Stormy Weather (remember that song?)

 After all the storms we’ve been having I started to think back to my earlier years (and those were quite some time ago) about storms and how they had such a variety of personalities. I like a good thunderstorm complete with lightening but not destruction. And a simple downpour is normally enjoyable although we’ve had too many lately – my garden is learning the backstroke! But with all the quirks and curiosities of storms the wind is my downfall. The wind, so powerful, turns the excitement to fear and I find myself heading for any chores that need to take place in the basement, a sort of denial through productive purpose.

That fear stems from the earliest storms that I can remember. Tornados to be precise. Tornados are not my favorite storm. (And I refuse to add the ‘e’ to tornado or potato or tomato once they become pluralized. It’s just my thing. It puts forth the image of some kind of odd female deer and the disgusting idea of toes in ones’ mouth - yuck) Back to tornados – they strike fear in my heart every time I see that funnel heading for the ground and hear the roar and the violent twisting and of course there’s always the Wizard. I watched that every year and more if I possibly could. Not for the tornado but for the cool Emerald city and all the weird stuff that happened on the way. I especially liked the poppy fields…

Anyway, my family had a sort of ritual, much like the in-case-of-a-fire pre-ordained plan which families now have for a safe escape which is brilliant and should have been on our family to do list but never was or the bombs-are-about-to-fall plan which was ordinarily conducted in school under ones desk or the more recent in-case-of-alien-invasion-from-outer space plan which requires a specific destination where all of the family members would meet no matter where they happened to be in the world.

Our bad storm plan was fairly straight forward: Everyone would head for the basement bedroom, all nine children and our mother. Our father’s job was to sit outside on the front step and assess the severity of the upcoming event. This is where he would have a camel cigarette, filterless, and contemplate nature in all of its glory and mystery.

Once ensconced in the Davenobed (yes that is what they called it, a Davenobed, it is now referred to as a ‘sleeper’ or a fold out couch. Ours was a Davenobed), all 9 children, which was a feat of nature in its own right, with our mother keeping tabs.

Now this next part is due to our Catholic upbringing, a constant theme in these blogs it seems. While nine children wrestled quietly each trying to maintain a personal space in the not so personal Davenobed, which by the way had a hinged wooden bar that ran across the bottom of the bed and was meant to hold pillows in place when the bed was folded, (the bar had a touchy hinge and could easily be triggered much to the dismay and potentially bodily harm of any unfortunate who found their feet painfully trapped and this was often intentionally triggered to alter the aspect of whichever sibling was under scrutiny at the time), our mother began the Catholic ritual of holy water dousing and palm leaf insertions. AS a matter of fact, even before we headed to the basement, our mother would enter every room of the house and draw a holy water cross on each and every window. And if there were those French windows with all the little lattice work in them she would put a cross in each little square! 

Once in the basement she proceeded to douse us all with the water using whatever method she found available at the time. The priests used to have a pretty little silver wand sort of thing with a perforated ball at one end which held the water and he would walk up and down the church aisles and lazily spray everyone he could reach which really wasn’t that many and so eventually the church allowed the use of some sort of straw broom like thing which the priest would dunk in the bowl of holy water that the poor altar boy would have to hold out and walk alongside the priest like a prisoner being dealt a painfully extreme punishment should his arms fall to his sides. 

The altar boy of course would go straight to hell for dumping holy water on the floor. Anyway, the new method of the straw broom thing was far more effective in reaching as many supplicants as possible while at the same time really giving them a good drenching. It seemed as though every year that bowl got bigger so there was never a shortage of holy water.

In my mother’s case she would flick the water at us over and over with her fingers constantly dipping and flicking till we were drenched or till her fingers finally gave out and were too tired to flick. At that point her next device against our demise, should the storm actually decide to take us out, was to break off bits of the blessed palm leaves from the most recent palm Sunday and stick them unceremoniously into our hair. We looked like scarecrows and were very uncomfortable with the whole thing.

In the meantime our father would be enjoying his smoke and relative quiet out there on the front steps…

Then began the torturous hour long or longer recitation of the rosary. The time allotted depended on the strength and endurance of the storm. Sometimes we would have to recite the whole thing more than once! At this point we were directed out of the Davenobed and onto our knees on the hardwood floor. There we would shift back and forth from one knee to the other trying in vain to find some soft spot. I would yank my nightgown (it was invariably night time when this happened) till it could stretch far enough so that I could make a sort of pad under my knees, which worked for the most part but left me with a form of strangulation.

Now we would start. The intro prayers were finished and the litany of Hail Marys would begin. All Catholics must remember the way this went. Someone, the lead pray-er, would begin the Hail Mary and half way through the rest of the lesser pray-ers would finish the prayer. This would be repeated over and over and over and over. If the lead pray-er was one of us who had the sorest knees or was simply the least reverent that person would shoot through the first half of the Hail Mary in record speed. Sort of a Mario Andretti of prayer leading. If our mother left the room for any reason the rest of us would see if we could break the record. If our mother remained with us the prayers would drag out in an extreme case of boredom but at the same time panic at the idea that it would never end. Our knees would be square and flat, our clothes would never dry and our hair would forever resemble straw bales.

And our father would remain in silent perpitude (I made that word) relishing his smoke and gazing at the clouds. He would be lost in reverie and I think simply happy that for once he was alone. 

The only time we ever experienced any anxiety on his part was the year of the big one. The 1957 tornado. It all started innocently enough. Children and mother in the basement, father on the front step, when suddenly things took a turn for fear and prayer, tumbling both on top of each other. For my father, realizing that what he was seeing was definitely horrible, crashed through the door and literally flew down the basement steps to whatever safety we could pray into our little lives. This was NOT NORMAL! Our father feared nothing! Therefore, WE WERE SCARED TO DEATH! 

We heard the wind pick up and watched from the window well windows as objects normally entrusted to kitchen shelves, closets, and other home interiors began appearing to have freed themselves flying past in a horrific cacaphonious (I made that word too) display.  The roar was overwhelming. It was so frightening that we left off praying our Hail Marys and remained speechless till our father crept back upstairs to see if it was over. 

But our mother did not relent. Now we had to pray a rosary of thanks that we were all still alive and afterward she made us crawl back into the Davenobed, all soaked with holy water, stickers in our hair and aching knees and had to stay there all night ‘just in case’. I didn’t know if I were more afraid or dreaded more the tornado or the fact that I had to share the Davenobed with eight siblings! I often wondered whether she really believed all this or just used it to punish us for every major and minor indiscretion we made or ever would make in our entire lives...

As one can imagine this had a very traumatic effect on children. Me anyway. There have been times when I forced my own children to crawl into our dirt floor cellar in the country while the wind howled outside. 

At one such storm I swore I saw the funnel cloud and took the children racing to the neighbor’s house where we sat in their living room instead of in the basement (they were Lutherans) and waited for the end of our days! 

Later I realized that what I had seen was a power tower making itself visible on and off through the black clouds. One of those crazy huge things that look like they were made with a giant erector set. I never told my neighbor though and we had even called the local weather station and they had an announcement about the tornado out in our part of the state which wasn’t really there but I never told them either.

We had another good storm last night. One that knocked the power out for blocks. But we have a generator that rarely gets used and fired that baby up and we were the only home in the entire area with lights on! Trees came down and the wind blew, people came out of their houses to witness the destruction in the darkness while a lovely yellow glow emanated from our windows. I was smug. 

And the only holy water around was that which poured from the furious clouds, whipped in sheets by crazy wild winds and drenched the whole city nicely. Storms are good sometimes. They keep you on your toes.