestled with a blizzard and won.
My mother will be irritated, frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t just do the proper thing and wait out the storm in the airport.
But my dad would have laughed.
I smile at the thought, allowing the memory of his laugh to trail around the ridges of my mind and the deep richness of his amusement to inspire me forward. He always loved mydetermination, and sometimes misplaced recklessness, that made for the best of stories.
Like the time I cut my blonde hair into a short bob, convinced that it was weighing me down from climbing the rope in gym class as quickly as the boys. They taunted me for days saying, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair,” before bursting into a wild fit of laughter that only revved up my resolve. I beat them all by the end of the week.
Or the time I rode an actual, real live, bucking bull at a rodeo with zero experience because my brother dared me, thinking it’d be too crazy for me to actually agree to. It wasn’t.
Or the time I decided that a street race in my Mustang was a good idea. Boys could do it, so really, how hard could it be? Fortunately, only the car needed an emergency room.
These were things my mother and most of the world would agree were sheer stupidity, but my dad’s lips would part into this marvelously warm smile that made all the pain of pushing through worth it. He’d laugh in the moment and for years later. When I’d talked to him last before the cancer took him, he’d said, “Katydilla, don’t let anyone douse your fire. You’re the brightest light I’ve ever seen.”
I’m not sure it’s true—that I’m the brightest light. But I was his brightest light and that had to amount to something. If it didn’t mean anything, then it’d be admitting that what he saw in me wasn’t true. And I so want it to be true.
There’s a splotch on the map in my lap, alerting me to the tears that have begun to drip from my eyes and down my cheeks. I ama lot of things, but I’m not a mope. I will not sit and sulk in what I’ve lost, not when there is something to do to put purpose to it.
“All right, this has got to make some kind of sense,” I mumble as I try to figure out the map that is unfortunately in small print, making me squint to determine the direction that my trusty steed (that is definitely more of a mouse inside, just like Cinderella’s horses had been) and I need to go to make it home. From my rough calculations, it is a thirteen-hour drive without a blizzard.
And honestly, nothing makes any sense, but I put the Mitsubishi Mirage into drive, and we attempt to ride the white wave of snow. We were doing just fine for about three hours, surprisingly. Until we weren’t.
“Hold on, Miranda!” I yell, and yes, I named the car Miranda, as I grip the steering wheel tightly.
The road beneath Miranda’s tiny tires has become a frozen skating rink, and it seems Miranda and I have something in common: we both don’t ice-skate. We slip and slide from one side to another until we plummet into the snow-packed ditch with me screaming and Miranda’s engine scolding me as if it’s telling me “I told you so”.
“Don’t be like my mother,” I scold back. “Bitterness is not becoming!”
I put Miranda in reverse before pressing hard on the pedal.
We don’t move. Except maybe forward, and while I’ve often told myself that two steps forward and one step back is still progress, it unfortunately doesn’t apply to a situation where you onlywant to go backward.
“Come on,” I plead, pushing hard on the pedal again. “I didn’t mean it. You’re not like my mother. You’re the opposite of her, and that’s honestly the biggest compliment I could ever give to anyone or anything.”
But nothing happens.
“Fine!” I sigh in frustration at the small car that’s already given up on me, just like every boyfriend I’ve ever had. “If you can’t do it, then I will.”
I fling the car door open before sinking my stilettos into the deep snow, gritting my teeth as the frost forces its way through my threadbare clothes, nipping at my flesh.
The truth is, I know I’m in quite the predicament. I haven’t seen another pair of headlights along the road for at least an hour, my phone is dead because I’d left my charger in my apartment back in New York City, and now I’m stuck. Well Miranda is stuck, which means I am too.
I drop to the ground, my entire body engulfed in the cold of the snow as I use my ungloved hands, something I’d also forgotten to pack, to dig out the front tires. But soon the chattering begins. The kind that shakes your teeth and crumples your spine as you begin to freeze from the inside out.
I stand up, my extremities beginning to fade into nothing as they become numb. I scramble back into the car, and it’s now I realize, out of habit of exiting a vehicle, I’d turned it off.
“Oh no!” I cry. “No! No! No!”
I turn the key, but unlike earlier when Miranda had reluctantly woken up, this time she stays asleep. Nothing is going to rouse her.I’d made her brave a blizzard when she hadn’t had the grit to brave it.
I tuck my hands into my armpits, hoping to thaw them, but even my sweat has frozen. I can’t find any warmth, and my clothes are beginning to stitch themselves into me, thread by frozen thread.
