A Long Spell of Gray

After the first few days of the fog, Nana had managed to run a length of clothesline from the back door to the wood shed and convinced us it would be an adventure to fill the woodbox while holding onto the rope with one hand and not be swallowed up.

But after six days of being fog bound, even this was losing its charm and tempers were beginning to fray.

“You got stock in Nova Scotia Power and Light?” my mother snapped at me when I left the sunporch lights on overnight.

“Shut the damned back door!” my grandmother angrily hollered at her, “You weren't raised in no barn!”

And so it went. We'd worn out the dominoes, Monopoly'd ourselves into a stupor, run out of card games, re-read every precious book and written letters to everyone we knew. Nana couldn't face another minute of knitting and in a fit of temper, my mother had ripped out half of her crocheting. Driving was treacherous, we couldn't do wash, and the fog horn was on everyone's last nerve. The pale, gray fog was thick as molasses, wet and dense enough to squeeze like a sponge. It obscured the road, the driveway, the old Lincoln, even the dogs de-materialized after a few steps from the back door. We were a thoroughly unhappy and irritable bunch.

When it still hadn't cleared by the eight day, we were barely speaking and the natives were restless. The tourists had abandoned us for the clear skies of The Valley, there'd been no mail for a week, the fishermen were desperate and the factory was shut down. Only those who lived within walking distance of the church had made the perilous trek for Sunday services and while James had preached, it was only to a dozen or so good souls, some of whom were openly suspect about the fog being a visitation from the devil himself.

“It's a fog bank, for pity's sake,” James railed at them, “The good Lord doesn't send bad weather as a punishment! It will pass!”

“One can't abide such superstition and ignorance,” Miz Hilda remarked to my grandmother later, “It's a fogbank not a Biblical plague!”

It was to be a record breaking sixteen more days before I woke not hearing the fog horn, over three weeks of the precious summer season lost, and it would mean lean times for the whole village that coming fall and winter. Even so, with the return of the sun and blue sky, there was light and warmth and reconciliation. They were things to be grateful for after a long spell of gray.