The night after the storm that splayed the city’s tree canopy and knocked out the power grid, I dreamed I was told by my mother, who at this time last year was still somewhat fresh off a successful lumpectomy and a round of radiation, that it was now my turn. She had been told this by “the doctor,” whom I had only met briefly, after I had done the test, a sort of blood test, though it was a white tissue that pooled into the vial. The dream consisted of me trying to find out which breast contained the cancerous cells, what type, what stage. It was that kind of dream, the never-finding-out kind. My mother had the answers, had been given them by the doctor, but every time she started telling me, something always caused the subject to be changed. I wish I could properly describe the atmosphere of that dream. The closest I can get is the very palest blue.
I rarely remember dreams, but this one, I could tell while it was happening, was searing itself into memory. That light, light blue coloured the rest of my sleep and followed me into the next morning, so real-feeling I was certain, in the night, neither conscious nor unconscious, that I was now ill, that there was simply no way this news wasn’t true, that the dream was more than premonition, it was prelude.
Maybe you’re familiar with the green hue clouds take on in extreme storms. If you live in the corridor between Windsor and Quebec City you might have seen that colour too last May. The clouds that rolled in on that humid afternoon were strongly, sickly green. We had been on the porch waiting for the red cell on the radar map, big as a thumbprint, to arrive, thinking we’d take in the flash-bang out there for a bit, but then the wind began to sound like a high-up train and the first gusts threw the rain horizontally into our faces and Mark saw a third of the tall tree across the street separate and fly off to the east. I observed the rest from an interior doorway, waiting for the funnel to appear in the kitchen window, or for the trees—when I could see them through what I can only call gusts of water—being whipped horizontally, every which way, to start ripping apart, and then we’d make for the basement. Or rather, I would. Mark was in the living room window, just on the other side of the glass from where we had been sitting, holding the dog, spectating. He has a different history with storms. I, having had a few close calls with tornados through my childhood, including the F4 that ripped a path between Edmonton and Sherwood Park in 1987, know acutely when a storm is taking lives.
We had no warning, beyond that red dot on the radar map. We had been thinking about a bike ride, about a patio; it was a beautiful day but Mark thought to check the weather. Claims that an emergency alert had gone out to people’s phones were later amended: the winds in our city were predicted to be two kilometres per hour below the threshold that triggers an alert. There were people out on boats, on golf courses, hiking through nature preserves. It had been a beautiful, balmy, late spring day. Not many were checking the weather.
It became clear soon after the cell passed—maybe fifteen minutes in all—that the power would not be coming back on for some time. Shreds of trees everywhere. Branches ripped, snapped in half, some massive. Neighbour’s young maple down. Neighbour’s big maple down. Trees in the park at the end of the block down. Trees blown apart, shredded. Power lines threading every which way. People standing, looking up at trees, looking down at where the limbs fell. I couldn’t get more than a few sporadic seconds of phone reception, a few four-second phone calls to family, quick bursts of essential info. At first, sending and receiving texts was only possible at the park, and then there was no signal at all. We later learned that the cell tower had bent in the wind. All was quiet, save for people talking in the street, save for the birds, busy with their own recovery and tending. Two juvenile grackles following a parent along strewn streets, mouths open, squawking for food. Neighbours who could get through to their people sharing news of the scope of the storm: everything down for miles and miles around, the whole city without power and all the towns surrounding too. Water still came out of the taps; we could still flush the toilet. Sounds of rakes and axes. A chainsaw into a tree limb. A neighbour let us plug our fridge into their generator for a while. Another neighbour gave us hot water from her gas stove the next morning and we made coffee. It’s vital to note that we didn’t sweat a single thing.
The second night, another dream: being present, intimately, as a man abuses a woman, screams at her, shoves her into walls and furniture, holds a gun to her head. Horrifying. Hiding behind racking for fear of it. Seeing that the woman was accustomed to it, was protecting others, maybe me, from it.
Our time taken up the next day with making plans for the food in the fridge, taking inventory of wood for the fire pit, propane, gasoline, matches, candles, flashlights. What cash or coin we had on us. And even unprepared, the inventory showed profound plenty, certainly enough to share, unless this becomes long-term. We do a calculation, divide plenty by time, yield approximate duration. We check in with the neighbours, make sure their calculations are favourable.
We find one spot downtown where we can get cell service, and it happens to be on a patio that is open and serving beer by candlelight, cash only. We sit with two cans in front of us, sending our messages, checking for news. We show each other photos of the same sort of stuff we just rode past on our bikes to get here: enormous maples pushed over, their roots and the earth around them exposed. Monstrous limbs fallen across roads or tangled, suspended in power lines, and power lines everywhere, which we rode over without concern because not one of them could possibly be live, trees on cars, on sheds, on garages, trees fallen into porches and onto roofs. On our phones we learn about the deaths, mostly from trees falling. Trees on walking trails, trees on campers. Boats capsized in lakes.
The next day, we start devising, promising, we’ll start doing things differently, for this is going to happen again and with more strength and frequency. Cash on hand, stores of water and food. Solar charger, cookstove. A way to boil water. Coffee grounds vac-packed in the freezer. Such plenty, such compass point. We spend the evenings out on the porch, greeting or chatting with everyone who walks by. Earlier we drove up only as far as Lakefield, to observe a little more of what happened, to search for cell signal so I could call my family. A row of three, four dozen power poles, tall ones, felled or snapped along the highway. A crew, a tiny human crew, with their attention on one in the row.
Later, much later, we’d learn the term derecho, learn that our city lost some 800 trees. You can still see their skeletons everywhere. I still can’t find the words for the feeling this leaves.
I dream that night that my car gets stuck in the river’s break-up and I’m nearly washed away, then my aunt is arrested and thrown in the slammer for handcuffing a police officer to a parking sign, and surely she’ll die in prison; what was she thinking. Surely they’ll kill her for what she’s done.
That was an electifying account of dream and storm and aftermath! Thanks for this!
Laurie, I read this immediately after reading an account in New Lines- the marvelous online magazine of long reads on unexpected subjects -A first-hand account of a family's perilous journey out of Khartoum - and am now reflecting on the separate-yet-related perils and havoc of the earth's atmosphere gone awry and of men with fearsome weapons strewing bodies not trees int he streets., all of it, sky and guns, violence of human creation. As for your dreams, Yikes. (Alice Major also has dreams in her Knife on Snow.)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#search/new+lines/FMfcgzGsmWwnPVVNjKTTjHCnZcjWjpTn