There's no accounting for the weather. One day it's nice--the next day it snows--then it rains. What is a person to do? At least we're not in the mid-west where there are tornadoes howling thru the skies. Thank goodness we don't have many tornadoes in this neck of the woods.
That reminds me of the time we were camping in Texas waaaaaay too many years ago. We were on a summer-long trip in our little motorhome, headed for the east coast. We went thru Texas. We had the radio on (a strange concept now) and we were listening to weather reports as it was really windy. There were "motorhome" warnings as we were driving telling us it would be wise to get off the road. The announcer on the radio would say "blankety-blank" county was getting hit by a tornado now. When you are a stranger in a strange land (and Texas qualified at that point in time) we had no idea what county we were in. We knew we are on the interstate. We knew we were going thru a tornado zone--that's all we knew. There are 254 counties in Texas and the AAA map did not have the counties marked. Texas counties are quite small so it's very easy to drive into one and out of another without even knowing it.We finally found a place to hunker down for the night and hoped we were now swept away by a twister or two. Needless to say, we did not sleep well that night.
Fast forward 30 or so years. We are now living in Texas in one of the teeny counties. I was home alone as the other DrC was away at a conference. The first night by myself in a very long time and the tornado warnings screamed at me all night long. The house we had bought had a "tornado room." (We were told at the time, that this was an important feature, as it would keep us safe in case there were tornadoes. We looked at each other when we heard that statement and thought "well we will never need to use that.) We were wrong. That night I stayed in the tornado room. The room consisted of a narrow 2-basin bathroom vanity, with a closet and toilet. That was my home for the night. I took my radio into the room along with a blanket and tried to sleep on the floor. The warnings went off almost every hour. Not a good night. Finally, I heard an "all clear" and emerged from my tornado room to assess the damage. Lucky for us, the house was not hit. The backyard was another story. The BBQ grill was nowhere to be found and there was a pile of sticks where outdoor furniture had been. I do not like tornadoes.
Several years later, I'm visiting a friend in Texas and there are tornado warnings. She puts her car in the garage and we go to her tornado room, which is a hallway and we stay there until the all clear is sounded. No damage was done to her home but not that far away a whole subdivision had been destroyed. Last night, my friend texts me saying she was in the hallway, trying to stay safe. Tornadoes are real and they are scary and they are destructive. Given that, I'll take a day of snow, a day of sunshine and a day of rain anytime.
When we were lecturing on cruise ships, I would tell my audience to enjoy the day despite the weather. You are here now and it might be the only time you are here. Enjoy it. Makes rainbows of the rain. Put on a jacket and brave the wind. Live the day like it's beautiful and it will be. As I get to the next inning of my life, I'm trying to enjoy each day as it is presented to me. This is the only time I'm going to be at this day. This day is on Memorial Day Weekend. I plan to enjoy the weekend. I plan to deal with the weather the only way I know how to deal with the weather...and that's "cope" with it. Remember, we're all in this together.
No comments:
Post a Comment