Ice, Ice, Baby

As we are being pelted with ice this Valentine’s Day (and before we lose power), I want to share a memory of another Valentine’s Day, many years ago, when Husband and I were not yet married.

In fact we hadn’t been living together very long at all, since I’d moved back from Boston only a year or so past. At long last I’d landed a full time job I liked, in an advertising agency in Rhinebeck, down the highway a tad and across the river from Saugerties, where we lived with his mother and his dog and (for a time) his sister.

And I didn’t know it yet, but Husband-to-be had a surprise in store for me that Valentine’s Day. He’d made dinner reservations and booked a room at the beautiful, historic (and romantic) Beekman Arms, which was just around the corner from where I worked. He said he wanted to take me to dinner in Rhinebeck and he’d pick me up at the office (VD was plum-smack in the middle of the work-week that year). When he arrived, not only did he tell me what he’d done but also surprised me further having packed up a complete business-appropriate outfit for the next day (well, the blouse didn’t quite go with the pants, and the shoes…heck, I just give the guy props for thinking ahead). Not only would this be perfectly wonderfully romantic, he’d thought, but probably thought also that we could sleep in the next morning since the agency was literally a hop, skip and a jump away.

There was one thing he didn’t plan for. (Actually, two, but I’ll get to the other one later.) Since the ad agency was very tiny and on a very tight budget, there were no bucks in the coffers for things like couriers and overnight packages when items being delivered fell within driving distance of an employee’s normal commute. And earlier that afternoon, I’d promised my co-worker that I would pick up some film she needed from our photographer in Kingston on my way in the next morning. And now, since Husband and I would be waking up just a hop, skip and jump away from the agency, I’d have to wake up even earlier in order to hop, skip and jump over the river and through the woods to the photographer’s house we go and back again in time for Janette to make the printer’s deadline on her project.

OK, I let that go. We still had a romantic dinner ahead of us, and an actual night in an actual inn all to ourselves, and I didn’t want to ruin it by thinking of the next morning.

And it was nice. Dinner was served beside a roaring fireplace, then we retired to our room (in a private little annex building in back of the inn). Except I remember at one point waking up in the wee hours, Husband sleeping soundly next to me, and hearing the sound of ice pelting the roof of the inn.

Which was another thing he didn’t plan for. An ice storm. A navigatable bit of snow was in the forecast, nothing to sweat about, but this was one of those February surprises. I went back to sleep, hoping it was just a dream, but when I woke again, I saw it was true. A good half-inch of ice had coated the world. The inn. The roads. And both of our cars.

But I was not yet a recovering workaholic at the time, and gol’ darn it, I was going to chip out my car and drive to Kingston and pick up that film and drive it back to Rhinebeck.

Fortunately, I didn’t hit anything, but the drive was dicey. And I made it to work, film in glove, albeit a little late, but boy, I would like that morning back. I’d have called Janette at home, said that going anywhere would be completely ridiculous, suggest she arrange a courier and expense it under “acts of God,” and then I’d snuggle back under the covers beside my future husband. And when we got up, we’d call room service for breakfast. And when we were good and ready (or checkout time, whichever came first), we’d say our goodbyes, and hopefully by then the road crews would have worked their magic.

And twenty years later we have another ice storm. On this Valentine’s Day, Husband wakes up, shuffles into my computer room to grumble “Happy VD.” He’s grumpy. The ice on the roof kept waking him up. I sleep with earplugs, so I can afford the charity to like the sound now. It makes me feel safe and protected, snuggled dry and warm into my house with hot tea and heat, with no cars to chip out and nowhere to go. I’m missing a massage appointment, which annoys me mildly, but I’ll reschedule it for another day.

He’s gone downstairs to start the coffee IV. And I’m upstairs, remembering another storm, another time, a time with surprises that were good and sweet instead of the bad kind that hit you like bricks in the face. Remembering fireside dinners, and when being iced in alone together in a romantic hotel room would have been enough.

But we have a different kind of warmth and safety now. In knowing that every morning he’ll come into my room to say hello, and be just downstairs.

In any kind of weather.