Girl Who Is Going To Be Ok

At the end of January, John had to go to L.A. for work. I usually go with him, but a big winter storm was coming and I thought one of us should stay home just in case it’s actually bad. (This is what we in the biz call foreshadowing.)

I started a new job that week and was super in the weeds. Before he left for L.A. on Thursday, John went to the store and got some food that I could eat if the power went out for a few hours, or a day. He also charged this big battery we have that will hold a charge for days and charge our phones, lanterns, etc. He charged all our lanterns, put everything out for me. Whatever was coming, I was ready.

On Friday, I worked at the bookstore and got slightly triggered thinking back to the pandemic. In March 2020, I worked at the bookstore the day before Nashville’s mayor declared a stay-at-home order. That day was wild. People streamed in buying books to read during what we thought would only be two weeks at home.

This Friday before the storm was similar. Everyone coming in was talking about the storm and how much reading they were going to get done. My spidey sense tingled remembering the last time I sold a bunch of people books for what they thought was going to be a “good time to get some reading done.” God help these pattern recognition skills.

On Saturday, it snowed a little, but no ice. People were chucking it up online about how overblown the forecasts were. I’m a Nash Severe Weather stan, so I didn’t contribute to the pile on, but I was glad the storm didn’t materialize. John was flying home the next day. It was going to be fine.

I woke up on Sunday at 6 A.M., the exact moment the power blinked off. I was hearing sounds that could have been gunshots, but I wasn’t sure. I have cats, so there was nothing to do but feed them and then try to figure out what was happening outside. It was still dark outside.

I reported the power outage and opened my neighborhood’s private Facebook page. Everyone’s power was out. The sound I was hearing was the sound of trees breaking and branches snapping. Everything was coated in inches of ice that had started falling at some point while I was asleep. It was gorgeous. It was terrifying.

John was scheduled to land in Nashville around 3 P.M. I didn’t think they’d let any flights into Nashville, and even if they did, the roads were under a thick sheet of ice. His flight kept getting delayed, but it didn’t get cancelled. In a stroke of luck, he had an early morning flight out of L.A. All of his coworkers had later flights and all of their flights to Nashville were cancelled. John’s wasn’t.

With nothing to do but go quietly insane inside my house, I spent the day online, spiraling. In the early afternoon, people started saying that if you don’t have power or heat, you need to leave NOW. This is the window where the roads are passable enough that you should try to get out.

When I look back at this storm, this is the moment when everything changed. This is when my logical brain clicked off and fear and emotion took over. The directive to “leave now” felt like life or death, and I was paralyzed by the decision.

What was I supposed to do? Stay home and wait on John, or do what everyone online was suggesting - use this opportunity to try and get out?

I couldn’t talk to John. He was in the air. My friends cared, but they were in the same boat. No one could help anyone but themselves. Plus, I legit live in the country. None of my friends live near me. Then I remembered Sandra. Sandra is my across-the-street neighbor. I say “across the street,” but I have a quarter-mile driveway, so our houses are easily a half mile apart.

I texted Sandra and asked if I could survive the night in a house without heat. She remembered that our house used to have a wood-burning stove and asked about that. I had to confess that we sold it to make room for our couch and TV. She offered to let me come over to her house. She didn’t have power either, but she had a working gas fireplace. I thanked her and told her I’d get back to her.

I called my friend Nicole, who has extensive hurricane experience and is not scared of death conversations. Crying, I asked her, “Will I die if I sleep in this house?” She very calmly told me no, I will not die.

My car was outside, but it was a frozen block of ice. Our quarter-mile driveway was also a sheet of ice. There were reports on the neighborhood Facebook page of trees and power lines down all over my neighborhood. Even if I wanted to leave, I really couldn’t.

I texted Sandra again and she called me. She was out looking around and said she could see halfway down my driveway and it was clear of trees and branches. If I wanted to drive out, it was possibly clear. I was probably crying. I just remember her saying, “I can meet you halfway down your driveway and walk you to my house.”

Right then, John texted that he had landed and was on his way home. He said it should take him about 45 minutes and that he booked us two nights at a hotel. I was crying and shaking and just frantically packed a tote bag for a night at a hotel. It was dark again, so I sat in the dark with the cats waiting on John.

Here are some things you should know about John. He grew up in the Maryland/D.C. area and can easily drive in ice and snow. He has a 4x4 truck. He’s an Eagle Scout and an engineer and can truly figure out almost anything. He loves me and our cats more than anything in the world.

I knew not to call or text him while he was driving. But 45 minutes came and went and I was scared. At around the hour mark, I heard the crunch of his tires on the driveway.

There was no time. Every minute that passed, the roads were getting worse. The temperature outside was falling dramatically. We had to get out of our neighborhood and get to the hotel.

I know John well enough to know that he was shaken, but he just hopped back in the truck and started driving us out. He warned me that there was a part of the drive where I was going to have to close my eyes. He said there were trees and power lines down everywhere, but he knew how to get out.

