Closet Thinking During a Storm

I’m in the closet with Rosie.

It’s a tall closet with a doorway leading to a hall but no door. The hallway has doors on each end. And they are closed.

Above us is a thin ceiling of wood, topped by a tin roof. And over that the branches of a live oak and a howling, screaming wind. Every so often an alarming thump suggests damage of some kind.

Here inside the closet, it’s pitch black. Rosie starts trying to dig a hole in the floor.

I get that.

Before the power went out, radar showed the storm would likely miss us. I think of a reptile’s tail, whipping around. We’re presently enjoying the tip.

Did the house just sway? Or was that me, here in the dark? Outside, three large live oaks embrace this house. Their roots lie below us, their branches above us.

I’ve seen oak branches in a hurricane, bending sinuously in the wind, defying our sense of what is solid and immoveable.

Tornadoes are different. I’ve been terrified of them ever since I realized how vulnerable this house is.

Like many old farmhouses, ours is one room deep. We’ve enclosed two narrow porches, but they’re largely glass. The closest we can get to that “interior room” the weather service prescribes is this closet we added on after living without one for twenty-odd years.

It’s set-in a little from the original house. The setback allows more room for the live oak I mentioned—the one that’s about twelve feet from where I’m standing.

Strangely, though, I’m not actually frightened, now. Rosie is standing next to me. We have Hale’s shirts to our right; the hanging drawers where he kept socks and such to our left. It feels almost cosy.

The emergency alert we received ten seconds before the storm hit said the tornado warning would expire at five-thirty.

Five-twenty now. Maybe having this expectation is why I’m not frightened.

Rosie seems accepting, as well, but that’s because the thunder has stopped. She’s not afraid of rain and wind. Only thunder.

And that’s because of an eight-hour barrage of lighting and thunder a few years ago—the year of the 23-inch rain event. Rosie has been frightened of rumbles ever since.

That war-like experience occurred in May, too, didn’t it? And isn’t May also the month when (if it’s not storming) we enjoy smoke from Mexico? Or am I confusing it with African dust?

Maybe it’s the prevalence of radar animations that makes us acutely aware of our placement on the planet in relation to forces we cannot control.

Come on, I tell myself. Cut yourself some slack. We’ve just endured a deadly pandemic. Far more deadly to people in other cities and other countries than to us, here in the center of the continent.

But death was all around us for much of two full years, touching our families, our dearest loves.

We emerged from that into economic confusion and significant changes in how our businesses and our personal lives operate.

And through it all, any sense of control we might yearn for has been lost.

Of course it makes us angry. Anger is so much more comforting to the spirit than a full awareness of vulnerability and lack of control. We humans always fight against feeling powerless.

Anger destroys us, though. It destroys our spirit and our ability to love our neighbor.

Hey, it’s five-thirty. The wind is down. In a minute or two, we can go out and check the damage. Ours and our neighbors’.

We’re going to need to help each other.

Readers can contact Hale at bfhale2017@gmail.com Her new book, This Familiar Heart, is available at the Fayette County Record office.