While I'm on vacation this week, I'm borrowing some writing I've
done for our son on my own memories. He gifted me with the book Questions You'll Wish You Asked: A Time Capsule for Mothers and Sons,*
by Melissa Pennel, for Mother's Day a few years ago. It's filled with
prompts to encourage the recipient to write about their own life
experiences. I have been chipping away at the various prompts little by
little. Rather than write my
responses in the book itself, I've begun a separate, private blog just
for him, and I share the post links with him whenever I complete a new
post. He also wants a printed version, so at some point I will copy
them over into a Publisher document to print. I'm grateful that he wants to know about my early life and events and people that had an impact on me.
Here's this week's prompt:
Did you have any irrational childhood fears? How did you get over them?
For a long time, I was terrified by storms. I had good reason to be.
Summer was the time of storms in Ohio. They came
rolling in off of Lake Erie in the heat of the afternoon, bringing wind
and lashing rain, and multiplying the waves beating the shore.
When
I was about 8 or 9, there was a terrible July 4th thunderstorm when we
lived in Eastlake, Ohio. The storms were so bad there was also a
tornado that hit nearby Willoughby. We had been having a BBQ with my
Aunt Marian and Uncle Bob, and when they left to go home at the height
of the storm I was so scared they would be hurt or killed.
The
storm raged for hours, the lightening was fierce, the rain just
pummeled our house. My Dad went outside from time to time to scoop up
birds which had been blown from the trees and put them in our garage.
Dad left the garage door open a crack at the bottom in case they wanted
to fly away.
We survived that storm with just lots of standing water in our backyard and leaves, twigs, and small branches everywhere.
Then, when I was about 12 or 13, and lived in Willowick, we had three big trees in our backyard. Not Texas tall, but Ohio tall
- probably 50-60-foot-tall trees. In June of that year one tree next to
our garage was struck by lightning and one very large limb crashed
down, taking the corner of our garage with it, as well as downing a
power line which ran along the back of the yard. The sound of that
strike was unbelievably loud. I think my Mom was working the night shift
then, and our Grandma was staying with us. About a year later, another
lightning strike took another of that tree's large limbs down.
Several
years after that, an epic windstorm took the second of our backyard
trees down. I discovered that coming home from a church function after
dark, and driving up the driveway wondering what that strange shadow was
across the driveway. I came to discover that the large tree in the back
right corner of our yard had fallen and completely filled our backyard
and fell all the way across our driveway. It took weeks to get it all
cleared up.
So, yes, I was scared of storms.
My
fear lessened as I got older, I guess because I came to understand that
there were precautions to take. And I came to like thunderstorms,
especially the beautiful lightning. Little by little I became less
afraid of looking at storms or being out in them. One of my favorite
memories was of actually going out on a "cliff" in a lakefront community
near my house, during a daytime storm and just letting the rain and
wind wash over me. It was an amazing feeling. I don't think I was every
truly afraid of thunderstorms again....until we moved to Texas!
Until next time...
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© Nancy Gilbride Casey, 2024. All rights reserved.
* I am not endorsing purchasing the book on Amazon; it was just the first link that came up.
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