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| Look In the Middle |
Yesterday, on a very nice afternoon, I was in the Ballinger Walmart, happily spending my money. I went to check out and just as the clerk was running my Corona over the scanner, a hubbub suddenly arose directly in the foyer. My hand was in mid-air as I looked out the front windows, only to see that the lovely blue sky and puffy clouds of the perfect day had disappeared and had been replaced with an opaque, swirling dust wall accompanied by a zipping sound. A manager-type person was running out the door and another manager-type person turned around and said "This is serious". Then it was over and a bunch of dazed, but unharmed, people stood around saying "Was that a tornado?" and "That was a tornado!". It knocked over a bunch of items that are kept outside in sidewalk-sale fashion and decimated a few plants. A woman and her son had been in the foyer, and, as I passed by on my way to the car (to get my id to buy the beer, believe it or not, haha!), she said the suction had nearly pulled them off their feet. A row of bicycles were also partially knocked over. The vapor in the middle of the accompanying photo is what was seen receding from the baby tornadoette scene.
What gets me is that the other night, when the cold front was coming in from New Mexico and a long squall line developed, reaching as far south as Big Lake and as far north as mid-Oklahoma, I stayed up all night watching it on radar, ready to go to the cellar. I was so prepared, the cellar top having been repainted to prevent leaking, the cellar itself had been cleaned and all bedding washed. I drug my kid down right when it started raining (I can only do this once, at the beginning of the spring weather season, after that I'm on my own in the hole), only to find myself hiding from gentle rain and a couple of lightning snaps. Then, here I am sashaying around Walmart with not a care in the world and zippety-pow! a tiny twister surprises me. There's a life lesson in that story, for sure, like "Quit worrying so damn much and enjoy living, 'cause you got no control over this thang!".
Me and the Mister have arrived at that time of life where we have no children in the household. They have taken over our former residence and we are now primarily stationed in the Concho Valley. I would have said 'finally arrived', but that's not what it feels like. When I was twenty-something, I could hardly wait for this day to come. Now that it is here, I've been too long in my kids loop to feel comfortable without them. I'm beginning to see why people (I would say elderly, but Lordy, what is that? My age?) have all the neighborhood children in, as some sort of way to ward off the empty feeling. The list of things that are bugging me are ridiculous. It's like saying I'm too comfortable. Here, you'll see what I mean: There aren't as many dirty clothes; no one eats the leftovers; there's always soda in the fridge; there's no one to clean up after (Mister's disarray is minimal). The only thing that doesn't look like a benefit is the milk goes bad before it's all used. I miss those little monsters. Even that is silly to say, because they both outweigh me by at least 50 lbs. Boy, this life is weird and strange.
But! I'm hell-bent on finding the fun in it.
