Ready for Anything
By Jennifer Xia
It was mid-February and the house smelled like Christmas. The power had gone out and Maria Valdez needed light. Perfumed by a mix of citrus, spring blossoms and anxiety, Valdez burned through her favorite Bath & Body Works candles as the most devastating winter storm in decades burned through Texas.
A month before, Valdez received a text from her sister-in-law asking if she could watch her two 9-month-old twin boys while her sister and her husband took their oldest daughter on a birthday trip to Disney World. Valdez had two kids of her own, a dog and a husband about to undergo a medical procedure. She and her husband had also been taking classes to become certified foster parents for weeks now, which made their already busy household that much busier.
But it was just one day, she thought. That’s what you do for family.
Even one day taking care of the twins meant bringing in a high chair, baby gate, playpens, toys and a duffel bag of clothes into their home. When Valdez heard of the cold front moving into Texas, she thought it wouldn’t be that bad. Maybe a little cold, maybe a little frost on the grass.
Texans, accustomed to beating off heat, weren’t prepared for the amount of snow, let alone going days without running water or power in subfreezing temperatures. Days leading up to the storm, Texans were warned about rolling blackouts. The winter storm overwhelmed the state’s electricity infrastructure, throwing millions of Texans without reliable power for days.
But before the storm hit Texas, Valdez and her family only felt excitement. Snow still held the wonder of Texans deprived of white winters. The morning after the first snowfall, Valdez’s kids, Mercy, 4, and Oakley, 5, wore rain boots and the warmest jackets they could find over their pink sheep and Pikachu pajamas. Unprepared with proper winter attire, the kids wore socks for mittens as they played in the snow. Valdez wore an Olaf onesie from Christmas and her husband roughed it out in his usual jeans and jacket.
Later that morning, the two boys, Kai and Leo, were dropped off at their house and would be picked up the next day by their parents. That was the plan. Leo was the mischievous one of the two, crawling under couches to explore the new home. Kai was the clingy one, crying for his parents as if he knew they were more than 1,000 miles away. But both boys were sweet. They had that in common.
After the family’s initial excitement, the winter storm unfolded slowly at first. They lost electricity later that day. But the house smelled great from lighting candles and it wouldn’t last long, Valdez thought. The next day, they lost water and her sister-in-law’s flight kept getting cancelled because of the snowy conditions. Valdez was worried about keeping the two boys warm as temperatures in the home dropped to the upper 40s degrees Fahrenheit. They were also starting to run out of baby formula.
Despite having never driven in snow or ice, Valdez’s husband made a trip to the nearest H-E-B plus! while Valdez stayed home with the two babies and her two kids. All of their phones were dead so all Valdez could do was sit with the what ifs. What if he doesn’t come back after one hour? What should I do if I get a phone call? What do I do?
But Valdez put all her intrusive thoughts into what she could control. During 30-minute periods of electricity, Valdez rushed to charge her phone. Her sister-in-law had frantically been texting Valdez asking for pictures of the twins and how they were doing. But the WiFi wasn’t working and after multiple attempts to reply, Valdez finally had to put her phone down. In the same way her sister-in-law, 1,000 miles away in sunny Florida, had to place her trust in them to take care of her two twins, Valdez had to place her trust in her husband that things would be OK. She had to hope in the midst of all the terrible what ifs.
Despite not having water and sporadic electricity for more than a week, Mercy and Oakley loved having their cousins over for an extended vacation. Without TV or their phones for entertainment, they played with their cousins by day and played board games by candlelight at night when the twins went to sleep. The family read books and colored pictures and would take turns playing outside in the snow while someone watched the twins. The two kids never got tired of the snow. In the face of disaster, kids knew how to have fun.
When Valdez’s sister-in-law and husband finally arrived to pick up their twins six days longer than planned, the reunion was sweet and sleeping in just as sweet. All they had left in the house was oatmeal, but Valdez added chopped apples and peanut butter, making the most of things.
The winter storm in Texas left a scar on the state’s political, financial and community landscape even after the snow melted. Hundreds of Texans were left without water for weeks after the storm. But Valdez found space for encouragement. The storm inspired their family to plan out how to start their own vegetable garden, with chives and carrots and cucumbers. The drive to H-E-B revealed how scary it was to be reliant on grocery stores and other people to sustain themselves.
But more than that, if their family could survive a winter storm with two twin babies, they could handle anything, Valdez thought.
They had been waiting for their kids to get older to become foster parents, for the affirming feeling that this was the right season of their next chapter. With candles dwindled and snow melted, spring came. A new season. The family was ready to bring a new child into their home.
