"Storm Watch"

I am terrified of storms. I don't mean the afternoon/evening, run of the mill, heat of the day thunderstorms. The kind I'm talking about come in riding a warm or cold front, and have hail, high winds, and tornadic content.

This fear began for me when I was a little girl. I believe it began when I was at my Granny's house in Grant Park. It would "come up a cloud", as she would put it, and the thunder would make the windows in the house rattle. The entire house would rumble and shake. It didn't help matters much that my grandfather loved to tease me. He would say things like "Let her rip!", and "It's going to blow this house off the hill!".

This, in my little 5 year old book, was cause for alarm. To tell you the truth I was not all that brave in the first place, so it didn't take much to scare me half to death.

Granny's house sat on a hill and was surrounded by trees. The old very large oak, been there forever, type of trees. These two facts made me believe two things. one, being on a hill made us far closer to the lightening than everyone else, and two, if the lightening didn't kill us one of the trees whipping in the wind would.

As I grew a little older my fear of storms only intensified because our neighborhood was hit by two tornadoes within a two or three year period. One occurred when I was in elementary school. I was just sitting in class minding my own business when I heard this sound outside.

It was the freight train noise that everyone on the news refers to, but I remember thinking that it sounded more like a very loud whistle. Observing how dark the clouds looked outside, I felt myself begin to panic and immediately began to search my mind for any other cause for the whistle noise other than an actual tornado.

Being the little Southern Baptist Sunday school and church goer that I was, I thought Lord, just let it be Gabriel with his horn announcing the second coming of Jesus.

Who could blame me? It sounded much better to me, and the truth is, minds are always filled with religious thoughts in a time of great fear or need, so it was actually a perfectly normal reaction.

It wasn't long before I realized it wasn't Jesus coming to take me home. I spent the rest of the day with my heart literally hurting due to the high level of anxiety I had worked up. If a child was found to be in this state these days they would probably be rushed to the nearest doctor and diagnosised with post traumatic stress disorder or something along those lines.

The other tornado I was in, came about a year or two later, and I am sure the two storms are a huge part of why I remain afraid in my adult life. I have a cousin, who is like a brother to me. He calls me on occasion when the weather is bad and says things like "are you on storm watch?", or "take cover, it's coming out of Alabama, moving as fast as it can, and it's headed right for your house."

He teases me, but he loves me. I know this because in one of my houses, I had a room behind a wall in my garage where I sought shelter from the storms. He showed up at my house one night with a small roll of carpet and said "This is for your storm shelter. It's spring time and I know you'll be living in there." How sweet is that?

The older my children get, the harder it is to convince them to take cover with me, but I do what I can. My husband has never been willing to enter the storm shelter. I have opened the door and shouted things at him like "fine! Let a tree fall on you!!, or the roof!! Die!! It won't be my fault, and random things of this nature.

This usually goes on until the storm gets so bad outside that I have no choice but to close the door, and leave him for dead. I have to consider the safety of the children and myself.

As I have gotten older my fears have lessened. The new radar technology and my ability to follow the storms more precisely on the weather reports and on my laptop has reduced dramatically the need for me to remain in a constant state of panic when it gets cloudy outside.

I have also discovered that the amount of times a storm actually hits my area is substantially less than the number of times the weathermen will scare me with a warning for my entire county.

I guess we all have our issues....some people have more than others, and some seem more well founded than others. The way I see it, I could find things far less serious to be afraid of, so I'm not feeling so bad about my fear of natural disasters..I mean that's pretty big stuff...right?