The Perfect Storm

It's Severe Weather Awareness Week.  I'm aware. 

Yesterday afternoon, Michael turned the TV on after ominous clouds rolled in, and we watched warnings of severe weather scroll across our screen.  I started pacing.  It didn't help that less than an hour earlier, I had woken up from a nap terrified by a nightmare relating to tornadoes.  In the dream, the roof had caved in and rain poured into Charlie's room.  I looked out our windows, to find that our house was surrounded by a wall cloud so thick that it was actually a cliff of rocks.  I watched as a tornado made erratic patterns around our cul-de-sac, and cars went flying into the air.  I held Oliver in my arms, telling him everything would be fine, and frantically hollered to Michael that we had to go downstairs.  But Michael, who was holding Charlie, was preoccupied with gathering things, and wouldn't go downstairs.  I yelled at him that we had to get downstairs, and looked at the window in terror as vehicles continued to fly near our windows.  But as much as I begged, Michael would not go, and I thought, this is it, I'm losing half of my family....

I woke up terrified, and went downstairs to hug Michael, crying into his chest like a little girl.  It was one of those dreams so real you can hardly move when the chaos of your REM stops abruptly to bring you back into a silent bedroom.  I have become markedly more anxious when storms roll in once I had kids.  Storms didn't bother me much before; in fact, I liked them.  As a little girl, I was thrilled when we got to snuggle on our scratchy yellow couch cushions situated on the basement floor when the warning sirens went off.  I would pretend to fall asleep there, so that my Dad would carry me back upstairs in his arms. 

But what is it now that makes my nerves so fried when a storm is predicted?  Is it our house?  Built four years ago, it sits on a hill in a development so new that there are no mature trees to break any wind.  There are times when the wind is so strong it actually rattles our bed.  You read that correctly.  Yep, freaky scary.  Not to mention that we can see for miles on end, which gives me plenty of time to freak out as the threats in the sky move closer and closer.  And then there are the children.  It is no longer me cuddling on those couch cushions under the protective arms of my parents.  It's me that's doing the worrying.  I'm old enough to see the footage on TV and understand that our house could just as well have been like the ones in St Peter, in Minneapolis, in Northfield. 

So when the sky grows dark, I gather tennis shoes, water, the diaper bag, flashlights, blankets, and snacks and pile them all by the door.  Then I nervously toss in my wallet, just for good measure.  I heard an emergency preparedness specialist once talk about the importance of these items to have available during a tornado warning, because those that suffer damage to their homes often lose their ID in the wreckage, and walk around in their socks only to cut up their feet badly in the remains of their home.

I walked around nervously on Sunday afternoon, biting my nails, sorting things into meaningless piles, alternately gazing at the sky and the radar on the TV screen. Michael told me it was scheduled to hit hard in 40 minutes.  40 minutes passed, and so did the clouds, without much more than a mild rainstorm.  "I guess that was it," Michael said.  I stopped pacing, and took a deep breath.

But then Charlie started screaming, an impressive burst of colic unrelieved by every human intervention we could come up with.  Oliver, who is typically amazingly nonplussed by these outbursts, just can't handle this one today and also starts crying.  Throw in a naughty behavior here and there, the need to get him into bed, and you have two bewildered, exasperated parents.  Michael just started laughing, because really, what else is there to do?  He sat and giggled over screaming Charlie, and I was wiping snot off of screaming Oliver's face.  I hollered something over to Michael, who was only a few feet away. 

"What?" he called back over the mayhem.

"I said," I yelled louder, "I said I preferred the other storm!"