The Storm
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Dreams:
In the valley of a set of gray mountains. Mammoth mountains. Collette and her family, and many others. Friends, perhaps. Under gray sky, through gray caves, enormous caverns in which were abandoned, ancient Indian cities. Through the cave to the open air of the other side, a crater, and up the side, a dam. Just as the silent roar of the tsunami wave swept in through the river, to slam against it. Unharmed.
Then after midnight outside a Mexican grocery store with Carrie-Bri to purchase Topo Chico, and successfully.
Often, Collette’s dreams owned a certain shade. And that shade was all the more often of late.
The muggy mist of an August morning, the gold field pasted in it. And yet it still looked like a painting, as OLeif pointed out, as the sun rose above the pines.
It was time for further fingerprinting. After a near twelve months of papers, delays, seals, signatures, and other official documentation, they had reason to hope that the last of the papers would be completed in a months’ time, to be shipped post-haste to Colombia. Then another four or five months of waiting, hopeful approval, and then the real wait began. A potential additional three years and eight months of it. Maybe more. And that was the way of international adoption.
So Collette headed downtown yet again for her 11:00 appointment.
The sun was bright, parking was $7.00, the appointment was brief and digital, the attendant — pleasant, and Collette learned two things: 1.) she had long fingers that were, apparently, still difficult to take prints of, and 2.) she appeared foreign in some regard, because she was immediately assumed, by security, to be looking for the fingerprint office, where she appeared to be the only American present.
The weather had been lying low for awhile. Nothing of an upheaval. Nothing too odd. Just hot and sun. Well that is until…
It all started off when Collette and Carrie-Bri ran an errand or two in Chesterfield. A few spots of unexpected rain, out of blue sky, on the way in. Small deal. Collette looked at the skies, hoping for more.
Little did they know while they were indoors, that the heavens were finished teasing. Out the windows: deluge. Driving rain. They ran for it, and even by the time they had returned to the highway, the rain had let up.
However, as they reached the final four-way stop before the house, WHAM! Somewhere nearby, very nearby, the skies had been split. And the thunder cracked.
Two turns later, and they could see Francis and Creole preparing to walk down to Dairy Queen, viewing the heavens together as thunder continued to shake. Somewhere a mile above them, a hawk circled.
“Looks like everything is south of us now,” Collette noted the radar shortly later.
Come evening, Collette looked out of doors as Carrie, Francis, and Linnea prepared to drop her and Puck off at home. Oh, it was the quintessentially perfect evening. The sudden hush of sun, the whir of cicada and the evening chirp of bird, as the west piled high in that all too-familiar violet-gray.
At home, Collette prepared dinner as they waited in hopes of a good storm. And, oh, it came. Somewhere in the middle of hearing the first rain and the split and crack of thunder and lightening, Collette checked the radar for weather alerts. Nothing. Not even a thunderstorm watch. Then the wind picked up. Zap. Out went the lights. Collette looked out the windows. The rain was falling so hard, it was a pure white-out. Then the wind grew worse. Of a strange sudden, Collette felt a surge of wind so fast and so powerful, that she whipped Puck downstairs as fast as she could, certain that the house was about to be flattened. In the basement, another zap, and then a strange sizzle of light, a flash of electricity whiz brightly with a pop like firecrackers through the ceiling. This was uncommon… Water already flooded in rivulets from the basement walls to the floor drain. Then the hail and the increase of wind.
Finally, things seemed to subside a little. Collette and Puck went back upstairs to open the windows to an already toasting house. Piles of emergency sirens from the highways, downed limbs, blasts of debris pasted to the front of the house, the sun already shining, and water already making spots on the kitchen table and puddling on the linoleum. The wind had blown hard enough to force a waterfall through the closed window. Whatever had hit, hit hard. It was the worst wind Collette had ever seen. Even worse, perhaps, than the stunning storm of 2006 back in the old youth days when she, OLeif, Judah, and Jimmy, had sheltered in the church office basement with the posse of youth until the mammoth winds had passed.
Later, as Dad and Francis picked them up for the night, they speculated that they might have experienced a microburst. Collette would not have been surprised.
So it was over back to the house to put Puck down for the night, as they would have slowly baked at home in their cracker box, until the electricity returned. And OLeif finished up his evening with the guys downtown at the pub.
On the way, Puck played with his little washed-out blue food coloring bottle that Francis had prepared for him earlier in the day.
“It’s a spaceship with people dancing in it,” he told his grandpa.
“Oh, it’s a dancing machine?”
“Yes.”
Then Dad began singing Dancing Machine.
Over at the house, Carrie had made chocolate chip cookies, Grandma Combs was also spending the night before they all left for New Mexico early the next morning, Dad, Francis, and Collette watched more of Season 5 LOST, then Dad and Francis involved themselves in a giggling punching match, Rose explained her metaphorical merry-go-round at work that day, sampled Grandma’s hummus because Carrie had to ‘plump her up so I can sit on her’, and started a staring contest with Dad, Carrie gave Rose a tattoo that read ‘I’m a Stinker’…
Good day.