Storm Child

It's warm. I can hear the birds twittering away in the trees outside my windows. The air is humid, moist. The grey clouds above are ready to burst with cool, February rain. The winds will come, too. The meteorologists say 65 miles per hour today with chances of pop-up tornadoes. Thunderstorms are likely, as are downed trees and power lines. It feels like March - the wild and crazy weather of that month comes as no surprise. But this severe spring weather in February? This comes only a few weeks after a major snow/ice storm that crippled the area. And now we are bracing for winds. It's exciting!

I have always been "the storm child," as my mother calls me. She says I was born in a storm. And I can remember plenty of birthday parties (I was born in February) altered by snowstorms. In New Jersey, on the shore, when the winds began to blow and the tides began to rise, I was always quick to get to the beach to watch the waves. In the big Nor'Easter of 1992, I remember taking pictures out the windows of our house as the flood waters rose quickly, submerging our street and anything on it. I watched picnic benches and lifeguard chairs float by. I measured the rising tide as it made its way up the front steps to our house. And it wasn't until the flood waters invaded my bedroom that I experienced the full force of the storm. Standing halfway up the attic stairs watching the water seep from room to room, I cried out, "It's in my room!" I remember the devastation.

But I remember other storms - floods, snowstorms, ice storms, hurricanes - that excited me. It was always an adventure. The power of the natural world fascinates me. So today, though I will be indoors, wary of a possible tornado (I'm still not used to that phenomena out here in the Midwest), I will marvel at mother nature, watching the wind blow and the rain pour and the landscape transform itself into a wide wet world.