Out Of Nowhere

Perception sure can be sneaky on a beautiful day. Wily clouds and shifty blue skies cannot be trusted to tell your eyes the truth. I knew that pretty lie on some level as I held the perfect cup of coffee while gazing out my kitchen window one morning a few days back. I went so far as to have a “Snow White” moment, wanting to start humming a cheerful melody and twirl around, letting my princess dress swing out as little forest creatures danced around my feet because everything looked picture perfect and I couldn’t wait to be part of it.

As I contemplated what I might put on my list of things to get done, my sleepy man joined me at the window and in a groggy voice announced it would be a scorcher of a day. I realized in that moment how that undetectable element couldn’t touch me as I stood there in my cool house looking out on the fields where the cows were grazing and the goats were jumping. It looked doggone delightful from my point of view, that was until I opened our back door.

Shew, at seven in the morning, the wall of heat greeting me was hard to describe, just an unnatural feeling. In fact, my dear husband, lovingly nicknamed Farmer Rick, smiled slyly, reflecting the “I told you so” message as he asked if I wanted some ice cubes in my coffee cup. I slowly turned back inside where the dream of picture perfect was now distorted by the blast of hell I just experienced and pulled out my plan B to do list, gearing it toward inside tasks.

As the day moved on and the hands on the clock ticked smugly into the afternoon hours, the light filtering through the window started changing.  Of course, the best weather detector on the planet started pawing at my leg. Ginger Bread, our gentle pup, is deathly afraid of storms and deems it her job to make sure I can never enjoy a good storm for worrying about her puppy anxiety. Farmer Rick never mentioned the chance of a downpour, so I wasn’t prepared to see the tempest kicking up with complete abandonment just beyond the walls.

I mean, the trees suddenly looked like they were bent sideways. Limbs, big limbs, were snapping off the poplar and maples and falling into the road in front of our house. The flowerpots on our patio went screaming into the yard as the cushions from our chairs took to the air. CRACK, the sound scared Ginger Bread into her next doggy lifetime as she frantically took off in a dead run down the hall. The brilliant lightning fell in straight lines, crooked warning for the thunderous sounds right on its heels as the rain fell in sheets so thick we couldn’t see beyond the water wall. I wish I had thought about filming it because this storm was WILD.

My farm darling and his Goat Girl Gone Cat Crazy (that would be me) went from the front door to the back door and back to the front door, watching as the sky raged. Yep, it was like something out of a disaster movie. As I waited to see if trees would fall, my ever-quipping husband announced the heatwave would break as a result, and that meant I could help him clean up the debris when the rain stopped…Glory, just what I wanted to do.

Oh, and of course to make it the perfect storm, our power went off, too. Immediately I thought of that hideous heat I felt during the morning hours and wondered how on earth we would make it without our air conditioning. Lawdy, the day had turned nightmarish. 

The power didn’t stay out long, and the winds finally died down. When the sky started sporting fluffy white clouds again and Ginger Bread pulled herself out from under our bed, we all went out to assess the damage and spent the next four hours picking up debris scattered all over the place.

The big limbs we pulled out of the road were too large to break up; we left them in the front yard until they got a little chainsaw action. The tin roof on our goat shed needed nailing back down, but for the most part, things were amazingly alright.

The day went places I never saw coming with that first glimpse of the morning, but suddenly the air felt wonderful - free of humidity and about twenty degrees cooler. Yeah, there was a complete mess to clean up, and the looks of the trees were different as a result, but we were safe.

As I stood there thanking The Good Lord for seeing us through the storm, I thought how the weather was very much like my life. You knew I was gonna go there, right? It’s the truth. Everything can seem hunky dory, smooth sailing, and then some freak gust of wind blows in from nowhere and has a heart dealing with things it never saw coming.

We weather all kinds of storms as we greet another day, but we are conditioned to roll like the clouds because there really isn’t another choice; we have to deal with life and all its gloriously unpredictable elements.

I think often about what my grandfather told me years ago: “we don’t grow through the good times as fast as we grow through the bad times”…true that! These days, with the gray I see in my hair and the laugh lines branching around my eyes, I feel like an old oak tree, tall and reaching for the sky. I’m thankful for all the debris I’ve had to clean up throughout my years.

Each broken limb carries a memory or lesson I needed to experience. I might look different after each storm as a result of losing a few limbs and a lot of leaves, but my roots are holding me in place, and my foundation has me sprouting out with new growth.

I know the hardest storms are still ahead of me, but because of my faith in something bigger than I am, I stand the heavy rains with a surety that the storms will pass, and even when the ultimate storm hits, I will feel gentle breezes and enjoy a new day. There, I said it!

Until next time…

Donna Ulisse

donnaulisse.com