The Blizzard

I never expected the ride home from hockey practice to be so traumatic. I had never been so terrified, never felt so lost and scared in my life. It happened when I was very young. I was around twelve years old and this one cold, snowy, windy night my mother decided to take me to practice changed my life.
My parents didn’t know if it was really safe to even go to practice, even if it was only a short drive. When I walked outside and breathed my mouth instantly felt cold, dry, and my teeth felt like they were going to smash like a beer bottle at a bar fight. And my hands turned white and purple faster than I could turn around and walk back inside to put gloves on.
On our way there the ride was seemed very smooth, until we had to turn into town. The van started to skid on the ice, we started to swerve, but we somehow managed to gain control just in time to turn safely into town and drop me off to go to practice.
After the long, exhausting practice my mother had come to drive home. It was pitch black outside and it had gotten even colder. There were icicles surrounding the bottom of the van, and it was not only dark, I couldn’t see the shoes on my numb feet from the aggressive snow and wind. It was the worst blizzard I had ever been in my life. I was already freezing and scared, but it got worse.
As soon as we found the van and instantly went to turn the heat on, it didn’t work. My mother became frantic to get home, so she quickly tried to start the van, but it wouldn’t start either. I became very frustrated, as did my mother. She yelled and screamed and couldn’t control herself. But the only thing we could do was wait, wait in the freezing cold van for a couple minutes and wait for it to start.
After I was almost numb from my toes to my waist the van finally started. My mom wanted to get home very quickly so she quickly got to the highway even though you couldn’t see about ten feet in front of the van. The wind was so strong I felt like the van was going to roll when we turned onto the highway, and it was so snowy and foggy I almost didn’t know where we were. I had never felt so lost when I was only a few kilometers from home.
My mom actually decided that It was safer to go slow on the highway, but there was no safe way of getting home that night. We eventually made it to what we thought was the turn off to go to our farm, but we were wrong. We turned off at the wrong intersection, and we found ourselves on the wrong side of the road. My mom was screaming obscenities and panicking as we saw the faint glow of distant headlights coming towards us.
As that distant glow of headlights got larger my mom backed up the van so we were facing the oncoming car. My mom quickly drove the van to the right and onto the right side of the highway. We drove to the next intersection and believed that was the right one. That time, we were right. We very slowly drove across the gravel road to get home and we returned safely that night. Terrified, but safe.