Awaiting the storm - Day 90 - Daily Haiku
Awaiting the storm
it's warm tonight and windy
with rolling thunder
Cori MacNaughton
One of the things I miss the most about Florida is the frequent and often violent thunderstorms. In fact, I initially moved to Tampa in large part because of the thunderstorms, as I grew up loving them in Los Angeles, where they are infrequent.
When I was a kid, from ages three to twelve, we lived in a house at the end of a cul de sac, where our back yard dropped off into Coyote Pass, a small canyon that was renamed Monterey Pass by developers and city planners. There were a number of developments built in the early 1960s, such as our own, Monterey Highlands, that were to become bedroom communities for Los Angeles city and its environs.
Heaven forbid that they continued honoring the coyotes that preceded us all.
We had a beautiful view of the city lights, off to our south, which is why my dad wanted that particular lot. We really did have a gorgeous view.
We also had a split rail fence across the back, denoting the beginning of the ice plant-covered steep hillside, and for years we had a family of roadrunners living nearby, that our black cat, Cat-Cat, endeavored to pick off, one by one.
So the male roadrunner would diligently run along the top rail of the fence, to get the cat's attention, and draw him away from his family, so they could escape to safety. Courageous little guy.
The one weak point in the developers' plans for our community, however, were that while they buried all the power lines in the neighborhood itself, the better to be aesthetically pleasing, the lines came into the transformer at the base of our hill, which for whatever reason is frequently where lightning struck, resulting in our losing power during nearly every electrical storm.
Which, as kids, we dearly loved, because my parents quickly established a routine, as did we kids. The first thing we did, as soon as the power went out, was to turn off all the breakers so that we wouldn't know when the power came back on. That was part of the fun.
Then my mom would make us toast and hot cocoa, aided substantially by the fact that our stove and oven were gas, and this was before gas stoves had piezo electric starters . . . yes, to light a burner, we literally used a match.
And yes, I miss that tech, because these days, when the power goes out, a gas stove is every bit as useless as an electric stove, which is quite frankly a stupid design. If nothing else, the end user should have the option of starting a burner without needing electricity. It's really not that difficult a concept. But I digress.
While my mom was making the toast and cocoa, my sisters and I would start a fire in the fireplace, which quickly turned into I would start the fire, being the youngest and the one with the least seniority. Which was fine with me, because I've always been a bit of a fire bug, and typically once lit, Carol and I would trade off on fire tending duties.
If we had marshmallows, we'd roast them. If we had steak or chicken, we'd skewer pieces and cook that over the flames as well. We literally had a mini camp out in our living room, in front of the fireplace, while watching the progression of the storm through our sliding glass door (which, being on top of a hill, my parents opted not to obscure with draperies.)
It is little wonder that my sisters and I all three LOVED thunderstorms, as I do to this day.
Interestingly, it wasn't until I was eighteen and took a road trip with my dad, to visit his favorite cousin in Texas, that I learned that he had always been terrified of thunderstorms, but had been so determined not to pass on his fear to us, that he and my mom came up with the whole thunderstorm routine so that she could keep us busy while he quietly freaked out on his own.
Which, when you think about it, takes a special kind of courage, to choose to make each thunderstorm a fun event for the kids, rather than to show your own fear.
So, like Papa roadrunner, he protected us, but rather than protecting us from an outside threat, he protected us from observing his fear.
I really was blessed with amazing and wonderful parents. ;-)
And I would love to hear your take in the comments.
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All words and images are my own. The top photo, of an approaching storm, I took in 2012 in our front yard looking south, probably with my Canon SX 30 iS camera.
The photo of our dog, Lolo, and our late cat, Miod, I took as they were cooperatively begging at the dinner table, despite our longstanding rule of not feeding them from the table.
You can see how much that deterred them both.
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You have lovely parents! Instead of making their kids feel scared, they made the brownouts fun and molded their children as brave persons.
Indeed they did, at least in that regard!
And it worked to the extent that some people thought I was a little nuts for how much I love thunderstorms. ;-)