A Storm in Three Acts.

I.

I woke up thirsty last night around 11:50. It was starting to rain, so on my way to get some water I closed the bedroom window a bit so the maternity clothes piled underneath wouldn't get wet (yes, it's high time I put those away). By the time I'd made it down the hall to the bathroom, it wasn't just raining-- it was storming, and badly, with lightening bolts whizzing around and the very floor shaking from the force of the thunder. I started to wonder whether I'd shut the window enough when I noticed a strange sound underneath the din from the storm. Oh, no, I thought. That's the tornado siren.

I raced downstairs and turned on the TV, where a local newscaster gestured to an oddly beautiful map of Franklin County, decorated in the most violent hues from the radar. "Seek shelter immediately!" he was saying, his forehead shining with sweat. Well, shit, I thought vaguely as my feet propelled me upstairs double-quick. This is the fulfillment of all my worst nightmares.

"We have to get to the basement. That's the tornado siren," I told Mr. Milkweed, snapping on the light. Not so terrified that I forgot about the rather disgusting griminess of the concrete down there, I tore off my socks and put on flip-flops as he raced to the nursery. Yanking a very sleepy and confused little Eva from her crib, Mr. Milkweed practically tossed her to me and the three of us headed for the lowest level.

II.

The basement was cool and too bright, and the broken antennaed radio we had sitting by the treadmill did a maddeningly incomplete job of keeping us informed. "Fzzzzzzzzbttt Grandview Heights! Upper Arlington!Fzzzzzzzzzz funnel cloud fzzzzzzz tornadic activity! Fzzzzzbtttt heading down the fzzzz corridor. You are in the path of this storm!" Outside, the winds died down, the rain quieted, and then picked up again with renewed intensity.

I passed Eva a squirming off to Mr. Milkweed, who crouched on a stool with her as she blindly tried to breastfeed through his t-shirt. A clearer radio signal informed us that the storm was passing into Bexley, and then towards Obetz, so silently we waited another five minutes or so just to be safe and headed back upstairs. "Da da?" Eva mumbled into my neck, attempting to latch on to my collar bone. About five minutes of nursing later, she was out, and I laid her back in her crib as the tornado sirens continued to wail.

"So, what's the deal? I thought the warning expired," I said, jittery from the after-effects of the adrenaline rush. Mr. Milkweed offered to sit downstairs and watch the weather for a while to try and get a bead on things. I drifted in and out of sleep, listening to the cracks of thunder and occasional whimpers from the baby monitor that never really amounted to anything. A while later, Mr. Milkweed came up and said that the city was trying to shut down the sirens, and that they shouldn't still be going off. It rained for a few more hours.

III.

This morning, the sun shone brilliantly, and the air was thick with moisture. I turned on NPR, half expecting Steve Inskeep to be intoning dramatically about the chaos overnight. Instead, I hear about Hilary Clinton's campaign debt. It's as if the insanity of the night before never happened. I got some pureed apples down from the freezer.

Our neighbor Mike was feeding squirrels on the porch. "Did you hear the sirens last night?" Mr. Milkweed asked, trying to be neighborly. "Yeah," he said scornfully, spitting over the side of his porch. "How about them fire trucks, though? You hear them?" Mr. Milkweed confessed that he hadn't. "Whole bunch of 'em a couple streets over." Mike sighed and scratched his belly. "Think I'm gonna climb up on the roof later today. Gutters 'er clogged." The screen door slammed.

Mr. Milkweed reported Mike's comment to me. "That's the worst idea ever," I said, and began to prepare Eva's breakfast, mentally outlining my schedule for the day.