4:44AM. I don’t know if it’s the sky lit up white, or the bing bing bing of the hailstones on the driveway or the metallic clanking of the three story ladders against our house. The workmen have ripped off all our gutters and the rain is falling in one solid sheet in front of us, well not really because the wind is whipping it southward at an odd angle. I’m not so scared of thunderstorms anymore but the wind is rattling our new windows and whipping the branches of the pine tree. The siding supplies lay on the front lawn, metal surrounding us.
When Bill and I were in Boston we visited the Science Museum and went to a talk on lightning. The woman talked about the safety of being in a car during a storm. It’s not the rubber tires, she explained. It’s the fact that you’re in a totally enclosed vehicle, as she stepped into a giant, open wire cage. Okay, now THAT made me nervous. The lightning the machine behind her could generate was around 4 billion megawatts. I’m probably making up that exact number, but it was a really big number, bigger than what the lamp in my front room can take. Or my body can take. I decide to watch as she closes the door and the cage starts to rise into the air. Oh, come on. Is this REALLY necessary? Higher and higher, she calmly explains that you need to be totally enclosed (like in an airplane) so the lightning can travel around the outside and leave you safe on the inside.
CRACK. The crooked finger of lightning strikes the outside of the metal cage and crackles a little around it. Snap snap snap. She stands in the middle, then starts to walk around, calmly demonstrating the awesome power of lightning, but also its properties and tendencies.
I hope my metal cage life is fully enclosed. I don’t want any energies to be able to slip through. I want them to slide along my outsides and be neutralized into the earth. I look out through our beautiful new windows and listen to SOMETHING metallic banging outside our front room window. I’m not scared. The first storm has passed and is heading on its journey northeast. But I see another one coming on the Weather Channel’s Doppler, the orange and yellow blob advancing lopsidedly, fronted by a thick glob of green that almost seems to jump in its intensity and excitement. I close my eyes and tune in to my inner Doppler to see what’s going on, grateful I’ve worked with developing that for the past 10 years, otherwise all I could do is watch the storm and not know where it’s come from or how severe it is. I’m listening for the sirens. So far I don’t hear them. But the night is still young. 5:09AM and I’ll sign off, the small rat cage ready in case we need to transfer our lady rats and head to the basement, away from the windows and wind and ladders and packets of siding.
In the end we’ll be safe, the rotted roof and mold behind the siding ripped out and replaced with new wood. We will be safe and secure with our new, just as WE will be safe and secure with our new - it just takes time, faith, and a whole hell of a lot of work. But I’m up for it. Literally. And now I feel tired. 5:11AM. Good night, er, good morning, everyone.