vignette from the last workshop
I stepped off the train in Davis Square this afternoon and it smelled just like the storm cellar we had when I was growing up. It's not the earthy smell of mold, but the smell of water and stone - concrete is still stone - and the promise of something. Solace. Refuge.
I grew up near Mammoth Cave, a national park of limestone caverns. I only went three times, always in summer, and always they tell you to bring a jacket, because summer or winter, it's always 54 degrees Fahrenheit once you go below the surface. The ranger always gave the standard disclaimer: there probably wouldn't be a cave-in, but if that was a fear of yours, you might want to just go up and have a picnic instead. For the rest of us, well, if the worse happened, our families would thank us for the savings in funeral costs, because "You can't get buried any deeper any cheaper."
I used to be terrified of thunderstorms. As soon as the wind picked up, I wanted to go to the cellar, close the two doors behind us and wait in the cool womb with the jars of canned tomatoes. But my parents said there was no need. It would probably miss us. Each time, it would probably miss us, and the TV station would let us know if there were an actual tornado. I stood at the kitchen window and watched the leaves strip from the trees, not standing too close to the window lest a branch fly off a tree and break the glass. I could not sit, could not watch TV, could not look away. If a funnel cloud were coming, I wanted to see it coming, I wanted to know I was about to die and how many seconds I had.
It was just as bad in a car, maybe worse, with the fear of lightning burning your body from the inside out, and they could tell me I was safe as long as I didn't touch the metal parts of the car but I couldn't make myself believe them. We seemed to be speeding, hurtling down the road at 100 miles an hour, faster than my father drunk on the interstate, the car weaving in the crosswinds. I always begged to stop, to wait out the storm on the side of the road, but they said the sooner we got home the sooner we'd be safe.
I was 11 when we drove home from church in an afternoon thunderstorm. I think I'd stopped begging by that age, but I prayed silently: Just let us get home, I will do anything, just don't kill me here in the open but enclosed in this coffin of metal and glass. My brother was driving, and he had to drive around downed limbs - maybe entire small trees - and I watched the branches flail on the hill in front of us and knew one would crush the roof of our Datsun if it fell on us. I was watching the trees and willing them to stay intact, so I saw when 50 yards in front of us, the lightning bolt split the huge forked tree in half. Through the jagged white line etched into my eyes, I saw the ball of fire billow out from the fork, saw the left half of the tree separate from the rest. It didn't fall like I'd expected, didn't hinge down like a door at the joint, with the tips of the branches landing first. No: That entire half of the tree seemed to move a few inches to the left, pushed aside maybe by the fireball, and then seemed to stay suspended in midair for long seconds, like a cartoon character who's run off the end of a cliff. It hung for a moment, and then it all came crashing down, broken end first, into the ground like a javelin, still upright until gravity pulled its lopsided self over to rest.
It should have terrified me. It should have stopped my heart. Instead, it slowed it, stopped my tears, started my breath. I still don't know why it gave me peace.
Originally posted at http://violetcheetah.dreamwidth.org/66077.html. Feel free to comment there
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I grew up near Mammoth Cave, a national park of limestone caverns. I only went three times, always in summer, and always they tell you to bring a jacket, because summer or winter, it's always 54 degrees Fahrenheit once you go below the surface. The ranger always gave the standard disclaimer: there probably wouldn't be a cave-in, but if that was a fear of yours, you might want to just go up and have a picnic instead. For the rest of us, well, if the worse happened, our families would thank us for the savings in funeral costs, because "You can't get buried any deeper any cheaper."
I used to be terrified of thunderstorms. As soon as the wind picked up, I wanted to go to the cellar, close the two doors behind us and wait in the cool womb with the jars of canned tomatoes. But my parents said there was no need. It would probably miss us. Each time, it would probably miss us, and the TV station would let us know if there were an actual tornado. I stood at the kitchen window and watched the leaves strip from the trees, not standing too close to the window lest a branch fly off a tree and break the glass. I could not sit, could not watch TV, could not look away. If a funnel cloud were coming, I wanted to see it coming, I wanted to know I was about to die and how many seconds I had.
It was just as bad in a car, maybe worse, with the fear of lightning burning your body from the inside out, and they could tell me I was safe as long as I didn't touch the metal parts of the car but I couldn't make myself believe them. We seemed to be speeding, hurtling down the road at 100 miles an hour, faster than my father drunk on the interstate, the car weaving in the crosswinds. I always begged to stop, to wait out the storm on the side of the road, but they said the sooner we got home the sooner we'd be safe.
I was 11 when we drove home from church in an afternoon thunderstorm. I think I'd stopped begging by that age, but I prayed silently: Just let us get home, I will do anything, just don't kill me here in the open but enclosed in this coffin of metal and glass. My brother was driving, and he had to drive around downed limbs - maybe entire small trees - and I watched the branches flail on the hill in front of us and knew one would crush the roof of our Datsun if it fell on us. I was watching the trees and willing them to stay intact, so I saw when 50 yards in front of us, the lightning bolt split the huge forked tree in half. Through the jagged white line etched into my eyes, I saw the ball of fire billow out from the fork, saw the left half of the tree separate from the rest. It didn't fall like I'd expected, didn't hinge down like a door at the joint, with the tips of the branches landing first. No: That entire half of the tree seemed to move a few inches to the left, pushed aside maybe by the fireball, and then seemed to stay suspended in midair for long seconds, like a cartoon character who's run off the end of a cliff. It hung for a moment, and then it all came crashing down, broken end first, into the ground like a javelin, still upright until gravity pulled its lopsided self over to rest.
It should have terrified me. It should have stopped my heart. Instead, it slowed it, stopped my tears, started my breath. I still don't know why it gave me peace.
Originally posted at http://violetcheetah.dreamwidth.org/66077.html. Feel free to comment there
comments