As usual, where I start with these posts is not always where it ends up.

One of my kids sent me photos of outrageously massive, crashing and cresting waves on the ocean near where she resides, an effect produced by Hurricane Erin, which has been alternating between kissing and pummeling numerous states along the east coast this past week.

Simultaneously, one of my sisters let me know they were making preparations to evacuate their home if it became necessary – depending on which direction the wildfire ended up taking – as billows of smoke and glowing skies from a hungry blaze moved across the outskirts of their California town.

Throughout the last few decades, the whole climate change situation has slowly gained momentum from a dire warning to stark reality. Only now, over the most recent of years, has it become startling enough that any climate change denier would have to be pretty dense (or corporately greedy) not to acknowledge that something potentially disastrous is afoot.

It was in the 1970’s when I first experienced earth tremors in the northeast. Up until that time, tremors were something I only knew from the west coast. Were they always happening? Was it natural fault lines? Fracking? Undersea weapons testing? Subsequently, there is never any heavy decor or shelving hanging directly over my bed.

In 1989 I encountered the first (of a few) northeast tornados. Before then (at least for me) they were just stories shared by our midwestern relatives. The dog became restless as the sky turned pea soup green. Lawn chairs, kid’s toys, branches, leaves and and debris began to fly sideways past the house. I recalled my aunt telling me to open the windows (so the house would not pressurize and blow them out) and get down to the lowest or most interior spot inside. I did that, then grabbed the baby and the dog and crouched on the dirt basement floor. Mere seconds later it had passed through, uprooting trees as it skipped its way across a few counties and into the next state, leaving some areas totally unscathed beneath sparkling, sunny skies, while elsewhere lay a path of destruction and, tragically, a few deaths in its wake. And that was just an EF-1, debatably “only” a microburst. After that incident our local schools began installing NOAA weather radios and weather alert warning systems.

While (at this point) these experiences above have pretty much fallen way below the full wrath of nature, the degrees of separation are not that far off: A friend whose family lost their house in rapidly rising floodwaters from the Susquehanna river, another in Katrina, another stuck in her car as it began to submerge in a flash flood, at least two whose property and part of their houses were ripped up by a tornado, friends of friends and family who have lost their homes to racing wildfires…. an email from my cousin saying “I’m writing this from the basement because the tornado sirens are going off.” Were these things always happening, and happening as frequently? Or is it just a heightened awareness of such, an awareness made due to instant live media of these events?

So while these photos of waves and smoke were being shared and popping up on my phone in real time, it got me flashing back to memories of a few weather incidents from the past; memories like hanging on to the door handle of my car while the wind sucked my breath from my lungs, a basketball backboard, hoop, and a picnic table blowing by, trees bowed and bent till their tops grazed the ground, a huge tree lifted up and thrown through a (newly renovated) kitchen. Seeing the eerily surreal, pointing finger of a funnel expanding and contracting from a threateningly dark cloud on the horizon, as I raced to pick up one of my children from her friend’s house. Water rushing down the hillside, flooding the basement and rising to the level of the first floor, the oil burner, water heater and clothes dryer submerged, the washing machine actually floating. A physical earth tremor that was so loud we thought the furnace had exploded. Blizzards, with no power for days. Yet by comparison to other possibilities, these incidents are considered mild.

These geological and meteorological echoes from the past spun through my mind like a weather roulette wheel, until it landed on Hurricanes of Childhood. In my recollection there was always a hurricane, or the outer reaches and remnants of a hurricane, pretty much every year – sometimes more than one. There were so many that as a kid I used to hope one might eventually carry my name (that didn’t happen).

The pointer on the spinning wheel slows further and stops here: In first grade my mother sent me off walking alone to school in a hurricane – Hurricane Donna, to be exact.

The elementary school was normally only a ten minute walk from our house, which sat in a suburban neighborhood on the edge of still undeveloped land containing swamps, streams, fields and woods. I was six years old during the 1960’s era, a time when children of all ages walked and played everywhere and anywhere, unaccompanied. You went out into the neighborhood and beyond (sometimes far beyond) and didn’t come home until dinner time.

My mom used to stand outside on the front steps and ring a bell summoning us to return. When you heard the bell, you came home. This was so useful that eventually other mothers on the street started ringing bells to call in their children too. There was a deep-sounding ship bell on the east side of the street and a higher pitched school bell at the top of the hill. Ours was a distinctive Swiss cow bell with a tone that carried far.

Back then there were no mothers in cars waiting in school drop-off and pick-up lines. There were no “phone calling trees” of parents passing on information to the next one, or automated calling systems from the school district. You had to listen to a local radio station and wait for your school to be mentioned in the endlessly long list of school closings. And we walked, unless the school was too far, in which case you were bussed. My mother didn’t even drive at the time, had a couple of younger kids at home, and was pregnant with another. I’m guessing in her distraction and urgency to get me off to school that she didn’t even notice the dark skies, intense rain and billowing winds happening outside as she handed me an umbrella and shooed me out the door.

Immediately and disturbingly evident – there were no other kids walking up the street to school except me. I had only gone past a few houses before my umbrella was blown inside out, but I kept going, becoming ever more soaked as I trudged against gusting winds blowing water into my face and galoshes (yes, we called our rubber rain boots “galoshes” or “rubbers”), wind which left me gasping and almost knocked me over.

I just looked it up now to see how far the walk actually was to get to that school from home. As endless as it felt, it was just about the length of five football fields, which in the scheme of things is not very far (everything seemed so much bigger then). But given the conditions and the size of a skinny little six year old, it was formidable.

I did finally make it to school, water streaming down the back of my slicker….only to find upon arrival that the building was deserted. The door was was locked; banging on it elicited no response. I thought maybe they did not hear me knocking? Was I going to get in trouble? The school was not open. Turning around, the daunting trek alone was made back towards home.

I don’t recall my mother being especially upset at my return. It was just a fact; the school was closed, presumably due to the weather. I don’t think she even realized what I had just gone through. When this incident circulates through my cyclone of childhood recollections, I’m able to laugh about it (now), while having to wonder/marvel where my mother’s head was at during that time.

I’m assuming the school closing was announced on the radio back then, since nobody else showed up. Perhaps she didn’t realize the extent of the storm, therefore hadn’t turned on the radio. Maybe she was experiencing morning sickness that day, or she was busy changing the little one’s diaper. It’s highly likely (definitely likely!) she could not wait to get me out of the house and off to school that morning in order to have one less kid at home. She was a good, loving, caring mother in so many ways, and while born of a generation where kids were expected to do things independently like go off to play all day in the neighborhood or walk to school in the rain or snow, I still don’t think she would have sent me if she knew it was into a category 2 hurricane with wind gusts of up to 100mph. Can you imagine? During these current times, sending your six year old to walk off to school in a hurricane would no doubt be construed as neglect.

Delving further into this cache of recollections, I have to wonder what parenting faux pas my own children are going to dig up on me…..

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