\ i do, i

This is the time of year when scientists predict the coming hurricanes. It's getting on time to name your storms, ready now to call out the winds that will blow you over, watch the moment get gone, then forgotten. I can hear a few drops of rain testing the fortitude of the windowsill, wonder how they will send their reports back on to Tempest HQ. This home looks ripe for inundation. Everyone's crying on the other side, doing half the work. An inside job, you could and should say.

Get ready to name your storms, at least 10 to be personified and deadly serious, and for the power to limp from the transfer station, just enough for an occasional flash of light, worse than an unbroken stream of darkness. Just as your eyes begin to adjust to the unlit room, there it is, a flash of hope whose only purpose is to blind all your previous work at adjusting to the dark. You cannot always, then, feel your way around, rely on your fingertips or charm. You can say sorry when you're not, and wait for someone else to say something first, then pause and consider how to react.

I understand my ancestors better than their descendants, who would offer tribute to the darkening skies, and hope that the weather would pass. These days you are taught you cannot prevent a storm, only clean up the aftermath. We've abandoned prevention because we cannot prove it works. We cannot prove it doesn't.

It always worked til today, and then, whoosh, blown over like katabatic winds, melted, too, all at once, and floored, and on my back waiting to see clear blue sky where once the roof sat undisturbed.

I was used to these atmospheric disturbances early on, and knew that a tornado meant piling into the bathtub, the earthquakes were match made for door jambs and heavy wooden desks, the flash floods frustrated with the dormer gambit, the forgotten restraining order confounded with a hasty jaunt into the neighbor's crape myrtle grove, the yelling countered with silence, the endless days of drought defeated with sere patience.

Laughter on the other side of a tropical depression is like the sun peeking through the clouds, even while all your belongings float among the flotsam in your front yard, you smile and release your grip on the topmost branches. No one would suggest you're in the eye of the storm, not if it would ruin the momentary joy. Relatively speaking, it's all momentary, anyway.

I'm not enjoying the calm as much as I would have expected.