Stormy weather

I’ve always heard that March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb.  Here it is the second day in March and the lion has been roaring all across the country since yesterday.  Tornadoes have already hit towns from Missouri to Alabama and on northwards.   And the red ticker continues to scroll across the television screen screaming out watches and warnings of severe weather all around me.  So far lightening pops and silent flashes are as bad as it has been at my house, and hopefully that is the worst of it.

With the threat of severe weather I’ve been thinking about weather events I’ve experienced in my life.  I knew the weather was going to be rough today in north Mississippi so I reminded my friend Regina on Facebook that she needed to find the weather shelter at her new job at Ole Miss.  In response my Indonesian friend, Paulus, mentioned that the only shelter he ever knew of during his time studying at USM was the hallway.  I congratulated Paulus on becoming a true Southerner, for what Southerner has not spent countless hours waiting out a storm in a hallway? 

Growing up we had a short narrow hallway in our house and it sheltered us from every storm that passed over 118 Rawls Avenue.  My mother survived a tornado when she was young, so if she saw clouds gathering with even a hint of gray she went into survival mode.  My daddy on the other hand was invincible.  Nothing frightened him, and I think he got a little kick out of proving it.  It was never a surprise to find him mowing the grass or working on the roof when it was lightening.  I also think he secretly enjoyed how much his behavior annoyed my mother.

Even though the hallway is associated with potential life-threatening danger, I always felt comforted in there.  I guess in my young mind I thought it would protect me from everything and that idea just stuck.   My earliest memories of sleeping in the hall go back to when I was three and Hurricane Camille was upon us.  I remember hearing windows breaking in other rooms of the house and my mother walking around with a flashlight and going out on the front porch to see if the car was still there or if had been blown away. If my mother thought the weather was going to be bad she would make us sleep in the hallway on pallets on the tiled floor.  It was a common occurrence to be awakened in the night and ordered into the hall because bad weather was approaching.   Once, in recent history, she had a meeting with an estate planner and bad weather hit.  Into the hall she went taking whatever grandchildren were there and the estate planner with her.  I wish I had a picture of that moment. 

I must admit that I, as a parent, have done the same thing to my own children.  I’ve dragged them out of their beds still sleeping and put them in the hall on bad nights.  Once the three of us sat in the hall and prayed aloud because at the time a hailstorm was pounding on the roof and I was sure the roof would blow off at any moment.  I think that is the most afraid I’ve ever been of weather in my adult life, partly because I had children to protect and partly because, well, it was really scary.  I know how my mother must have felt gathering her brood together on stormy nights.  I only had two to worry about and she had seven.  Poor woman, she worried enough for all of us. 

There is one storm she almost missed because at the time she was working nights and sleeping during the day.  It was THE storm to hit Hattiesburg.  Ask anyone from around here and they’ll know it instantly.  I was in the second grade.  For my husband it was the storm that hit in third grade.  It’s different for everyone but still the same.  Everyone knows it as the day the world turned black; dark as midnight in the middle of the day.  We had a basement at my school and they would squeeze as many kids as they could into it when bad weather hit.  My class’s safe haven was music room in the basement music room right outside the cafeteria.  The windows were high so the view wasn’t much but the blackness was unmistakable.  I remember the lights going out and all us second-graders screaming.  It turned out to be a false alarm.  Some trouble-maker had turned them out to scare everyone.  And then they really did go out and everyone screamed again.  I don’t know how long the storm lasted but it felt like hours to me.  When it was mostly over someone opened the door to the outside and water poured in and began flooding the hall.  That’s about all I remember of that day, but that’s enough for me.

That was THE storm upon which all future storms were measured until another little storm called Hurricane Katrina came a’knocking.  I credit Katrina with teaching me it is true, tornadoes really do sound like trains.  I wasn’t as much afraid during Katrina as I was awestruck.  It was so surreal.  It was the aftermath of the storm that terrified me. 

Nowadays I am not afraid of storms.  I’m cautious, always cautious, but I am not afraid. My current home has no hallways to speak of, and my children are taller than me now and don’t need me to protect them from the weather.  Nevertheless I still call them down from their rooms when the winds pick up and the daylight turns dark.  I haven’t had the need to tonight, thank goodness, but there are still 29 days left before the lion turns into the lamb.