Storms of Life

Her Take:

If there’s one thing I would change about myself, without question, it would be the fact that I cry too easily. It makes me feel silly and fragile when I don’t want to be either of those things. 

Well, ok, I’m ok with being silly when It’s my choice, but I hate feeling fragile.

You know what it’s like; when every nerve ending feels raw and exposed and you go through the day feeling like the slightest wind, or touch, or word will make you crumble into a pile of crumbs and someone will come along and sweep you away? There’s a time for someone (Me. I’m talking about me, not shaming you.) to feel that way, when it’s normal and expected, but it’s no way to go through life. 

Last week I drove through my town and saw tree after tree, and limbs, and signs, and light poles, and all manner of things that had the audacity to be standing straight on the morning of July 20th, 2019 shoved to the ground. Each road I drove down, block upon block of my little town, was torn open from a midsummer storm.

Predictably, for me at least, I cried. 

It’s funny really, I’ve definitely CALLED myself a tree-hugging hippy, but I’ve never thought I was anymore attached to trees than the next person. Seeing this devastation, though, with huge old oaks, pines, and maples pushed over, their roots torn and pulled sideways out of the dirt, it was too much. Much, much too much. 

Maybe it’s the impermanence of it all, or the sense that no tree or house or person was truly safe. I don’t know. I just know that it made me cry. 

At about 10am on July 20th, Wisconsin Rapids was hit by what I’ve now learned is called a derecho. These are storms which, much like tornados, spawn from the unstable combination of high and low pressure in a thunderstorm. Unlike tornados though, derechos have straight-line winds with long and sustained gusts. For example, one report said that the winds in the derecho of July 20th had sustained speeds of 74 miles per hour with gusts up to 85 miles per hour. For reference, that’s the same as a F1 tornado or hurricane. The notable difference, I guess, is that because there’s no funnel cloud, there’s also no tornado siren and, therefore, not much in the way of warning. It’s just suddenly more windy than you realized it ever could be. 

That’s the sciencey part, now let’s get back to the part I really want us to talk about. 

On July 20th I was reminded that, suddenly and permanently, things will change. We watched the wind blow, saw trees bend in the wind, and it felt like the world was collapsing in on us.

From a window in my house, I watched a massive limb from an oak tree crack and fall to the ground, barely missing our garage. The tree that it fell from has likely stood in that spot since my mother was a child. I played under it when my grandmother lived in the house next door. The storm simply took a piece of it away, and kept raging. 

When the storm finally ended and we could survey the damage we found another big limb has fallen on the house next door, two big trees in our back yard tipped over with their roots pulled out of the ground, and the top 10 feet of another tree had been blown off. 

Still, we were lucky. (Note: A friend corrected me when I used that word. She’d like me to say ‘blessed’ instead, and we are.) We lost power, we lost trees, and the cleanup has been exhausting, but we are all unhurt. 

So why am I still driving around with tears in my eyes? It’s been more than two weeks, so I’m beginning to think it’s not the storm anymore. 

I think it’s how quickly and how many times everything in my life has changed. Or it’s the fact that things, and people, and opportunities can disappear in a second and all of those things feel like they take a lifetime to come back around. Or maybe it’s just everything, like global warming, and injustice, and hatred, and bigotry and misogyny, and people who don’t know how to love, only how to hate, and war, and crime, and EVERYTHING. The fallen trees and broken fences are just projections into my reality of how well and truly broken the world feels. 

Or it’s just me, crying too easily again. 

His Take:

This may not be the smartest people of Rapids right now, but I LOVE thunderstorms. I could sit in front of a window and watch the rain like I was sitting in front of the television watching Murder, She Wrote. Even as a teen, when it would thunderstorm, I'd go pull open the garage door and sit there with my dog reading comic books and watching it storm. I enjoy a nice, respectable thunderstorm with some lightning thrown in, but I don't like destructive storms.

Even though I live 300 miles away, when I open up the weather app on my phone, the home screen is set to Rapids weather. This has caused plenty of confusion and unnecessary coats, but that's my own fault. A few weeks ago when I looked at the weather and saw that there was a big-ass storm coming, I was concerned. The worst part? I didn't want to call or text anyone in Rapids, because the last thing you want to do in a storm is screw with electronics, even though I'm sure cell phones are a lot safer than corded phones and space heaters.

Then came the pictures from the Daily Tribune & the Wisconsin Rapids City Times, pictures of awesome destruction and damage. It's times like these that although my body is in the suburbs of Chicago, my heart truly lies in Rapids. Had I been able, I would've driven up there in the A-Team's van, skidded to a stop in the intersection of 8th and Grand, jumped out with a chainsaw and started helping people get the fallen trees out of the way.

I was glad to read that, as is the norm in Rapids, neighbors were helping out neighbors, and in fact continue to do so. That's something that doesn't happen everywhere, and shouldn't be taken for granted. I'm not a big fan of the phrase "________ strong". In the wake of all the tragic happenings going on, there's a "strong" slogan for a lot of cities. But honestly, the people of Rapids are strong, and even though it'll take time, you'll all come to know that you're "Rapids Strong". You're still people that care about one another, that are neighbors to your neighbors, that will go out of your way to fix a couple of dinners for the family down the block that maybe doesn't have electricity yet, on and on. So, just let me say a big THANK YOU to everyone in the 715 for standing up, shaking it off, and getting right back into it, You've proven once again that the people of Rapids aren't victims, you're a city of overcomers. Rock on, Rapids.