Something I miss by living in New Jersey is the opportunity to watch a storm blow through. Right now as I write this on Labor Day weekend, I am in Leesburg, Florida (near Orlando), sitting beside a screened in patio and pool at my father-in-law’s house. I am protected from the rain by an overhang. The rear of the house overlooks a cow pasture. Hues of dark and light gray clouds bulging with water are moving across the sky just above the pasture. The crackle of lightning and the subsequent thunder in the distance remind me once again about nature’s power as the wind hisses through the trees and drops of rain, at times heavy and at times light, make disappearing circles in the pool. There is a raw beauty I love in a storm.
I am mostly unaware that I do not often get to watch storms. When I am in Florida, a rain or storm blows through nearly every afternoon, sometimes just taunting us with a threatening sky that does not deliver any rain, and at other times a downpour descends from the heavens. Living in the metropolitan New York City area means the houses are so close together that we just don’t get a good look across an open field to see a storm bear down on us when they do come to our area. I miss being able to do that, to run outside of a house and look out at an approaching storm. Maybe living among farmers for much of my life who needed rain to make a living gives one a different perspective on storms. People around where I live now just seem to see the weather as a nuisance, and expect someone to take care of this nuisance.
I’ve never really been personally affected by a storm. Maybe if I had I would feel differently about getting to watch something that is potentially so devastating. But if I am asleep at night and I hear lightning pierce through the sky nearby and follow that by the counting of seconds until the sound of thunder to determine how many miles away it is (the universal method I think I learned from the movie, Poltergeist), I am very much afraid, particularly if I can’t get out a full one-thousand one. Sometimes it sounds like the lightning actually is striking a home in my neighborhood, as the houses tend to be tall, unlike the Midwestern ranch homes so prevalent there. I tell myself that our house has been here since 1910, and if it has lasted over 100 years, what are the chances? Sometimes my heart feels like it is beating so hard during storms that I think I might be having a heart attack, and I vow to myself to eat less red meats and more salads in a moment of despair.
I am mostly unaware that I do not often get to watch storms. When I am in Florida, a rain or storm blows through nearly every afternoon, sometimes just taunting us with a threatening sky that does not deliver any rain, and at other times a downpour descends from the heavens. Living in the metropolitan New York City area means the houses are so close together that we just don’t get a good look across an open field to see a storm bear down on us when they do come to our area. I miss being able to do that, to run outside of a house and look out at an approaching storm. Maybe living among farmers for much of my life who needed rain to make a living gives one a different perspective on storms. People around where I live now just seem to see the weather as a nuisance, and expect someone to take care of this nuisance.
I’ve never really been personally affected by a storm. Maybe if I had I would feel differently about getting to watch something that is potentially so devastating. But if I am asleep at night and I hear lightning pierce through the sky nearby and follow that by the counting of seconds until the sound of thunder to determine how many miles away it is (the universal method I think I learned from the movie, Poltergeist), I am very much afraid, particularly if I can’t get out a full one-thousand one. Sometimes it sounds like the lightning actually is striking a home in my neighborhood, as the houses tend to be tall, unlike the Midwestern ranch homes so prevalent there. I tell myself that our house has been here since 1910, and if it has lasted over 100 years, what are the chances? Sometimes my heart feels like it is beating so hard during storms that I think I might be having a heart attack, and I vow to myself to eat less red meats and more salads in a moment of despair.
I know I said I had not been personally affected by a storm, but actually I have. Just not a literal one. My mother died as a result of a freak accident, so I know what it is like to have someone you love struck by lightning so to speak. One of the men who used to work as a laborer in my grandfather’s masonry business--I used to work for my grandfather during my high school summer years--told me one day about his daughter being killed when she was standing next to a tree that was struck by lightning. She was just a teenager at the time. He had always seemed fairly normal to me as I was around him on the job, but I also thought he carried a tinge of sadness if you watched him closely enough. If you ever get hit by a storm like that, unfortunately you do not get to watch it blow in and prepare for its arrival. It just comes on so suddenly without any warning. And then on the other side, you never actually get over it. For all of the talk about “closure,” the elusive word we always want to experience when something bad happens to us, it just doesn’t come. I have found that you simply learn to carry it around with you, just like the masonry laborer did. Just like I still do. Sometimes this burden of non-closure is a little heavier than at other times. For me, it is especially profound during the latter part of September, which is when my Mom’s freak accident occurred four days after my birthday, which now serves as the prelude to “the day.” But sometimes as the years have gone on, I have not paid attention to the dates and I get through without giving it much thought, a circumstance that causes me great guilt.
I don’t think the tinge of sadness I have described in the masonry laborer was as obvious to me then as it is now while I am writing this. I am recognizing its source now, years later, as the same sadness I carry around, the fate of the few of us who are on the wrong side of statistical improbability. “You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than you do of _______.” Yes, you do, but sometime blank happens, the unluckiest kind of luck.
I have lived long enough to see the people in the family I grew up with go the way of all the earth. Normally, you get to watch the storm clouds gather in the distance and slowly move toward you. Sometimes they move just to the east or west and you are spared. But sometimes they come right at you. I guess when you watch a storm, you are actually watching life. The dark clouds in the distance pointing to those who were once young and strong starting to show signs of aging, weakness, sickness, and the slow decline. Finally, even though you may have gotten used to the storms passing by one way or the other every time, eventually one comes right at you.
We are all watching storms.
I don’t think the tinge of sadness I have described in the masonry laborer was as obvious to me then as it is now while I am writing this. I am recognizing its source now, years later, as the same sadness I carry around, the fate of the few of us who are on the wrong side of statistical improbability. “You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than you do of _______.” Yes, you do, but sometime blank happens, the unluckiest kind of luck.
I have lived long enough to see the people in the family I grew up with go the way of all the earth. Normally, you get to watch the storm clouds gather in the distance and slowly move toward you. Sometimes they move just to the east or west and you are spared. But sometimes they come right at you. I guess when you watch a storm, you are actually watching life. The dark clouds in the distance pointing to those who were once young and strong starting to show signs of aging, weakness, sickness, and the slow decline. Finally, even though you may have gotten used to the storms passing by one way or the other every time, eventually one comes right at you.
We are all watching storms.