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January 8, 2003
12 and a half weeks
This week marks the fifth anniversary of the Great Montreal Ice Storm and though it may bore you out of your mind, I want to bring me back to that time for the kids sake because they'll have these diaries one day. I was pregnant with Brandan and at the exact same weeks I'm at now. We lived at our old house, across the street from the river that runs around the island of Montreal. The first day the freezing rain started was annoying. Remo was driving me in because the trains were down, so he pulled the car out of the garage. Not even in gear and with the emergency brake on, the car slid all the way down to the street. Somehow I had to get down to it. Remember Thumper from Bambi when he was on the ice? I flew down the driveway and then across the street with my bags and arms flapping all over the place and I had to be moving a thousand miles an hour. I remember thinking my life was over, and Remo swore I'd break every bone in my body. For the first time in our lives, he couldn't laugh at me in a spectacle, he was so scared for the crash. To this day I can't believe how gracefully I stopped. On my feet.
I tried to get home that night on the only train still working and the scene was epic. Bodies were struggling to squeeze into cars that were already sagging. I got off and threw up. On TV we watched reports of ice a foot thick on trees. Soon after the trees began to fall. I remember the ice hitting our windows the second evening, forecasters weren't sure when it would end. You know how quiet and still your house is in the dead of night? The power went off and we woke up. Funny how quieter can feel so loud. Outside, everything was covered in shine and we were astounded by one of the neighbour's trees. The branches, so heavy with ice, seemed to be touching the ground! We went back to bed knowing we couldn't do anything till morning and I was hoping work would understand if I had no power, I couldn't go in. At three o'clock in the morning our doorbell rang. It was the police, we had fifteen minutes to evacuate the premises. They were already hanging danger ribbons across our front yard. I think I would be good in a fire because for the first time in my life, I was ready in ten and by flashlight even. I was not prepared for the world outside. Wires all over our house, we could see that at least three of our big beautiful strong trees were down. Our road was blocked by a tree, cars were driving up on the sidewalk to pass. The city was impossibly black except for the headlights of people like us running away. In the dark of night, you understood this was different, shocking.
We went to Remo's parents and were grateful for the radio in the car, even if the announcers didn't know anymore than us. The first day in the dark was fun, maybe even the second, I'm a camper at heart. The third day we were so so lucky because the power came back on at Remo's parents. Both Remo's brothers were there and we all slept on the floor in the family room, in front of the fireplace. I was prepared to put a pillow over Vince's face to get him to stop snoring. This is a man who travels often and is purposely placed by hotel people at the end of a hallway, so he doesn't disturb other guests. I think I thanked every God in the history of the world that Remo doesn't snore. It was worse than losing a freezer full of ice cream.
Four days later, we still weren't allowed on our street even. I didn't have to worry about work because all businesses were closed, my organization had opened its doors for employees who needed a place to stay, though on the other hand, public officials were begging people not to leave wherever they were. Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquake, their devastation is imaginable. I would never have fathomed freezing rain ultimately causing such powerful destruction.
Millions of people had no power. In the coldest months of the year, many of them never had it restored for over a month. All bridges onto the island were closed. 11,500 Armed Forces personnel were brought in to assist (the largest such deployment in history on Canadian soil); for the first time ever, the Métro subway system was totally disabled; railway locomotives were used to provide emergency electrical power, the icebreaker Louis St-Laurent was brought in to provide emergency electricity from its powerful engines. They say the Ice Storm of 1998 is perhaps one of the largest natural disasters ever to hit North America. At night we would see a flash of light (a power line?) and then crash. Like a war, it was like a war.
You never think you'll think you'll run out of food. But when your full freezer thaws out and you have no way to cook any of it, you understand waste. We couldn't buy milk or meat in the stores because everything they had was ruined, grocery stores had no power and suppliers, no means to get it there. You couldn't buy gas even because the stations who had generators to run the pumps, eventually ran out of gas.
It turned colder. Electric power towers began to crumple one by one, like toys smashed by the hand of God.
The airport, at one time, was being run by generators, as were many hospitals. Two of the three water processing plants for Montreal were shut down, the power had been cut to them. You were told not to drink the water, nor to ride elevators. (January 9th, Black Friday, the Montreal Fire Department was readying plans to bulldoze houses and apartments, dynamite them if needed, because there was only 1 water pumping station still operating in Montreal and they were estimating that we were 3 hours away from losing all water pressure to all the city. The Fire Department would have had no water to fight a major fire and was laying down drastic contingency plans.)
Day seven we listened to the hour long list of radio closure announcements. My work had asked that employees try to make it in. That was the morning I started spotting, the first time that I met Dr. Bray. Like a doe in headlights, not sure what was going wrong. His medical terms made me nervous, I barely knew how I got pregnant and here he was bed resting me with a warning not to get up for anything? At work, they didn't even know, I was terrified to tell them I was pregnant, half because I was still reasonably new, but mostly because married or not, they'd know what I did! My medical certificate said threatened miscarriage, I gave it to my very shy boss. I'm not sure who fared worse, but he was very kind. I started ten days of bed rest. Want to know what that was like? I had nothing to read because there were no libraries or stores open, but wait, my in-laws had 25 year old encyclopaedias. There was no TV and I had the company of an old fashioned Italian mama. She kept me entertained with what so and so did to her before the encyclopaedias were even born. Insane. I thought I would go insane. I spent my hours craving; double stuff oreos, red jello and cheese whiz. I memorized What to Expect When You're Expecting and changed my mind when I truly understood how the baby was getting out. If you're smiling at that, I'm afraid you're not taking me seriously. I was really freaked out.
