Beyond Cold – Entry 7 in the story of my sister and me

I think I’m ready for a change. This is how I felt in college. There’s something I want, but I don’t know what it is yet. I just feel restless. I’m not unhappy, it’s just getting to be about that time. 

Pat Loehmer

 Flashback

            Knock. Knock. Knock.

            I rolled over in bed and knocked on my bedroom wall twice in return. I lay there awake for a few minutes, listening. The house remained quiet, Mom and Dad fast asleep.

            I eased out of my twin bed, slid my bedroom door open, crept through the living room and pushed open the first (and only) door on the right. I slipped into the room and noiselessly shut the door tight.

            I think I was maybe in fifth grade, when our brother moved out of the third and smallest bedroom in the house and into the room above the garage. I was finally going to get my own bedroom!

            When my sister Pat left for college, I thought about moving back into the larger bedroom, the one she and I had shared for years, but it just didn’t feel right. I couldn’t sleep there alone.

            But when Pat came home on the weekends and tapped on my wall with the code knocks we’d made up years before, I would end up back in the spare bed. We’d whisper – and giggle - half the night.

            She had wanted to be a veterinarian for as long as anyone could remember. She loved any and every animal she ever met, and graduating from high school with a 4.0, she could do anything she wanted to.

            After a few years at UW-River Falls, majoring in pre-vet, while working in the electrical shop at the paper mill during the summer, she decided to take a totally different career path. She transferred to UW-Stevens Point, which was closer to home, but also so she could change her major to paper science. I think she only stayed a semester there. The mill offered her a position in the electrical department and she would go on to take classes to become a licensed electrician.  

            Few women worked at the paper mill at the time, and few women anywhere were electricians. Pat would never let something like being female slow her down or prevent her from doing what she wanted. 

 February 1997

            “Think you can call in sick tomorrow?”

            “Of course.” I rarely called in sick because I was feeling ill. I would use some lame excuse, migraine seemed to usually work, but I think my manager realized what I was really doing those rare days I didn’t make it to work. “What’s up?”

            “I’m feeling pretty good tonight and I think it’s time we took a ride.”

            “It’s the middle of winter.”

            “So.”

            I picked her up early the next morning and we headed up north to some of our favorite waterfalls. What would they look like in the winter, would they be frozen or too buried in snow to be seen?

            Our first stop was the county park on the Turtle Flowage, where we had camped with Judy the summer before. The flowage was covered in snow and ice thick enough to hold not only the two of us, but four-wheel drives and ice shacks. We struggled through the snow, me leading the way, cutting what path I could to make it easier for Pat to get through. We thought we were getting close to the falls but stopped when we heard the sound of rushing water. The water of the meager falls still had enough power to force through the snow. Hmm? we thought as we stood panting a mere foot from the open water, and then we wisely tromped back to solid ground.

The falls at Black River Harbor were more of the same, except that our trek through the snow was much longer and followed a rabbit path instead of the boardwalk which led tourists to this spot in the summer. We were pretty much alone, not even any rabbits out that day.

We continued our drive and came out on Lake Superior. Up until that point the air outside felt like the chill of any other winter day. The sun was shining, and it felt warm when we turned our faces to it. But we had been raised on Wisconsin winters and as long as the thermometer stayed above zero Fahrenheit, we were comfortable.  

When we got to Lake Superior, however, it was as if all life had stopped. It wasn't just the cold and it wasn't even the wind because there was none. The air was still; there was no movement in the sky or the ground around us. No birds were flying and there was no noise whatsoever. It was like walking into a vacuum.

I thought that Gitche Gumee was powerful in the summer, when the waves crash on the shore, unrelenting in their actions. The power to just withdraw heat, movement, the very air above was a power I could barely fathom. The Lake was covered in snow, with drifts like waves upon the beach, and as far as you could see it was one solid whiteness, the sky blending into the horizon. It reminded me of a lunar landscape.

            "Wow," Pat said, "not quite what I expected."

            "I know. It’s like being on another planet. It’s beyond cold.” I wondered, though, if that was what the cancer felt like to her or the chemo running through her veins. Both sucking away at her life.

We took our pictures and fled back to the SUV. Then drove to a restaurant in Bessemer for hot chocolate.