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Dear Halloween Blizzard of 1991,
It is now the winter of 2021. I am 30 years away from you, but the many years between us will not diminish your amazing power. I was 10 when you visited. I am now 41 years old, older than my mother in 1991.
Every year, when a hurricane hits Minnesota, I bring you. I speak of you to my three children as one of the most amazing things in my life.
Here is what I tell you:
“It was Halloween night. My sister and I were either cheating or healing. Our father sat in the car, slowly following us until late in the evening. We were still relatively new in the United States, and we had been in the country for only four years. We were refugees and poor. We did not have the funds to buy the best heroic clothes or traditional folk clothes. We wore our regular clothes. On our faces, we had cheap plastic masks. My sister must have been a magician. I was a brown bear with a red bow on the side. As we ran from house to house, I wiped the bear’s skin with my breath. In the flash of my bear’s eyes, I looked up at the streetlights showing the way. Under their orange light, I saw white snowflakes flying.
“My heartbeat became a clock that I knew we were struggling with when the pus was collected and causing a slippery slope under our feet. However, guided by the Halloween spirit, my sister and I fled from one neighbor’s house to another. When plastic bags themselves we were in the arms, the wind was blowing and the freezing cold of the bones swept through us and made us tremble. We struggled with the cold for as long as we could.
“That night, before I climbed into bed and under the blankets, I stood by the window and looked out. I noticed that the snow had already covered the ground. Pumpkins in the balconies of neighbors and friends were buried under the white canopy. I prayed for the snow to fall.
“I wanted the snow to fall in all the dirty places in our city. I wanted the snow to wipe out everything I knew so I could think of something new. I wanted the schools to end. Workplace to close so that women and men do not get up too early. I wanted everything to stop – for a while.
“I fell asleep and dreamed of a land covered with soft snow, a world without noise, where families could play beautifully in the snow.
“The next morning I found what I was looking for. I woke up. I looked outside. I screamed with joy. Snow was right in the middle of our window. I woke up my sister. We ran to the kitchen. Mom and Dad were at the front door and then the back door trying to open it. They couldn’t. We were trapped by snow. Snow that was too long if I was tall!
“My father said, ‘If you can get it ready soon, if Mother and I can open one of these doors, you can come with me outside.
“I wear pants. I wore several shirts. I grabbed my jacket. I closed it. I grabbed my ribs, and I was ready. I was like a football player waiting for a game. My feet could not stand.
“My parents couldn’t open the front door, but Dad had the idea of a back door. He opened the kitchen window. He pushed out the veil. He climbed up and down the sill. Outside the house, he dug a door with an old shovel.
“My father told me to follow him. He made stairs in the snow – big, big stairs – by lifting his legs up as high as he could on top of the moving white. We could not see the stairs or ledges, bushes or cars. Everything was covered. The wind blew so hard that there were piles of hail longer than I could. At one point, I drowned and sank to my chest in the snow.
“The only word I made was amazing: split lips, laughter and fear flooding, everywhere, everywhere. Our whole yard was empty. Trees were falling because of the snow. On the sidewalk, on the sidewalk, on the lawn of the neighborhood, there was nothing that we could tread on.
“All over the world, the world had changed. On Halloween night, I lay in bed thinking that I would wake up and find an iceberg. I had no way of seeing what was in front of me: snow, climbing on the roof of a house. There was more snow on the ground than I had ever seen in my life, and it was amazing. ”
Each time I brought up the subject, my children would open their mouths wide in fear. Their eyes widen. They put their little hands up under their jaws and exclaimed, “I want it to be that way too, Mommy.”
Through my articles, they will be with me after you, Blizzard of 1991.
Through the eyes of my children, unaware that within 24 hours, 28 inches of snow fell on these cities. Little do they know that at least three men died of a heart attack from a snowstorm. Little do they know that in all these cities, there were people who lost their fingers on the snowy jaws, some reconnected and others who lost forever. Unbeknownst to them in clearing snow from the streets to make 1,700 schools and businesses around the town work, Twin Cities spent $ 700,000. He only knows what I knew at the time.
All he knew was that one dark Halloween night, a Hmong girl made her wish, and in the morning she woke up and found what she was looking for. They just know that the reality of a desire is often beyond the reach of the mind and knowledge of the seeker.
Blizzard of 1991, you went through everything I knew could happen. You taught me that anything is possible in the hands of nature. When I become an old woman, remembering you will make me the youngest in the world.
With dignity,
Kalia
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