A dark and dreary day

In Texas in the spring, weather determines your day’s activities. It sure did mine today Last night having goofed in submitting my Central Market order, I checked the weather forecast, found that the severe storms predicted were to be over around noon. I scheduled my curbside pick-up for 12:30.

This morning all that changed. By noon, it was almost night-time dark, with thunder rumbling. We were under a tornado watch until five o’clock, a flash flood warning until three-thirty. Sophie refused to leave my side and looked abjectly miserable. I called Central Market and asked if they would keep my groceries until tomorrow, and they agreed.

By coincidence, I’m reading Widow’s Tears, by Susan Wittig Albert, a China Bayles novel with flashbacks to the devastating Galveston Hurricane of 1900. Fiction has the ability, through focusing on particular individuals, to make the generalized horror of such a storm very real. For those who don’t know, it was and still is the worst natural disaster in U. S. history. Eight to ten thousand people died or were lost—the figure is approximate because nobody knows how many were swept out to sea. The city was totally destroyed.

Susan’s chapters describing the storm, particularly those in which fictional character Rachel Blackwood fights to protect her home and children, are graphic and compelling. You feel yourself in the storm, feel the floor and walls shaking, watch the water rise ever higher, hear the wind scream. At one point, Rachel looks out and sees a woman lashed to a door being tossed by the gale-force waters. She is sure the woman is dead and knows the horse behind is as its body rolls over and over in the water. Susan has told me that these scenes were terrifically hard to write, but she’s done a masterful job.

I know of course that I am on high ground—I actually do live on a slight hill—and that we’re far from the Gulf and unlikely to meet such a fate. But it’s still spooky to read about that storm while a milder version rages outside. We were spared the possible hail, and the storm passed.

The weather gods smiled on us in the late afternoon, and an al fresco dinner party went on as planned on the huge deck at the home of good friends. They have a new really long table—seats twelve at least—of 200-year-old beams, so we were celebrating not just spring but that new/old table. Interesting people, good conversation, and tasty food.

Lots of remarks about how the sun had come out just in time. A shift in the breeze sent one guest scurrying to check the radar, but it was reassuring. Then, after most had finished supper, suddenly without the warning of thunder or anything, it began to rain.

Everyone scrambled to get inside, but I did hear Phil Green say, “What about Judy?” My walker was across the deck. Hostess Sue held out her hand, but I said I needed the walker. Bless her, she got wet herself getting it for me, but we both made it inside only a bit damp/

Weather does indeed call the shots in Texas.