The Storm

     

By D.I. Muhammad 

           

Unsplash Image by David Moun

It's Friday around 6:30pm, and I get ready to leave the house to go pick  up my daughter from her Summer job.   As I step out the house I notice dark clouds rolling in, but some of the sky is blue. I'm saying to myself, "A storm is coming."  Before I could get in my car, the wind picked up, and knocked over my garbage cans sitting in front of the house.  I'm just sitting in the car watching all this dirt kick up and blow across my windshield. 

I don't know where the blue recycled garbage  can blew from, but it stopped in my driveway, in front of my car.  I'm making sure I don't see a tornado forming before I jumped out the car to move the blue receptacle off to the side on the grass.   Wind still whipping furiously.  I get back in the car, my daughter is calling, and she tells me the lights went out were she's at.  I tell her I'm on my way. 

I've driven in heavy rain, don't like it, but nothing like this.  The wind, I'm talking to her to "pull up a little."  She did, and now it's raining. As I cautiously drive I'm noticing the tree branches that were ripped from the tree by the wind.  Stoplights were out in certain places.  I even came upon a garbage receptacle that the wind carried out into the middle of a busy street.

It's been hot all week with a real feel of 102 degrees. Temps read in the high 90's.

I get home with my daughter, and our lights went out.  I tell her, "Don't open the freezer. I just bought ice.", as I go to call in the outage.

My house has been hot all week. I use fans. My inherited home from my mom when she passed, has been giving me the blues, but it's mine.  The home is an older home, and my instincts don't trust running an air conditioner,  even though I would love one. The whole house needs some form of renovation.   

So, it's not about the house being hot. It's about not having the power, so the phone stays charged.  My daughter is working. If she wasn't it wouldn't matter.  I would wait it out, writing my thoughts back on paper.

So, the house feels hot. I've got hot fur babies that are finding the bare floor more cooling than laying on the carpet. 

Saturday I find a hotel. That part was stressful.  I'm safe. 

I take my daughter so we can go eat after we got settled in the room. When we left I saw those dark clouds again surrounded by a little bit of blue.  I say to my daughter, "It's about to rain."  We stopped at a gas station across from where we ate.  We get a snack, and go back to the hotel.  

When we get out I see those dark clouds. They felt like they were stationary waiting for us to get in before they did anything.  I'm looking at the sky quietly saying, "Be nice."

We're walking to the room and the lid on the garbage can hit real hard. The breeze didn't blow that hard. My daughter jumped. The dirt started kicking up again.  I say to my daughter, "This is how it started yesterday when you called from work."  She responded, "Oh, no."  Soon as we got in the room I heard the rain. I heard the wind and the thunder crack.  It moved through as quickly as it did yesterday. 

Most of the city won't get lights until late Sunday or Monday night.  Where ever you are, if your lights went out, stay safe.