Arrange to go to the homes of friends or relatives or to a summer cottage, which will afford some protection against fallout.

I can see it all as if it happened. My mother loads us into the Pontiac — my fourteen-year-old sister, my eleven-year-old brother, and me, who is not quite one year old in the fall of 1963. Our station wagon doesn’t have seatbelts, so my mother needn’t waste time to strap me in. I’m squished between my siblings in the back seat, straining to see the world about to end. We are lucky to have a cottage, lucky it’s on our evacuation route, and lucky the Soviets launch their missiles before we close it for winter.

My father will not see any of this as luck or privilege. Instead, it’s the natural fallout of a charmed life blessed with good looks and boundless self-confidence. After serving in the air force in Europe, he will return without so much as a paper cut. He will continue up the corporate ladder at Bell Canada, moving from climbing telephone poles to managing defense communications during the Cold War. He will do business mostly from the office, showcasing the benefits of using the telephone: like the Bell TV ads will say, he lets his fingers do the walking.

Because of his job, my father will stay in Ottawa when the air raid sirens go off, although our house is not equipped to withstand a nuclear bomb. The year before, instead of adding another layer of concrete to the walls of our basement to ward off radiation, he will build a rec room with panels of knotty pine — the same kind he will use to finish the sitting and dining areas at the cottage.

In 1983, when building an addition to the cottage, he will plan to finish the second attic with knotty pine veneer. He will fill up the space too quickly with boxes, leaving no room to work, and the twenty sheets of veneer will remain leaning against the attic wall for nearly forty years. In the fall of 2020, I will enlist two friends to help finish the attic as an homage to my father. We will don PPE and N-95 masks to work with the pink insulation but run out of time before I close the cottage for winter. The following year, one of those friends will protest the use of N-95s to protect against COVID-19. His home will become a sanctuary for those like-minded but not me.

Store essential papers such as title deeds, marriage licenses, birth certificates, or other important legal papers at your destination.

In 1943, while serving as a Pilot Officer for the Royal Canadian Air Force in Scotland, my father will express interest in emigrating to the United States after the war, reversing the migration route of my grandfather from New Hampshire some twenty-five years before. In a letter dated January 14, 1944, my grandfather will express regret at his son’s desire to leave Canada whose “future looks as bright as any country’s” but promise to send copies of relevant legal papers. “Whatever your reasons may be, I don’t know, but study them carefully.”

Why will my father want to leave Canada? More adventure, perhaps. Or love. In a letter dated March 28, 1944, my grandfather will write, “Beware of all designing women and most of them are. It is safe enough with an ocean between you as long as you don’t put it down in black and white. He travels light who travels alone but if the right woman shows up the bondage that follows may be the finest thing in the world.”

In June 1945, my father will return from overseas with letters from my grandfather, which he will store in a leather traveling pouch. On his first day home, still in his air force uniform, he will spy his future wife through the window of the Dominion grocery store. They will marry in two years and buy land for a cottage not far from his hometown, and he will abandon the idea of emigration. After rearing three children, he will tell me that, given the choice to live his life again, he would not get married or have children. Life is difficult enough, he will say, without the burden of caring for others.

Know the main evacuation routes and the best route to get to them from your home.

The leather pouch with my grandfather’s letters, alongside 19th century legal documents from my Melvin ancestors in New Hampshire, will be kept in a plastic container in the walk-in closet under the second attic just below his air force uniform that hangs from a homemade rack.

On May 21, 1850, Noah Daniel Melvin will be appointed as 3rd Sergeant in the 1st Company of Infantry, 14th Regiment, 6th Brigade, 4th Division of the New Hampshire Militia. On June 7, 1864, at the age of thirty-three, Noah will be drafted into the U.S. Army and instructed to report on June 14 or be deemed a deserter. He will appeal to the authorities to be excused from service.

At the hearing, will he speak from his heart about the young family that needs him? Will they pity how he lost his wife Losina three years before at the age of twenty-three? Will they object to how he married her younger sister Clara a year later to care for seven-year-old Lavinia and six-year-old Guy? Will it make a difference that their six-week-old baby is ill?

On June 16, 1864, the Board of Enrollment will exempt Noah from military service for three years as he will provide a “furnished substitute”. Likely, he offers up Sylvester, the unmarried brother who sells hair restorer based on a secret Egyptian formula. Although Noah sells proprietary medicines to cure scarlet fever, arthritis, black tongue, and the like, his infant son will die in November.

Stock emergency supplies at your destination.

My uncle will take my father — then in his eighties — to a dermatologist who will prescribe a new treatment for the itch on his back. While the brothers are in the waiting room getting ready to leave, the doctor will appear to call in the next patient. The patient will rise from her chair, and my father will almost knock her over as he rushes to hug the doctor in gratitude.

