Cellar

I couldn't sleep last night. Sometime in the early hours of the morning my weather radio alarm went off. I stumbled out of bed to find out what catastrophe awaited us and heard that we were in a tornado watch. My family lives in Oklahoma, so that's no big deal. In Oklahoma you are either fascinated by thunder, lightning, and tornadoes, or you are terrified of them because of some close call. I have always been fascinated, but most of my family has always been terrified.

The number of times that I can remember being awakened in the early hours, hauled out of bed, and carried to the musty cellar is more than I can count. I'm not kidding. Trips to the cellar happened anywhere. At friends houses if were visiting during an alert, at relatives houses, all locales were potentially a trip to the cellar if the tornado siren sounded.

At my great grandmother's the trips to the cellar were scary. Her cellar was the size of a large shower, but her family was the size of a small army. It was dark and wet, and if it had been raining there would be boards on the floor to keep your feet out of the water. The walls were lined with shelves filled with canned vegetables and fruit. A single bare light hung from the ceiling. Its meager light never made it past the jars of canned vegetables. If it was a particularly nasty looking storm, many neighbors would drift into the cellar with us which meant that the youngest ones had to find empty spots in the shadows on the shelves. It was there on those shelves that I realized that I was far more scared of what was lurking in the shadows than what was roaring outside.

When I became a teenager I was given a little more freedom about when I would or wouldn't go to the cellar. Although I always felt like this freedom happened because I was older, I now know that the real reason was the advancement of weather radar. With the advanced doppler radar, Gary England, Oklahoma's premier weather man, would keep us advised while we were sitting in our living rooms. Instead of sitting in the cellar clutching a transistorized radio and waiting for the all clear siren, we would eat popcorn and drink Dr. Pepper while we watched the storm waltz around us. Now, we didn't have to go to the cellar unless we could see it's electronic footprints marching right at us.

One cloudy evening while I was outside watching storm clouds gather, my grandfather and grandmother pulled into our driveway. When they arrived I knew that we must be in a tornado watch. I followed them inside. They sat down on the couch, and I sat in a chair by the window. Gary England was in front of his doppler radar tracing out the expected path of the storm I had been watching outside. As ominous as the clouds appeared, we were only in a tornado watch. That didn't still my grandmother. She was shaking visibly and was chattering about needing to go to the cellar now. That was not an option I liked very much because it might mean that I had to go with her. You know how it goes; we don't want grandmother worried about her grandchild. In desperation, I told her that it was just a tornado watch, but her formative years were not spent with doppler radar. She knew that when the clouds were dark and swirling it was time to get underground.

Instead of comforting my grandmother I said something sarcastic. I don't remember the exact words, but I do remember saying them with a laugh. My grandfather stood up and said, "Marcine, we're leaving. I am not going to put up with that." They both got up and walked out as light rain began to fall. My parents didn't say anything to me. Maybe they were thinking the very thing I said, or maybe they knew that I was feeling guilty enough not to need any correction. I don't know which, but I do remember watching them leave hoping that the storm wouldn't get any stronger.

So, last night the sound of thunder and wind driven rain was echoing through my bedroom and through my head. It made me anxious, and I wasn't sure why. Now, after thinking about it for several hours, I think that I have an answer. I don't have a cellar.