SUZANNE RUDD HAMILTON

The snowstorms in Northwestern Illinois are legendary. There are tons of corn fields and very few large buildings, so the snow just blows everywhere and drifts accumulate.

Needless to say, I did not know this when I chose Northern Illinois University in DeKalb for my collegiate studies.

My first year, the snowstorm reputation proved less legend and more reality. They started in the first week of November. Inches of snow fell and drifts abound to various heights, accompanied by shivering cold temperatures. Not happy, I trudged on to classes every day. Luckily the school had great bus transportation.

That all changed in December, two days before winter break. Overnight an epic record snowstorm hit the area. Asleep, I was unaware and woke early to get to my 8am final exam. It was a Saturday, so the bus system did not run, but I had a car, so I could drive the mile to campus.

I went to the exit of my apartment building, but the door would not move. I pushed and pushed with all my might, but it wouldn’t budge. Puzzled, I walked to the other side of the building to try another exit. It wouldn’t budge either. Using my college educated analytical mind, I could not conceive that both doors could merely be stuck. However, before giving up, I employed the patented cartoon method of running into the door at full speed. The door still did not budge.

I went back to my third-floor apartment to call a friend for help. When I got to my phone, I saw the parking lot out of my window. The cars were completely covered in snow. They all looked like little snow mounds, as you could not see they were cars. I looked down to see the snow drifts at 6-8 feet high below my window. I wondered if a snow drift had blocked the doors.

I called a few friends, to no avail. They were all snowed in too. But I had a final exam I had to get to. I tried to call my professor, but no answer.

I went back to the door and found a couple neighbors having the same trouble. Working together, we were able to prop open the door and successfully exit.

Now I had to deal with my snow-buried car. It was a light fluffy snow, so I used my arms, gloves and scarf until I got into the trunk and retrieved my snow brush. Working quickly, I was able to uncover my car. Tired, but satisfied I would make the test, I got in the car and turned the key. Nothing. No sound. No turnover. Panicking I tried again and again a few times. No use, it was dead. And now, all my neighbors were gone too.

As a Freshman, I didn’t know the penalty for not taking an exam. So, I thought of no other alternative. Late or not, I had to show up before the exam was over. So, I decided to walk the 1 mile to campus.

I was not exactly dressed for a hike in the frozen tundra, but I was dressed for winter. The first part of the journey was a field. It was cold. I kept thinking of Jack London’s Call of the Wild and how he crossed the frozen tundra. That occupied my mind for a while. But soon my outerwear began to crisp from the cold and provide little protection from the howling frigid wind. I was freezing, but knew I needed to persevere.

I remembered a lecture in my psychology class regarding the power of the brain….mind over matter. I desperately decided to try this method. I wondered if I could trick my mind into thinking I was not cold. The warmest place I could think of was the beach. And what made me think of the beach? The Beach Boys. So, I romped along in my crispy winter wear singing Beach Boys songs, imagining myself at the beach under the warm sun.

I am not going to say it worked, but it did help. It occupied my mind for the hour it took to walk to campus and to my exam. I was very pleased with myself. I came, I saw and I conquered the snow and cold all by myself.

Unfortunately, I was the only one. When I got to the classroom, there was a note on the door that the exam was rescheduled due to the weather. Independence only goes so far. I may have beaten the cold once, but I didn’t want to try again. Luckily, I found someone with a car to take me home. I will live to learn another day. I was tested enough today.

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.

Barbara was a typical working soccer mom. With her college sweetheart Matt, she had three young kids who ran her around day in and day out. Not to mention she her nursing career she had to fit it too. She spent most sleep-deprived nights counting all the things she had to do.

This time of year, Christmas, was especially busy. There were presents to buy and wrap, cards to send out, holiday parties to shop for, cookies to bake, school plays to attend, and decorations to put up to make the house a Christmas wonderland for the kids. Matt helped where he could, but it seemed like one task for him turned into twenty long questions for her. It was usually just easier to do it on her own.

Every year, she held her breathe from Thanksgiving to New Years, constantly anxious at the dwindling time clock to get everything done.

After a ten to ten midnight shift just one week away from Christmas, she needed to stop by the mall after a to get a few things she could not find on Amazon this year. Luckily the hospital had a parking garage, so she didn’t have to chisel the overnight ice and snow off her car, like the many she saw when pulled out of the parking lot.

As she drove, bopping her head along to the Christmas music on the radio, she went through her mental shopping list. At Apostrophe, she needed to buy those teen jeans the girls wanted, she thought. And Sam asked for those static magnet things we saw when we stood in line for two hours to see Santa a few weeks ago. And that special perfume Matt’s mother likes is at Macy’s. Oh, and don’t forget to go by the personalization store to pick up the matching Christmas t-shirts. I hope I ordered the right sizes, she thought. “And I hope they are in, there just is not a lot of time if they are delayed,” she muttered aloud.

Just as the radio played Rudolph the Red-nosed reindeer, a deer popped in her right path without notice as if in time with the music. In a quick jolt of the steering wheel, she sighed in relief, just missing him. She bumped along the side of the road with the plow’s packed snow drifts and looked for a way back onto the road. When she turned back onto the pavement, she hit a big patch of black ice and started to spin.

“What do they say again, turn into the spin, right?” she panicked a little and turned the wheel.

But the car just kept spinning and spinning. Suddenly time slowed as her head whirled and swooned with each rapid rotation.

What would happen to Matt and the kids? He wouldn’t be able to take care of them by himself, her mind drifted. How would the girls grow up without a mother? She would miss their proms, weddings, grandkids.

Then she began to get dizzy and flashes of her life played in her mind like a movie. Her first kiss, their wedding, the birth of her kids, last summer at the lake with her mom and dad. They all seemed to be smiling at her as she saw each of their faces in her imagined state.

Then in a minute, it all abruptly stopped, pulling her forward into the steering wheel. She looked up in a daze. Her car had careened across the road into a snow bank. The car was a stuck and a little banged up, but she was ok. And she had only gone about 20 ft.

It was only minutes, she sighed in relief. It seemed like forever.

She composed herself, found her cell phone, and called the insurance company towing service. They said they would be there in 20 minutes. Glad that the car was still running, so she did have heat, Barbara surveyed her short and perilous journey through the car window. She saw her snowy tire tracks of circles go across the road and sighed again in relief.

Still a little shocked, she couldn’t stop thinking about what she saw. Her kids, her family, her life, all passing by in just a few minutes. The life she lived and had yet to live.

“Wow lady,” the tow truck driver said looking at her car in the steepled snow bank. “You were really lucky the snow stopped you. A few minutes more and you would have been off the road completely.”

Barbara looked over at the sharp drop-off of wooded embankment he was pointing too and tried to catch her breathe.

On the truck ride to the body shop, Barbara was rifling through her purse and found her Christmas to do list.

“Why did I spend so much time on all this fussing?” she wondered as she crumbled up the list. “I need to spend more time with my family and less time on all of this stuff.”

Snow Test

Minutes In Time