I’ve never been afraid of storms. I’ve never obsessively watched the weather channel as the green and red satellite blobs moved menacingly east. Never sought shelter when commanded by local television and radio stations.
This storm was different.
My first warning came not from a meteorologist, but from Big Sophie, my shepherd-lab mix. She is terrified of bad weather. Late Saturday afternoon, she began following me around like a shadow. When I went inside the house, she sat with her nose pressed to the crack of the screen door like she was trying to squeeze herself in.
I turned on the weather channel and called Pop, my resident weatherman. “Is there bad weather heading this way?” I asked. “Sophie is acting strange.” Pop has an ability to read the weather right out of the sky. And usually he’s right. Right as rain.
“I don’t think so,” he pondered. He switched his television to the weather channel. We both looked on as the well-groomed meteorologist gestured at the weather map and talked about rain heading this way, but nothing of any consequence.
But Sophie didn’t agree with the consensus. She was predicting very bad weather. At suppertime, she only ate half her bowl of food and hurried up to the house, waiting for me at the back door. She was so anxious that I brought her into the laundry room to sleep for the night. I nestled into the couch for my evening dose of old black and white movie therapy and as the evening wore on, I forgot all about Sophie and the weather.
I went to bed and listened to the whippoorwill conversing on the edge of the hayfield. Soon I dropped off to peaceful sleep.
Much later I sat up in the bed, wide-awake. The red numbers on the clock read 4:23 am.
It was raining and I could hear the emergency siren from town. Before this year’s run of bad storms, I probably would have thought, it was someone’s overdeveloped sense of caution serenading us all at zero-dark-thirty in the morning. But since January-since we’ve had two tornado storms hit Carroll County- I was paying attention to the siren that wailed from the center of town.
Then the power cut off, leaving the room completely dark. I listened. The wind rose up quickly, the force of it pelting leaves and rain against the house. I closed the window and sat on the edge of the bed, listening closer. Outside, lightning popped like a bullwhip.
There it was, sure as I was sitting there in the dark… the low rumble of a freight train. Suddenly my palms began to tingle and I felt an urge to flee. Sophie was barking as I bolted out of the bedroom and let her out of the laundry room. We all crouched together in the hallway and listened as the tornado hit.
I prayed there, earnestly. “Dear God, if its time for you to take me, please let me go quick and painless, not lingering till morning with a pine branch through my torso.” (Over-dramatic, even at the end). That’s when the tree hit the roof. It shook the house and made my heart bump loud and fast in my ears. I prayed again, “Father, when I said I was ready to go…I sort of meant that figuratively.”
Fortunately, it was not my time to depart this sad vale. The wind died down. The storm began to make its way eastward. I pulled the pillow and comforter off the bed and made a nest in the hallway, afraid of what might come next. I lay there for quite some time, surrounded by two stinky dogs and a persnickety cat, glad for the company of them. Finally, I got back in bed and went to sleep, one ear cocked toward town and the siren.
I woke around 7 am and remembered the storm. Rising, I put on warm clothes and stout shoes, just in case, then went out to survey the damage. A pine tree next to the house had fallen on the roof. I couldn’t tell how bad it was. The two biggest hardwoods in the yard lay in a tangled heap, branches holding on to each other. There were more trees down, all around, their twisted stumps still standing. The air smelled like bruised leaves.
I cried a little, out of loss of those trees and felt more than a little sorry for myself because of the tree on the roof. Then Big Sophie came frisking up, grateful to run off all the anxiety we had stored up from the night before. She was, like the lilies of the field and sparrows in the air, just glad to be alive. And suddenly, I found myself in agreement.