As I stand at my desk, looking at the distant reflection of color that is all I can see of the outside world from the part of my employer’s building I work in, I can’t help but think of last year’s torrential storms and the hour and a half I spent stuck in a bathroom, waiting for the tornado warnings to clear. The storm now distending the sky, wrapping it unevenly in darkness long before the sun is due to set, will not be as fierce as the storm last year that left me without power and anxious about something entirely new after I finally made it home between tornado warnings. Even if the weather reports can no longer be trusted as much as they once could, I’ve spent my life watching for storms of all kinds. I know when one is coming by the way the air feels on my skin, by how the temperature and pressure change, by how the wind blows and the various layers of clouds move relative to each other. I studied a lot of meteorology as a child, with the same fervor as I once studied trains and Richard Scarry’s books, but only because I once got surprised while hiding from my family in the woods by a torrential storm. Sure, the science of it all was interesting, as were the remote and–in my eyes–exciting places such science got done, but I was looking for practical lessons and I learned them well enough that they serve me still. I can’t tell exactly when the storm will happen, but I can tell that it will and how bad it will be.
I’m not terribly worried. I know that my plans to get takeout on the way home will likely be impacted by these storms and that maybe I should just cook at home instead (especially considering how long my day has been and how fragile I feel in the face of potential disappointment), but the storm won’t be bad enough or last long enough to really worry me beyond that. Still, the time I spent in one of the bathroom tornado shelters late one night last summer springs to mind as the building empties out, as unessential lights are turned off (including the ones in my office, which feels like a statement about how my employer views, but I can at least turn my office’s lights back on myself and I’m incredibly aware of where I fit into this metaphor), and I am reminded of just how silent and empty this place can be not just at this time of the evening, but when I’m worn out, exhausted, and emotionally drained from an incredibly busy day at work. There’s an extra layer to the stillness and feelings of isolation that fills my eyes with the movement of ghosts and my ears with both the constant, inaudible sounds of Someone Else Nearby. The distant rumbling of planes or thunder or wind does nothing to ease my mind while I fail to actually be productive and settle for something close to “organized” on behalf of Tomorrow Me.
I wish I could sit on my porch, like I used to, as the clouds rolled in, the humidity rose or fell, and the rain began. It has been five years since I lived in a house than had a covered porch and I miss that lovely westward view deeply. I miss storms being something I could appreciate now that they’re things I just plan around. I miss the excitement, the buzz, the anticipation of clouds on the horizon now that I almost never see them until they’re overhead and most of them only ever exist as alerts on my phone and icons on my weather forecasting app. I miss having the internal peace that allowed me to simply stare at the clouds without intrusive thoughts about how I could be better spending my time. I miss the knowledge that I could be dry and comfortable while I watched the storm rush in around me now that I have to keep my windows shut and my blinds closed to keep these old, drafty windows from stealing all the cool air from my apartment. I miss the wonder I felt at the arrival of each storm now that I know that the weather I’m seeing is a reflection of climate change and global warming.
Missing the innocence of youth (or any version of your past self) is nothing new. I have a life filled with regrets that I learned something about the world I’d rather I never knew and I am hardly alone in this. I still can’t help missing the way I was before, when I could simply enjoy a storm without thinking about impending climate change or whether or not the place I’ve chosen to live is as flood-proof as I hoped it would be when I picked it. I wish I could do the work to make myself comfortable in the face of all this uncertainty, but I’m just as much at the mercy of circumstance as the people who can’t tell when it is going to storm or how bad it will be by the way the wind feels between their fingers and around their joints. Everything I’ve ever learned about weather and storms and how to understand them has only brought me grief now as I discover just how much the things I’ve learned need to be altered by experience thanks to the shifting ways our environment works. I wish I could look up at the sky and find comfort in the impending rain, but now each drop looks to me only like one more sign that the world is ending. Not in the way you probably think I mean, but because things will be different–things already are different–and they will one day be different enough to draw a line between the world I learned about as a child and the one I know in that eventual present.