Just Call Me Dorothy

I am petrified of storms.  Its really sort of a love/hate relationship.  I love to hear the thunder and rain.  The lightening doesn't even bother me.  For me, its all in the wind.  I hate storms because they come with wind and, sometimes, tornadoes.  I've always been this way.  Its part of who I am.  When I was a little girl and the wind would pick up or it looked like a storm was coming, I would run all over our backyard pulling anything that wasn't tied down into the house.  Toys, decorations, lawn furniture.  It all had to come in.  And I didn't even live in tornado alley.  We're talking mid-atlantic states here.  Not exactly known for their tornadoes.  I mean, this is a place where what would normally be tornado sirens are used instead to call volunteer firefighters to the fire station.  We did have a tornado once.  It came through near to our house while we were away.  I remember being so scared that when we got home all my stuff would be gone.  (And to someone with OCD, even undiagnosed at the time, "stuff" is very, very important.)  Hubby and I survived some non-descending funnel clouds while living along the gulf coast.  I remember hearing the tornado sirens in the middle of the night thinking "wow, that must be one big fire".  Little did we know.  I think back to the two years that Hubby and I DID live in tornado alley and I don't know how I functioned like a human being.  I think I just chose to ignore the threat as a coping mechanism of some sort.  I remember the green skies, the wall clouds, the sideways rain and the tornado sirens but I never remember being scared.  Now, I live here in Suburbia, basically the midwest, where the threat is higher than you'd think it would be.  I live the months of March, April, May, June, July and August in fear of the wicked winds.  I force my family, birds and all, into the basement every now and then where we sit with our bike helmets on waiting for the warnings to be over.  I have, through much therapy, come to realization that I am as safe as I can be in my home, but my car is a completely different story.  The thing that fears me most about storms now is traveling in them.  One night, on the way home from a wedding, we were driving down the interstate when the radio went off with tornado warnings for all the local counties.  Having just passed the last exit before a vast stretch of farmland, I insisted that Hubby drive backwards down the interstate on ramp shoulder so that we could take refuge in a Hampton Inn lobby while the cyclonic cones of death made their way through the area.  Today, we laugh about that night, but I would do it again in a heartbeat if I had to.  The reason I'm writing all of this today is that tomorrow we are taking a trip to Hometown to see our new little niece.  We are making the trip in one day which means we will be coming back to Suburbia in the dark, driving straight into a cold front.  They are not calling for any severe weather but with their tendency to do nowcasting and not forecasting, I am nervous.  But I will go.  When the thunder rumbles, I will white knuckle my atlas.  When the lightening flashes, I will scan the horizon for potential funnels.  When we start the trip home, I will medicate . . . heavily.  Meteorlogical scars run deep in my mind but I will live through this.  If not, I'll see you in Oz.