If the phone rings late, it’s usually one of my older kids. Not Sunday night.

It was my mom calling from Spokane, wondering if I’d seen the news. I hadn’t.

“We’re snowed in,” she said. Like a town crier, she told me about Spokane’s colossal snowfall, more than 13 inches between midday Saturday and Sunday afternoon.

A Southwest Airlines plane had skidded off a taxiway at Spokane’s airport. Roofs north of town had caved under the snow’s weight. My folks’ power had flickered off and on. Their street was too clogged for anybody to drive, even my sister with her four-wheel drive.

But the snow is beautiful, my mom said, “and your father has his snow blower.”

Tough and resilient, my parents have never so much as mentioned spending winters somewhere warm, such as California or Arizona. They live in the two-story house where I grew up. My nephew jokes about putting barbed wire around their roof to keep my dad from climbing up to sweep away pine needles.

They’re tough, but they’re also 84 and 85. Reading about thousands of people in Eastern Washington snowed in and without power, I’ve been feeling powerless. From 300 miles away, I can’t offer much help. My sister, who lives near my parents, is devoted to looking out for them, and I’m forever grateful.

“Do you guys have enough food?” I asked my mom, as if I could easily stop by with groceries.

I knew they had a full freezer. There’s also a stocked pantry in the basement. My parents hadn’t lost power, but my mom was worried about it. With a stubbornness I’ve heard before, she told me exactly how much firewood is in their garage.

By Tuesday morning, a couple more inches of snow had fallen atop the record-busting 13.7 inches — Spokane’s biggest one-day snowfall since 1950 — and more was predicted. Snow was so deep that Spokane’s City Hall was closed Monday for the first time since Mount St. Helens ash covered my hometown in 1980.

My parents’ street was still impassable Tuesday, although main roads were being plowed. Somehow, their newspaper made its way to their porch, but they hadn’t seen mail for days.

The plan was for my sister to drive to the nearest plowed street, a two-block walk from my parents’ house. She’d meet my father and take him grocery shopping Tuesday, and they’d walk back home. Neighbors were beginning to call each other to find out if anyone needed milk, my mom said.

The wildest winter of my girlhood was 1968 and ‘69, when I was 15. Right after Christmas, the mercury dropped way below zero for days. Then it started snowing — and didn’t stop. When school finally started, we had to walk on the tops of icy berms made by snowplows.

I must sound like a crazy old-timer when I tell my kids about it. Reporting on recent snowstorms, Spokane’s Spokesman-Review newspaper published a piece from its archives about that winter nearly 40 years ago: “A low of 25 degrees below zero on Dec. 30 was followed by an 8-inch snowstorm that didn’t stop until New Year’s Day. Measurable snow fell in January on 20 of the 31 days. A six-day stretch of snow early in the month was followed by another arctic freeze down to 19 degrees below zero.”

See, kids? I’m not making it up. I remember it as a fantastic wonderland. My brother and other neighborhood boys made real money that winter shoveling snow from driveways and roofs.

What’s fun for a 15-year-old is altogether different for people my parents’ age. They have always been hardy and self-reliant. Now, in this winter for the record books, they have me worried. Extreme weather seems to be forecasting a time when they’ll need more help.

If the phone rings at 5 a.m., it’s usually a phone-tree volunteer from my son’s school calling with word of a snow closure. Monday morning, the phone rang.

Outside, I could see grass under a light veil of snow. My son loved his snow day — if you could call it that. My thoughts were elsewhere.

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.