I can see the scene unfold as if I witnessed it — my father’s determined strides that crush everyone in his path. So often he will not give me attention when I crave it or, when he does, the intensity will be overwhelming. More than once, I will push it away. It will never be the right dose at the right time.

When my father finally has his breakdown, the psychiatrist will diagnose a paranoid disorder, which he will call a sense of entitlement gone bad. The meds for paranoia will finally calm the itch, but I will wonder if my father would prefer to scratch. In his nursing home, he will restrict his movements to the dining room and back. With his stride now a shuffle, he will grip the walker tightly, letting his fingers guide him. The kitchen staff will serve him a bowl of vanilla ice cream every evening for dessert, even if it isn’t on the menu.

The bathroom cupboard at the cottage is only accessible with a step stool, and even then, my fingers will reach into a void. I will pull out greasy plastic containers full of twenty-year-old salves and lotions — failed remedies for the itch. The pill containers — bottles, plastic dossettes, and sheets — for paranoia will be gone. I will swear that I had left them there. I will think the mice got to them and spent their days moving between their nests and the pills, chewing up the white toilet paper for nourishment.

Know how to improvise protection quickly should you be prevented from leaving.

In her later years, arthritis will confine my grandfather’s mother, Lavinia, to a wheelchair. With the financial help of service clubs, the family will install a lifting device to swing her in and out of bed. Every morning, she will trace the same path to watch the birds in her garden. In the mid 1970s, when family members bring my grandfather back to visit his childhood home in New Hampshire, they will note the grooves in the wooden floor.

In her later years, my mother will live with Alzheimer’s. In 2008, when she steps out of bed in the middle of the night, her knee will buckle and she will land on the carpet, breaking her hip and wrist. She will tell my father to go back to sleep, and he will.

My father will not accept her eventual placement in the nursing home. After I confiscate his station wagon, he will arrive at the home in a taxi to take my mother back to the house, ostensibly, for lunch. He will slap two nurses and ram my mother and her wheelchair against another nurse as he tries to leave but will be stymied by the exit code.

In response to the subsequent restraining order, he will plan to stand at the Cenotaph in his air force uniform with a rifle. I will set in motion the events that lead to his involuntary incarceration in the mental hospital, the diagnosis of paranoia and vascular dementia; the medication that flattens his emotions and soothes his itch; and the regular bowls of vanilla ice cream. We will feed my mother white lies to deflect her concerns about his absence and distract her with the sight of birds in the garden outside her window. At least once, before she graduates to a walker, she will attempt to unlock the safety belt of the wheelchair with a limp shoelace.

Have all members of your family, particularly children, carry personal identification tags, cards, etc.

My father’s blue velour bathrobe will hang in the walk-in closet on an accordion rack a few feet from the air force uniform. It is one of a pair that my mother will make for me and for him in the 1970s. Fifty years later, I will continue to wear my bathrobe at home because it is warm and heavy. I will wear my father’s robe at the cottage, especially in the shoulder seasons. Each time I tighten the belt around the waist, I will see his name on the white label stitched into the fabric by the nursing home staff. Another tag will be stitched onto the collar, pressing his name against my neck.

If you do not have a specific place to go, know the reception plans of communities on your evacuation route.

On June 10, 1824, Noah Phillips will sell 50 acres of land in Hebron, New Hampshire, to his 31-year-old son-in-law Walter Melvin, a mason and farmer, for $150. On December 6, 1871, five years before his death, 78-year-old Walter will transfer the 50 acres, as well as farm implements and stock, to his 40-year-old son Noah Daniel Melvin with the provision that he “comfortably maintain and support me in sickness and health during my natural life, furnishing me with food, clothes and medicine and medical aid when needed according to my degree and standard in life and after my decease shall give me a decent burial.”

After my mother’s broken bones, and everything that follows, I will choose not to bring my parents back together in their house under my care. Instead, my sister and I will use our legal powers to sell the house. Once my father is placed in his own nursing home, I will bring him up to the cottage for day trips until he dies. We will bury his cremains with my mother’s in the garden.

In the spring of 2025, I will decide to sell the cottage knowing a new owner will likely tear it down and build a permanent home. Shall I trust the paper urns have at last degraded, allowing the cremains to mingle in the damp soil? Shall I dig them up with the blessing of a clergyman and scatter the last of them on the land? Should I move them to a proper cemetery and install a plaque, or are these few words enough to remember them by?

When I clean out the second attic with friends, I will not tell them the tarp we spread over the garden is covering my parents’ graves. Among the items we find in the desk and drop from the window is a collection of roadmaps, including Voluntary Evacuation Routes for Ottawa Carleton Eastview. It will identify escape routes for those who choose to leave in the belief there is somewhere to run.