The Sky and a Kangaroo

Some time ago, I feel ill and missed work and school.  I moped on the couch all day, wallowing in my misery.  One night, Mike came home, made himself dinner, and was preparing for his first post-wedding boys'-night with his dad and brother.

"It's fine," I moaned.  'Just go.  I'll be fine."

"You sure?" he smiled?

"Yes, of course.  I love you."

And the bastard walked out the door.  What?!  Clearly my words were a cry for help, a desperate attempt for him to read my mind and volunteer to stay and take care of his ailing young wife.  He did not read my mind, and, in this apartment, that is unforgivable.

Two nights ago, I was feeling a bit bummed.  I'd dropped Mom off at the airport that morning, and I missed her already.  The only thing that cheered me was getting some vege-out time with Mike.  When he got home, I started to brainstorm some plans, but he reminded me that he had plans (which he'd told me days before and the night before) to go see a movie with his dad and brother.  

Well, I've been in a fragile state lately for no good reason, and I started to cry.  How could he leave me in my (apparent) hour of need?  What terrible timing!  Why didn't I remember that he was going out so I could have spent the whole day feeling sorry for myself instead of being so suddenly devastated?  (See?  Fragile.)  

After Mike left, I indulged on the couch under our big window on some "Colbert Report."  Suddenly, the sky is black.  The wind is screaming.  Next commercial, I tell myself, I'll go roll up my windows.  (Yes, the show was online and could have been paused at any moment.)  I skip out in some flip-flops and stand outside near our door as I watched the clouds roll in.  I can hear the rain approaching, and suddenly I'm younger and standing on our porch in Nebraska, holding our cat that I've oh-so valiantly saved from the outdoors, feeling the hot wind and watching the tree turn brighter against the darkening sky.  

Back inside, the power blows.  There is a fury of wind outside now, and I'm desperately searching for the new ("genius!" I'd told myself) spot of the matches.  A few curse-inducing toe-stubs later, candles are lit, and I wait for the lights to return.

The lights did not return.  Mike, who'd only experienced the storm as a nice sound effect in his movie, came home to find me sitting next to a group of candles, reading a magazine with squinted eyes.

"Hey," he said sheepishly.

Our entire apartment is electric, which means no air conditioning in the week of record-breaking heat, no hot water for oatmeal, no wireless, no cell service, no hot water for showers, and certainly no fridge or freezer.  Mike went to bed that night so hot that he tried sleeping on the bathroom tile and sprawled in the bedroom floor before creepily dragging himself from the floor to the bed, horror movie style, in the early morning hours. 

I didn't sleep that night either, but not for the heat.  I couldn't stop thinking about our food.  Our fridge is usually lacking, but Mom had just visited, and I didn't want her to think that we're starving, so I packed it with all the wonderful dishes I was going to make her.  There it all sat, warming away.  We had so much money sitting in our fridge, wasting away.  

I thought of the apricot preserves purchase I'd indulged in, the first whole gallon of milk we'd bought, the Omaha Steaks order in the freezer.  I tried to console myself with the fact that some people don't have ANY food, but that just made the waste seem so much worse.  I had bad dreams about food, and it wasn't helped when I opened my eyes to the aforementioned creepy crawl of 4 AM Mike.

The next morning, an exhausted Mike had a plan for the shower that was sure to be freezing.

"Okay, we'll scrub with soap outside the shower, then hop in and rinse off," he said conspiratorially.  It didn't sound like a good idea to me.  "Come on," he said.  So we soaped away, and the cold loofah made me more miserable than I'd just been.

"It's not foaming," I spat, scrubbing until my thighs turned bright red.

"Okay, go go go!" Mike cried, and he cranked the shower on and in we went, laughing.

The water was hot.  It was burning almost.  The hot water from the evening before hadn't cooled, and it was the best (ten-second) shower I'd ever had.  When we cracked open the freezer, everything was still rock-solid.  We packed it in a cooler to take to his parents house.  On the way, we stopped at Wawa to grab breakfast.  We mulled over breakfast sandwiches and donuts and hugged good-bye as we went our separate ways for the day.

We felt like such a team, and it was a wonderful thing to come out of it.  (So is the renter's insurance check we're getting for our spoiled food!  Thanks, USAA!)  The power came on a few minutes before I got home from work.

When I was laying awake that night, I watched what was left of the storm outside my window.  I'd ran my fingernails lightly over Mike's back and blown through pressed teeth, up and down, hoping to cool him off.  Somehow, it made me miss a world where heaven was winning a coin flip with David and being the first to lay my toasted self on Mom and Dad's bed so Mom could gently put aloe vera on my back as she blew lightly up and down my spine.  I missed listening to the storms from my bed, watching Oliver opens his eyes lazily each time thunder cracked; his casual attitude relaxed me, even in my later high school years.

Mostly, I thought about the storms of my life, the ones I find myself in now.  Mike said before falling asleep that some author talks about how scary and humbling storms were before technology, how close to God they must have made people feel.  Now, I think we're constantly predicting the storms that are to come, and we hear about where they hit and who they injure or kill.  We know the stats and the patterns, but when we're in the storm, no radar matters.  We're in the midst of thunder and lightning, and our head knowledge doesn't count anymore.

Head knowledge doesn't count, so trust blindly, without restrictions.  Because, you know what, the weathermen always get it wrong anyway.