Are You Lightning?

No sound is more synonymous with a Southern day of thunderstorms than the screen door slamming. Gusts of wind catch our back door, whose rusted latch never quite catches, and rattles it in the frame as if someone is locked out, shaking the door in frustration. From the bathroom come echos of this rattling, as a century old window pane vibrates in the millimeter of space that has worn in to the wood in its lifetime of weathering wind and storms. From the bedroom one can not decipher the rustling of the tree tops from the whir of traffic on wet pavement. I'm not one to romanticize the rain, but I have to admit, I covet days that demand nothing of me but to sit in PJs and storm chase from my couch. Fascinated by the radars, the viewer photos, the firsthand accounts, and the breaking news of damage; my attention reanimated by buzz words like rotation, squall line, wall cloud, funnel, wind gust, and rain wrapped tornado; I am in the crow's nest, centered indian-style on the sofa, glued to a busy weather team on television. Every Spring brings a day like this one.
I can feel the cushions pulse in the same quake that shakes the walls and reverberates as the thunder rolls over the sky. Flashes of heat lightning draw my attention back to the backdoor windows, though the view is obscured by a screen door beaded in rain drops. I recall the many sounds of rain I've encountered; how it tinkled on the tin roofed back porch of my childhood home, how it was muffled by canvas flaps of the platform tents at girl scout camp, how it sounds like it'll flood us and sweep us away when Sean and I are camping in a nylon tent, the way it beats against the thin windows of a log cabin or filters through tall trees in the woods, how magical it is dancing against a body of water. My cat watches with horrific magnetism as the branches that usually house her bird friends sway wildly, as pots are blown over and the grill cover bucks against sheets of rain. She's just like me, she can't peel herself away from watching, until the danger gets a little too near, at which time she bolts from the door with her tail in a fluff.
Today, the threat of any severe weather seems to have passed us. Some spontaneous grumbles of thunder and a heavy dose of rain are battling with the wind for the title of Most Menacing Weather Element, and that's all that's left to worry about in the Ohio Valley. As the disturbance winds down, the weathermen abandon me in favor of day time programming, and I'm left recalling my favorite stormy day memories...

As a little girl my mother instilled a fear of storms in me that surpassed a Pentacostal fear of God. The fear was so deeply ingrained in my child psyche that at the first sign of thunder I was sure I'd be swept up like Dorothy, certain that my destination would be far less magical than Oz. My memory busily retrieved stories of the '74 tornado that I'd extracted from my mother's phone conversations and mentally cataloged under Holy Moly; her pristine, white painted oak double-seater swing being splintered by the funnel cloud, the Highlands being torn apart, coming out of the basement to find the other side of her street clearly indicating the tornado's destructive path, fearing that my dad was dead when he was really riding around on his bicycle taking photos of the damage, my God Mother watching her neighbor's possessions churning in its own little cyclone.
When storms hit, our household followed a script so predictable that we were more like characters in a play than people living our lives. It was inconceivable that we would ever go out to dinner during a storm, or work on homework, or even take a bath. Daddy was always watching television, unimpressed by the brewing disaster afoot. While he happily ate his pizza (we always ordered in on rainy nights) Mother and I would color. With the blinds drawn in the family room we sat with a tub full of crayons, each selecting a book from our extensive collection. These were no grocery store coloring books, they were purchased from the craft section of the bookstore, and boasted intricate lines and artful images on cardstock paper. Our collective fear was channeled in to the picture, Mom and I fully concentrating on a world of colorful wax. A jarring clap of thunder might rattle our attention, but with heads still down Mom would whisper "We're ok." Usually the storm would subside right around the time that we were each faced with a completed masterpiece. Relief meets relief. But occasionally an unmerciful Mother Nature would send the tornado sirens screaming, and within 2 seconds all crayons were dropped and Mother and I were unfolding my dad's old army cot in the basement. We would yell in unison through the air vents, "Tom, get the animals!" "Daddy, find my pets!" And one by one, my father, with a look born of tedium and boredom, would dutifully deliver the animals down the basement stairs. Two wiggling cats. A cage of mice. A birdzerk cockatiel. At least one hamster. At least one lizard. A frog tank. A box turtle. An 80 gallon aquarium with a 4 ft long iguana whipping violently against the glass. "Tom hurry! Get down here! The sirens!" "I'm trying, Pat!" Poor Daddy, an unwilling Noah on a preemptive ark. And right on cue, as the last critter found a secure place on the cement floor and the first to be rescued were finally settling down and unruffling feathers, the sirens would stop. "Jefferson County is in the clear. You may come out of your basements." That announcement over the weather radio was the bane of my Father's existence. A cleansing sigh, irritation burning behind tired eyes, my dad looked down and lifted the aquarium. We survived again.

