A Winter Memory

One of Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop prompts for this week is to share a favorite winter memory. Now I don’t personally like winter. I however have this weird kind of love/hate relationship with it and especially with snow. It looks beautiful, but my already almost nonexistent orientation and mobility skills go out the window entirely when it snows. Still, I am going to share a memory involving snow. It’s not really a cherished memory, but I’d really like to share it.

On Friday, November 25, 2005, the eastern half of the Netherlands was suddenly hit with a big snowstorm. I lived in Apeldoorn in the central-eastern part of the country. During the week, I attended a rehabilitation center for the blind also in Apeldoorn at the time. It was a residential center, because blind people from all over the country went to it. That being said, the center closed on Friday afternoon for the week-end.

The snowstorm started at around noon. I left the center to go to the bus stop for the bus home at around 1PM. I hardly made it to the bus stop, only to find out public transportation had been canceled because of the weather.

I walked back to the center to call a ParaTransit taxi home. They first informed me it might take several hours for the taxi to arrive, then called me to inform me all transportation had been canceled.

By 4PM, my sister offered to come to the center by tandem bike to take me home. This sounded crazy even to me, but she persisted.

I need to add here that, like I said, clients of the center came from all over the country. The day staff were calling the manager by this time to request clients who lived out of city could stay at the center for another day. This would’ve been doable, as the center did have beds for during the rest of the week and the staff offered to get them some takeout food and stay for the night. The manager though refused.

By 4:30, a staff had decided to drive me home. My sister did end up cycling through the snowstorm to the center, but thankfully she didn’t have to make the way back with me on the tandem as well. That would’ve been nearly impossible, as I struggle to put in enough strength to do my part of the biking even in normal weather.

Some clients ended up staying with staff for the night, including blind staff who didn’t really feel comfortable with it. Of course, the manager didn’t take in any clients. Some other clients ended up being taken home by taxis in the evening. One of them made it home to southern Limburg, which is normally about a 2 1/2 hour’s drive, at five o’clock in the morning. The taxi driver ended up hitting the crash barrier on the way back north.

Needless to say the resident council, which I was a member of, filed an official complaint about the manager’s way of handling the situation. The man from southern Limburg was the resident council representative for the broader organization’s client council. He and the clients who’d had to stay with staff, were offered a sheepish apology and some flowers. The staff involved didn’t even get those.

Now that I’ve written this post, I realize November isn’t technically winter. Let’s call this a snowy memory then.