Our house was in darkness for eleven days, our roof shingles shot and we had two trees left in our yard. The house smelled stale and goop leaked out the fridges and freezer. It took over a month to get our cable back but I think I'd suffer more now without cable than I did then. You know what I remember most about that difficult time? The incredibly heartwarming moments. Getting coffee out to the men from Vermont on our street. Crews from all across the north eastern states charged up here to help. Without stopping to eat or sleep they worked frantically in the cold, determined to restore our power. Army trucks charging up and down the streets. A new spirit of camaraderie evolved. Neighbours helping each other without asking. Looking for ways to keep warm and fight off the onslaught of killer rain tied us together. When finally electricity was restored, we wandered the house, forgetting to turn on the lights and still looking for matches to light candles. At the beginning of the blackout we did the contrary, flipping on dead switches. Habits die slowly, new habits die even more slowly. Blackout anxiety set in.
It was an incredible time. Forecasters insist it'll be at least a hundred years before we could again experience a disaster of this magnitude. May I knock on wood. Twice for good measure.
This New Year's eve we hustled like maniacs to get ready for our party, I prepared more food than our wedding and in the afternoon the freezing rain started. We're the last house on our very short street, on the edge of what used to be a golf course. In the summer it was great because getting a permit to close off our street for the kid's party was not a problem, but in the winter our street is not a cleaning priority. An hour before the stores closed, Remo and I ran out to pick up the balloons and buy him some pyjamas (imagine throwing a pyjama party and you're the only one not in pyjamas?) and we pulled out of the garage and slid across sheer ice. Our tires simply spun. Frantically, I tried to call city hall, public works, anybody to get them to come and salt our street. I kept getting answering machines, it seems the people in charge celebrate the holidays. I have no idea who I phoned, but when we got home, the fire department called to say the people in charge of our street were pretty sure they'd finished our area. I told him it wasn't true and he was apologetic but suggested we call and complain on Friday. Ugh. Remo was spreading every bag of salt and sand we owned but it wasn't working. As if I had all the time in the world with a party an hour away, I had to call everyone and beg them not to smash into each other.
In then end, if I count the kids (and trust me on this, they beg to be counted), we were about 30 people. Seeing everyone at the door with pink and red pyjamas hanging from their winter coats was hilarious. This year, I had them come over later so the kids would be tired, but those kids stayed up till after the parents started conking out. My plan to randomly draw names of parents to go downstairs and watch the kids, didn't fly. We all made our new year's resolutions; mine is to relax with the family on Sundays. Stephane (who is the funniest person in the world yet still shocked us with his), has decided he will not, I'm struggling to find the least embarrassing way to write this, pass gas in public. His wife said then hers is to only be with him in public. Alas, it was a really great evening. Good people, so many laughs. The last group left at 3:00am, we were in bed by 3:30. For the record, Kaillan was up at 6:00 and that was SO painful.
On the pregnancy front, I'm feeling much better. My days are so much better, by late afternoon I start feeling a little ill but while I still feel nauseous, only beef or irony vegetables kill me. This Monday I'm doing the triple screening test and next Thursday I see Dr. Bray. Shoot, I just realized I never did the blood tests I was supposed to do. I've been eating so much lately, my weight has to be back to normal, and I know I'll be showing much earlier this time. Even now I find quite a few things uncomfortable.
Kaillan started calling Brandan "Babbeeeee" and Brandan hates it. He asked me to get her to call him J.J., like Jay Jay the jet airplane. I find explaining things to her difficult. Kaillan started waking up every hour on the hour crying. Because my parents are here, the first night I took her in the bed with me to get her to stop screaming bloody murder. She insisted on sleeping in this incredibly akward position with her face on top of mine. I'd move her and she'd come back. Ever since then she screams frantically to go back in our bed where she can sleep on my head. Since she was brand new, Kaillan has always slept with her legs pulled up under her, her arms tucked under her chest and her bum in the air. If you try and straighten her out when she's sleeping, limbs fly back under her like magnets. I'm wondering if now that she's bigger they're pins and needles and she's waking up because they hurt! Brandan still makes his way to our bed every single night (I'm convinced it's because we coslept him when he was a baby) and I spend quite a bit of time wondering how I'll juggle a nursing newborn too. Will we ever sleep again? Worse, if we actually do sleep, would we ever wake up?
Because on the weekend Remo proudly bragged to our friends the one statement I've learned we should NEVER make, something about how we haven't been sick in months (I promptly knocked the closest wood I could find - his head), Brandan started a cold and Kaillan looks a little glossy eyed.
Last night I put in a movie for Brandan, Babe, Lost in the City and thank God he fell asleep because the movie was awful. My Dad and I watched it to the end, I'm not sure if we were hoping it would turn around or just reeling because it was so not appropriate for kids. Sure there was a happy ending, but it was nothing like the first one and a waste of twenty dollars.
I crave dill pickles. I don't even particularly like them. But two days in a row I went to the cafeteria for a tuna sandwich with dill pickles and carrots on the side. In fairness, you don't generally go to our cafeteria unless you're desperate and I couldn't go out because I'm up to my ears in my TTM board. There's a bunch of you I'll be getting back at just as soon as I get some work done. All of a sudden I feel very Jeanette-ey.
Till then,
Allisun
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