When the thunder sounds like a continuous kettle drum roll
accented by cymbals crashing after a canon blast; when water cascades over the
windows like a hundred men in a bucket line emptying their pails just over the
transom, you are in a Midwestern thunderstorm.
Thunderheads stand thousands of feet tall rising up through the
atmosphere where the roiling motion gains power with each cycle until cells
break free explosively to dispel their energy on the houses, farms and fields.
In 1951 and again forty two years later, nature visited our
area with such storms. Days melted into
weeks as the water ran through the rills and tributaries making the mighty
Missouri rise and rise and escape her banks to fill every lower crack and void
for a dozen miles or more from her normal channel. In other years, the storms hit the Tonganoxie
split and bypassed our city either north or south. Then there were the years in the mid-1930’s
or like last year when the storms gave a wide berth to our whole region – and drought
went from moderate to severe.
Today and tonight, the northeast part of the country is
bracing for a mega snow storm.
Predictions suggest that in some areas the depths will be measured in
feet rather than inches. Other spots
will see a mixture of heavy rain and heavy snow. Flooding will occur in places that had been
relatively untouched by the recent super-storm named Sandy. But some victims of Sandy’s wrath will likely
have their partially rebuilt homes filled with swirling, blowing, very wet snow. Sad and worrisome.
Weather can be very disconcerting, very disruptive and
always uncontrollable. Our stress builds
when weather’s wrath arrives but then we’re given one of those idyllic days of warm
gentle breezes, soft sunshine, and scudding white clouds floating in azure
skies. Such days come more often than we
notice.
In the small hours of this morning, the rain danced steadily
on the tin chimney pot atop the fireplace chimney next to my reading
chair. The music of rain on a tin roof
has long been credited with being an aphrodisiac but this morning it acted more
like acupuncture or a deep fingered massage.
It’s rhythms worked to relieve the stress that expelled sleep from my
night. Everyone has those nights but
rarely do they come with the curative powers of a steady gentle rain playing a
lullaby on an improvised instrument. I
was lucky.
That’s it. Luck. And noticing such luck. Worry drowns out recognition of blessings, good
fortune, good luck. Stress rises like a
quake jumping up the Richter Scale – doubling with each successive increment
and shunting all positive thoughts out of bounds. When that happens, usually, I read.
Opening a novel is opening the door to the life of an acquaintance
or friend. I become an intimate
confidant to the worries keeping the characters from sleeping. As the source of worry is unveiled scene by
scene, a mirror appears in which my life’s stress is revealed in
perspective. The problems confronted by
ordinary characters often seem extraordinary.
With the novel as guidebook, when my stress feels extraordinary, the
problems I’m confronting seem ordinary, mundane. When I wish I could give the main character
advice, I wonder what advice he would give me.
So it begins, we carry on this
conversation in my head. An inanimate
book holds the key to an interactive experience.
But I didn’t read this morning. As I sat down to read, Eva curled up at my
feet. Rain drops began dancing on the
chimney pot. The rhythm was slow and
steady as the accent of each droplet made its mark and let its arrival be
announced. Soon, Eva’s shallow breathing
fell in harmony with the raindrop sonata.
My eyelids grew heavy and the worries that had captured the conscious
quadrants of my mind scooted to the sidelines.
I visualized scenes I’d experienced, either personally, or in places
that have become familiar from books.
The feeling of being at home took over and I wondered how it could
happen – that the feeling of being home could be missing when I was already
genuinely in our wonderful home filled with immeasurable blessings.
Like weather that ravages possessions and disrupts our
schedules, most worries are born in events that we cannot control. Worries can grow into fear as the unknown
future nurtures stress built on infinite possibilities – outside my control. So, the butterfly that flaps its wings in Malaysia
might create currents that lead to a hurricane in Haiti but, more likely, the
Monarch will simply arrive at its next destination. Getting a mind settled may mean thinking
about our next destination and being prepared to pause to help when a hurricane
hits.
Today, I don’t remember what worries stole my sleep at three
a.m., but I do remember the rain. I
might even recognize the timbre of some individual droplets. Tonight, maybe I'll remember last night and sleep.
--td