I'm at girl scout camp for the very first time. It is no small feet for me to go away from home. I am young, and shy, and terribly attached to my Mother. She's chaperoning, but still, we're on foreign soil. We embark on a lovely day of hiking and crafts and retire to our canvas flapped platform tents. I am full of enthusiasm for this new thing called camp. I slide in to my troll doll sleeping bag and delight in the idea that I'm going to bed and I'm not at home. Slumber finds me quickly. I am so content and cozy. And then a trickling rain wakes me. Just rain, no big deal... This is a real adventure! Then the thunder. There are no coloring books. Daddy isn't here. Mom reaches over and says, "It's fine," but I don't think she believes it. I'm determined to settle in to this adventure. I am determined to conquer my fear. I say, "I knoooow." There is thunder and lightning all night long. Heavy rain. I hear some of the other girls scream when the thunder claps, or cry to go home. I hear mom rustling in her sleeping bag. I think about the Mayans, and the Incas, and the Native Americans, and every other primitive culture I learned about at school and reminded myself that they must have lived through many storms without a basement. In my child's mind I resign myself to Mother Nature's will. I lay with my eyes closed and let myself really experience a storm for the first time. I kind of like it.

In fifth grade each kid in my class had a pen pal in San Antonio, TX that was learning English as a second language. We were in a Spanish immersion program, and used one another's letters to perfect our second tongues. At the end of the year we visited our friends in San Antonio at their elementary school. A couple of months had elapsed since several of us received letters from our pen pals, and some of us had gone through two or three over the course of the year. It was my first lesson in the cruelty of immigration policy. I sat at the lunch table with a girl I'd never corresponded with, but was paired with nevertheless. I wondered what happened to the girl in my letters, who couldn't understand why mis padres allowed tantos animales in mi casa. My new friend looked out the window and commented on the particularly unusual hue of grey in the sky. "My father works on a farm. He says when the sky looks like this it is going to be bad storms." Terror struck and I began to resent this girl who I did't know, who wasn't my pen pal, who had the audacity to scare me instead of making me feel welcome. We finished our lunch and nothing happened, but still I couldn't settle in to the visit. Bad storms? Why was everyone else so happy and at ease? This sky meant bad storms. We went back to their classroom for a group photo and still, not a single rumble of thunder. I finally dismissed my fake pal's diagnosis of the weather. What did she know? I smiled for the photo, hugged the Mexican students adios, and started thinking about dinner. It wasn't until we were filing out of the front doors of the school in single file line that the ominous grey fulfilled its promise. Sheets of rain came down in perfect lines, almost horizontal in the wind, to this day I've never seen more geometrically perfect sheets of rain. I sat on the bus with my nose buried in a Baby Sitter's Club book, attempting to ignore the giant bolts of lightning, but really, I was cursing that Mexican girl. She summoned the rain.

Fast forward 15 years. I am 20 years old spending a stormy day in my first apartment, much like today. Planted on the couch and glued to the news, I watched a line of solid red doom move across the radar screen from northern Indiana and Illinois, down across too-familiar towns in Southern Indiana. The Marengo Cave area was decimated. Trailers blown in to oblivion, schools now piles of brick, cars piled in heaps of twisted metal. People crying. As a wall cloud formed on the Indiana side of the river I became certain that Louisville was to meet the same fate. Even in a state of frantic alarm, I could not be persuaded to step a pinky toe in the cellar of my building. I lived in a nearly 200 year old brick building with way too much history and square footage to trust what may lurk below. The few times I attempted to open those double cellar doors in the backyard, I was met by thick matted cobwebs and clusters of leaves, dirt, and creepy indiscriminate matter. No. I could not trust that cellar to protect me from the wall cloud. I decided instead to heed the weatherman's advice and seek shelter in the inner most room of the apartment. I had a tiny hallway that led to the bathroom with only doorways to the foyer and living rooms on either side. Quickly gathering cushions from the couch and chair I lined the walls. Then, perhaps in an embarrassingly weak moment of humoring my own terror, I dragged my mattress in and blocked off the foyer. I kept the living room doorway open so I could keep an eye on the TV, but secured a hatch door out of an old futon cushion. In my little bunker I made sure to stockpile sentimental essentials; my letter box, my photo box, my favorite pair of jeans, a couple of trinkets belonging to my grandmommy, and my thoroughly unamused pets. I'm pretty sure I forgot to provide myself with food rations or water. To be fair, at some point the tornado sirens did go off, but I didn't take cover until the last of my prized possessions was safe. And sure enough, just as I'd placed the final pieces of nostalgia against my cushioned wall and got the animals calm in my lap, there was stillness. Is this the calm that my mother described before a tornado hits? I listened for the characteristic train whistle. Nothing. And then, almost mockingly, the weatherman said it, "Jefferson County is in the clear. You no longer need to seek shelter." I got up defeated, not by a disaster, but my own irrational fervor. The animals and I emerged. A storm had hit, alright. The one I created. And so, with the same cleansing breath my Father drew before heaving 80 gallons and a thrashing reptile in to his arms, I began loading my arms with trinkets.