Warning

When you are halfway across the state from your home and they announce a tornado warning for your county, there isn’t anything you can do. What will be will be. But it doesn’t stop the adrenaline from racing through your system. So you try to talk yourself and each other down from the rush by reminding yourself that Massachusetts isn’t part of “Tornado Alley”. But as soon as you work through that thought, you remember the stories and the images from the Worcester County Tornado of 1953, which was absolutely devastating and deadly. Then the heavens open up and the rain comes in torrents and you have all you can do to drive without hydroplaning on the water that is falling so fast none of the manmade systems can absorb it quickly enough. So against the background noise of the pouring rain and the windshield wipers and the plumes of water spraying up like fountains from the wheels of the other cars and crashing against the windows, you struggle to listen to the car’s weather radio. The computer generated voices of NOAA weather radio tell you so much, but you want to see the multicolor Doppler radar images so you can pinpoint where the most damaging cells are in relation to your house and where you are right this instant. Eventually you just let go and let nature do what it will do, because that was your only option all along. You drive as responsibly, as safely as you can, pulling over when it is required to wait out another cloudburst. You still want to redirect the rain after the first inch has fallen, to go where the droughts and wildfires are. You’re human. You want to control, direct, have dominion. Instead you wait, and breathe and after a few hours of white knuckle driving, arrive home, just after the tornado warning has been lifted. Your house is there. You are not in Oz. The white and pink petals are trampled into the ground, like confetti after Carnivale. But you are home and whole and grateful.