Elizabeth G: FEAR

I don’t usually write about serious subjects when I blog here at RWQ. I pretty much stick to books, music, and movies, along with the occasional interview with a guest author or even a recipe. You know, fairly frivolous stuff meant to amuse or entertain.

But it hasn’t been a frivolous kind of week in the USA when we’ve faced devastating storms along one of our coastlines. Once again Mother Nature has reminded us that there are some things over which we have no control: Weather being at the top of that list.

Most of us live with the possibility of some kind of dangerous weather. For my friends on the West Coast it’s earthquakes. For my family in California and Arizona it can also include flash floods, mud slides and forest fires. In my part of the country it’s tornadoes, thunderstorms, blizzards, ice storms, and flooding. Our family doesn’t obsess over the weather, but we are aware of it. We keep bottled water in our basement, along with a few emergency supplies and a first aid kit.

In the wake of Hurricane Ike and the devastation, I’m going to tell you a story about my little brush with FEAR. It was a few years ago. My husband and I decided to go out for a late dinner on a Saturday night. (After all, I’d been writing right up until 8:00 p.m. and it was time to relax.) For whatever reason we didn’t check the Weather Channel before we left. The last prediction was cloudy with a few rain showers. The restaurant was on the other side of town, which meant taking the interstate that skirts our city.

We enjoyed a leisurely dinner and then headed home. It wasn’t long before we realized the few rain showers were actually a downpour. In fact, a proverbial deluge. We even had to pull off the road several times because we couldn’t see more than a foot in front of us. We debated whether to take city streets (notorious for flooding) or the interstate. We decided on the latter.

It seemed like we’d made the right choice until traffic slowed to a crawl. There were red taillights ahead of us as far as we could see. Otherwise, the night was as dark and ominous as I ever recall. When we reached an underpass we realized we were approaching a dip in the six-lane highway and it was flooded.

I’m sure we’ve all seen and read about cars getting swept away in only a few feet of water. That crossed our minds as we inched forward. But there was a concrete divide, so we couldn’t turn around. We couldn’t go back. We could only drive straight ahead.

I thought of that night again as I watched the news this past weekend and knew in some very small way I could relate to how those thousands and millions of people were feeling as the storm barreled down on them.

I’m not sure I have a point to this blog. Certainly we’ve all been sending our thoughts and prayers and hopes to those in harm’s way. And hopefully sharing whatever assistance we can give to them.

I don’t want to ever live my life in fear. But I still vividly remember the night we drove through the flood.

Blessings all,
EG