I was shocked at what I saw. I’ve seen tornado damage, but this wasn’t that. Trees weren’t uprooted. They were split in half. There were power, phone and internet lines down everywhere. I’ve now heard people say that it looked like hurricane damage. No part of any road was clear. Our neighbors were out in the dark, in the ice, clearing the trees with chainsaws so people could get out of our neighborhood. I’ve never seen anything like it. It looked like an apocalypse movie.

I think at this point it was around 7 P.M. We got out of our neighborhood and started driving across town to our hotel. Kroger was open, so we ran inside to grab something to eat for dinner. Every hotel in town was full. Ours had a homemade sign on the door that said “No more rooms.” If John hadn’t thought to reserve our room from L.A. I don’t know what we would’ve done.

We made the decision to leave our two cats at home. The hotel allowed dogs, but not cats. We talked to our friends and everyone was leaving their cats at home. “The cats would be fine,” everyone said. I mean, our cats both used to live outside, so they probably would be fine. I didn’t love it, but we decided that if at any point, we were worried the cats would die, we would sneak them into the hotel. Plus, it would only be for a few days, right?

We checked into the hotel on Sunday night. Every day, we extended our stay another night. Everyone in the hotel was a storm refugee. There was a shared camaraderie that was honestly nice and reminded of post-9/11 NYC. There was a lot of grace given to barking dogs and screaming kids, both, I’m sure, sick of being locked up in a hotel room for days on end.

We bought a $1,000 generator, borrowed an extra space heater from the owner of the HVAC company we use and went to the house every day to warm up the cats. John would turn on the generator, plug in our three space heaters and sequester the cats to one room so they could get warm. We also did things like run our water, run the outdoor faucets, pour this purple house-grade antifreeze stuff down the pipes, clean the litter boxes, etc.

On Friday, it started snowing again and was supposed to get down to single digit temps overnight. This was when I broke. Our poor cats had been in that cold house, alone since Sunday. I started crying at Firehouse Subs and told John it was time to bring the cats to the hotel. It was snowing so hard. We ran into Publix and bought a Rubbermaid tote, litter, a scoop, poop bags, treats, food and a water bowl. Then we drove to our house, loaded up the cats in their carriers and drove them to the hotel.

John is a smoker, which means he knows all the places you can hide in and around a hotel. He knew which door we could sneak the cats through. He was right. No one saw us. We were on the third floor, so we carried them up three flights of stairs. They meowed the whole time. It was so loud, lol. I got them settled in the room while John went back out to get the supplies. He said a man and woman saw him carrying it all in the back door and he heard the man say, “See? They brought their cats.” John turned around and said, “You didn’t see nothing.”

People don’t appreciate John’s sense of humor, but I do.

That Friday night was the first time I relaxed. The cats were with us, we were all warm, we were going to be ok. Then the power in the hotel went out.

For three hours, we listened to almost everyone in our hotel pack up and leave. John checked and there still weren’t other hotels nearby with open rooms. Plus, we had the cats now, so we couldn’t just walk into a hotel holding two cats and a Rubbermaid tote full of litter and ask for a room. We decided to wait it out. Luckily, the power came back on after a few hours and stayed on.

Our friends Shannon and Buckley had a house we could move into on Sunday. It was Shannon’s mom’s house. She was leaving to go out of town and more than happily offered us her house. We checked out of the hotel on Sunday morning and moved into the house in East Nashville. Later that day, the power in our house came back on. It had been out for eight days. We had been in the hotel for eight days.

While John was at the house putting the generator and space heaters away, the water went out. We live in between two big roads and there were water main breaks on both roads. No one knew when we’d have water. We decided to stay at the house in East Nashville until we had water. Not as important, but we also didn’t have internet. No one did. The internet and the power lines were a mess everywhere.

Important to note, I was working this whole time, because I’m insane and broken in a very American, capitalistic, perfectionist way. This is why when you hear my Burnt Toast episode, I’m in a public library. I was still displaced.

On Wednesday, our water came back on and we moved back into our house. On Friday, our internet came back on. All in all, it was about two weeks from storm’s coming, storm’s here, displaced, back home. Two weeks in fight or flight is hell on your nervous system. It’s no surprise that as soon as I went back to work in the bookstore I caught a cold, and then that cold turned into pharyngitis, which I am still recovering from.

The last time I knew the date, it was January 24, the day before the storm, and somehow it is now the first week of March. So yeah, that’s where I’ve been.

🧈 I’m THRILLED to be the newest member of the Burnt Toast team! Virginia brought me on in January to produce the Burnt Toast podcast. Virginia and Corinne interviewed me on the pod, which you can listen to here.

📚 I’ll be in conversation with Lindy West for her new memoir ADULT BRACES on March 18 at Parnassus Books. The event is free to attend, but you have to RSVP. You can do that here. Hurry, because it’s almost full.

🫶🏼 I already did a public thank you on Instagram, but to everyone who helped us during the storm, thank you. It was a nightmare that I hope to never relive, but so many of you did so much.

😭 This no longer a secret, so I’m able to tell you that Ann Patchett not only paid for our eight-day hotel stay, she also paid me for all the shifts I missed due to the storm. She did this for the entire bookstore staff. So the next time you want to buy a book, please buy it from Parnassus.

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