The ancient date is
an intersection. I am sure of this because of the meticulous records of
weathermen and government. About the time we heard thundersnow, blinded in that
driveway down which no cars could travel, the Joint Chiefs told Reagan they
could protect, not avenge, America from nuclear fire. The idea, the hopes were
so high, they were in orbit over our country, a network in the stars to shoot
down the missiles and prevent the war.
The president may
have been pondering as the first flakes fell over the capital while to the
north, I saw a snowmobile carom down Keighler Avenue as if the apocalypse had
already fallen and the cars we depended upon were suddenly useless as an
appendix.
We built snow forts
the next day after the blizzard finally relented, walls of white taller than we
had imagined were possible, defending our childhoods against nameless threats
we knew lurked. Meanwhile, our parents broke down the frozen battlements just
so their world could function.
About then, perhaps
the walls closed in and grew taller in Reagan’s mind, the paradox between
seeing the madness of Mutually Assured Destruction and selling the Evil Empire
and Star Wars like an actor pitching soap.
It is another
convenient juxtaposition, all things coming together like weather fronts. It
was before the 1980s, the true ‘80s, my ‘80s, really began. It all happened
just before Michael Jackson moonwalked over luminous floor tiles, before Soviet
fire destroyed its target, black box and bodies falling far from Seoul.
It happened when we
were just young enough not to see what danger, true danger, lurked under all
the world’s beds.
