Storm-story

I hate storms I really am not comfortable at all with thunderstorms or hail or hurricanes or, god forbid, tornadoes. So what do I do? I move to a tiny town in the middle of Oklahoma and end up living in a trailer. Feel like I should have an X painted on the roof!

Everything’s been going well, I love my new job, the ex is half a country away and I even have flowers surviving! I’ve gotten a puppy and she, finally, is house or should I say, trailer-broken. She doesn’t like storms either. In fact, she’s my early warning system! Forget weather.com, when a storm is coming, she’s howling and spinning in circles!

I’d been invited for dinner to a new friend’s house. She’s in my writing group and we share a love of Bichon’s so even the pup was invited. It had been a grayish-greenish sort of morning and I was quite happy to be headed somewhere a little more stable than my trailer. The pup was happy to be going anywhere in the car!

When we arrived at Michelle’s house, the two dogs went nuts and tore around her house in typical ‘bichon-blitz’ fashion. I was, initially, horrified, but Michelle just laughed and said they’d be fine playing and let’s go eat.

We were enjoying coffee and watching the two dogs soundly sleeping having, finally, worn each other out. We were watching the sky too as it had this storm-green cast to it, but the meal had been good and the coffee was yummy and the conversation was excellent and, well, I really wasn’t paying much attention to it.

Suddenly both dogs went flat out nuts! Running in circles, yapping and barking—high, shrill, break your eardrum barks. It went pitch black and it sounded like I was back in Boston in my apartment near the T.

Michelle swore then said we needed to get downstairs now! Both of us grabbed dizzy puppies and were on our way downstairs when something hit the house and we both ended up at the foot of the stairs. We sorted out arms, legs and frantic pups. We needed ice for her ankle and my wrist, but neither of us was about to head back upstairs. The dogs were still frantic. We noticed water dripping in through the ceiling of the basement.

Michelle shook her head and then grinned. Had I grabbed my cigarettes? No…she hadn’t either. Blast. Bummer.

Suddenly it was very quiet. We headed upstairs. Michelle, limping and one footed, I carrying the two pups. At the top of the stairs the door was hard to open. We both pushed and heard breaking noises as we got it open. Tree. Big Tree. In her living room. And her kitchen. And her dining room. The huge tree on the side of the house came down and basically crunched most of the house. I think I would have been in tears, but she headed for the freezer, grabbed ice and her cell phone. She couldn’t get a signal, but said that folks would be showing up soon and we were ok and that’s all that was important. Houses were replaceable and she’s wanted to remodel anyway. Life happens she said. She also explained that the possibility of this was why all the valuable stuff was in the chest freezer in the basement.

She grabbed a pack of smokes from the fridge and we headed outside to see the damage from there. Seemed like half the town showed up soon after that. Pretty cool place I picked to land in. Can’t get over how nice and helpful everyone was!

My car seemed basically okay but wasn’t going anywhere until the tree branches covering it were removed. One of the rescue workers, Danny, gave me a ride home. I was, frankly, afraid of what I’d see when we got there. My imagination was working overtime! Everywhere we looked we saw houses wrecked and trees and lines down. Part of the food-store roof was in the pharmacy parking lot. We had to backtrack several times because of downed wires. And then we arrived at the trailer park.

Fine. It was all fine. Nothing. It was as if there’d been an imaginary line and the storm just didn’t cross it. My puppy and I sat out on my porch watching the evening sky, listening to the now gentle rain, and thinking about my evening. And I realized something. I was home. I sat there in the dark, now with a sleeping pup on my lap, smiling.