None of us will ever forget the winter of our discontent, when ice-burdened trees toppled and crashed like bowling pins, dragging down the wires which until that instant had, like veins, carried our home-life blood to us, keeping our homes functioning and throbbing with life. Impotent now, the wires spread across the ground in grids of abandoned webs while standing trees popped and exploded constantly, sounding as if we were in a bad war.

Our world went instantly black and cold, causing all normal daily activity to cease. Everything dependent upon electricity, which is everything, immediately became things of longing memory. And most especially the simple act of daily bathing.

Oh, how I (and everyone else) yearned for a hot shower, obsessing about it constantly. Luckily for me, I was granted a miracle. My husband “Mongo’s” company held their annual sales meeting this year in town nearby, in a big hotel in which all of the rooms had working showers! I went there to the room Mongo had reserved and while he was in his meetings, I stood under that hot shower and scrubbed everything three times, thinking maybe that those everythings would stay cleaner for longer because of the extra scourings.

It was Mongo’s plan to stay at that hotel for the nights since the meetings would go quite late, and so one day, after my marathon shower and before I drove home, to show my love and gratitude, I left him a serious mash note, maybe just a little risqué, and hid it under the spread of the big hotel bed.

But he never stayed there overnight. Mongo came home at the end of every long workday to make sure I was all right, stayed home and drove back to the meetings the following mornings. He was great that way! And, I forgot about the note.

Until last week, when the memory of it surfaced suddenly, and slammed into me like a wrecking ball. Oh no! Frantic, I pulled a few strings (well maybe just one — I vaguely knew the valet parking guy) and asked him, begged him, OK bribed him, to have the people who cleaned that room to please, please call me.

They did. Too late. My note, they told me, had set off a riot, a horrific scene of epic proportions, the shouting and throwing of things heard all over the floor, and probably, they told me, that note precipitated a nasty divorce.

“The man, nice fella, kinda bald, he got the room just after your husband left,” the cleaning person told me. “The guy was in town on business. It was his anniversary, 25th, a special one you know, and he told the kid who brought his bags up that he missed his wife a whole lot. That they hadn’t had to be apart much over the years and wasn’t he sorry that of all times, they had to be apart now. On this special anniversary.

“So the guy goes down to dinner and decides to take in a movie, and guess what? His wife, who’d planned to surprise him for their anniversary, flies in, gets to the hotel, finds that he’s out and decides to wait for him in the room. She gets undressed, puts on this brand new sexy black nightie she got just for the occasion, and climbs into bed to surprise him for their anniversary.

“Some surprise,” the cleaning lady says to me. “Oh boy. The wife sees the note and she erupts like a volcano, just destroys the room, kicks the honor bar to splinters, heaves all the peanuts and cookies and candy bars against the walls, and pitches the soda cans and booze bottles against the windows and manages to crack them pretty seriously. Didn’t break through them, thank the lord.”

“Oh no, oh no,” I groan. “This is awful. Terrible. All my fault.”

“That’s not the half,” says the woman cheerfully. “Her husband comes back, walks into the room and she clobbers him with the hair dryer she’s ripped right off the john wall. Knocks him colder’n a mackerel. Took seventeen stitches to close the poor guy up. It was some ugly, I can tell you that. ”

“Oh NO!” I’m screaming now.

“And then,” this woman tells me gleefully, “she kicks him one in the ribs, screams that she’ll take him for every penny he’s got, that she’ll get the kids, the two houses, the cars and the dogs, and that she’s got all the proof of his infidelity in this NOTE she’s holding in her hand, and she stomps out the door, still in her negligee, and flies back to Cleveland. Wow, what a mess!”

“NONONO!” I’m practically hysterical at this point. “I’ll tell her I wrote the note to MY husband, not HER husband!”

“What’s your husband’s first name, honey?” she asks me. I tell her. “Oh bummer. That’s the woman’s husband’s first name too. But hey, I gotta idear what might save the situation. ‘Scuse me for being personal lady, but did you happen to use another name for your husband in that note? You know, a private little nickname kinda thing?”

“I did! I did!” I scream. “We’re saved! I used that name too in my note!”

“So what is that name, if you don’t mind my asking,” the woman says. I tell her.

“Jeez,” she says, shakes her head and sighs. “Talk about yer coincidences.”

“No! This nightmare can’t be happening. I’ve got to fix this,” I shout. “I’ve got to convince her that the note was meant for MY husband. I can tell her that. I can save that marriage! You’ve got to get me her phone number!”

And the cleaning woman actually got it for me! And I called the outraged wife. And she listened to me and believed me! And oh phew! I saved that nice couple’s marriage.

OK. None of this happened. But I did write that note and I did leave it in the bed Mongo never used, and yes, I’ve been worried. What if something like that DID happen? Should I call the hotel to find out? Would you? I’ll tell you one thing I will do; next ice storm, I’m sticking to sponge baths.

LC Van Savage is a Brunswick writer.