A Mighty Wind

I love thunderstorms! I feel a tad guilty about this since thunderstorms can be dangerous to people and damaging to property, but I can't help myself. My heart leaps gleefully into my throat when something severe-looking shows up on the Doppler radar for our area. We get great summer thunderstorms in upstate New York and we had a doozy a couple Sundays ago. Jason was at the church finishing up some financial clerk business. The kids and I had just woken up from a rare and lovely afternoon nap when the lowering sky prompted me to check the Weather Channel. With a promising Doppler, Josh and I climbed onto the couch to watch the show outside our big picture window. I pointed out the rain and penny-sized hail out to Josh. We imitated the "boom-boom kabooms" (nice onomatopoeia, I know) and I told him this was thunder. I started to explain lightning when I realized that to him, "Lightning" is a cool, red race car. (I feel like such a slacker when TV educates my kids before I do.)

At this point the wind started to really blow. Instead of the dappled light that normally filters down through the canopy of trees in our front yard, I saw a stone-gray patch of sky glaring angrily at me like a dull, dead eye. As the trees in our front yard twisted unnaturally ground ward, huge, dripping, humiliated limbs plummeted to earth. My majestic arboreal sentinels were being tortured.

The jovial mood vanished and I started to panic. I couldn't get weather reports on the television any more as the power flickered fitfully and the thunder became a bit biblical. In true Chicken-Little fashion, I grabbed the kids and went down to the basement. (Those of you who live in hurricane or tornado-prone areas, feel free to laugh now.) In LA, where I grew up, disaster rises suddenly out of the ground and shakes you out of your complacency. It does not extend a wet, leafy hand to greet you giving you several long moments to contemplate your doom.

To my credit, after standing blandly in the basement for a few seconds I recognized my idiocy and returned upstairs. The storm began to subside and I began to wonder when Jason would be home. To my dismay, I found I had a voice message on my phone of a cheerful Jason telling me he was on his way home...just before the storm hit. Feeling slightly sick, I went outside to take pictures and wait for my conquering hero.

And conquering hero he truly was. Through a curtain of rain, Jason swerved around tree limbs strewn across the road and squeezed past a once mighty oak now fallen and blocking one and half lanes of a two-lane road. (Yes, some off-roading was involved). With mounting anxiety for the safety of his family he passed a downed power line and another fallen oak, this time leaning heavily on an unlucky home owner's roof. As Jason pulled quickly into the driveway, I felt like the damsel in distress whose white knight rides up to rescue her. Who cares if I was excitedly snapping pictures rather than fainting in terror, or that Jason's white horse was really an old blue Honda? "Old" married couples have to find excitement wherever they can.

And more excitement was in store. We decide to load the kids into the other car and drive around to survey the storm damage. This seemed like a good idea until our newish sedan started lurching over road debris with sickening crunching sounds. Our folly was rewarded when we discovered more fallen trees in the apartment complex we used to live in. Under darkening skies and through newly failing rain, I convinced Jason to return home for the camera (Yes, I had left it at home). On our way back to the scene of destruction, Jason remarked that he felt a little bit like a storm chaser. Having just been thinking the exact same thing, I gleefully replied, "Isn't it exciting?" He started laughing and I envisioned a twister-hunting expedition to Tornado Alley after the kids were grown. Hopefully, Jason will be up for it some day. I need his kamikaze driving skills. We returned to the apartment complex and I snapped this last picture with my aging camera while rain pelted me through the open car window. Too bad I didn't think to use the towel we had in the car as a makeshift tent so I could get a better shot. Oh well, I'll probably have a better camera some day in Tornado Alley.