Tornado!

There’s been a number of tornado watches the past month. Even some warnings. Iowa, so I’ve learned, is on the edge of Tornado Alley.

My youngest son Samson doesn’t like tornado warnings. Or watches. In fact, he hates them.

“We should’ve just stayed in Pennsylvania,” Samson mumbles under his breath when the sirens go off. Or “there have been sooooo many tornados since we moved here.”

Samson is right. Not many tornados on the east coast. Unlike my son Samson, I was born in the Midwest and, while we didn’t get as many tornados warnings in Minnesota as do in Iowa, we certainly got some.

It’s funny. I’m afraid of so many things. And yet tornados do nothing to me. No anxiety at all. And then there’s Samson. He isn’t afraid of anything. Except tornados.

Anxiety is a funny thing.

***

We’ve had to go down to the basement a handful of times since moving to Iowa City. The sky gets dark. The wind starts gusting. Rain, lightning, and hail. The works. The sirens go off. The emergency broadcast station interrupts our TV’s and phones. I’ll concede to my son Samson that, given such conditions, it is fair to wonder if the world is ending.

“We need to go to the basement,” Samson tells everybody.

“I was going to go outside,” I tell Samson, “and say hello to the tornado.”

“Dad!” Anxious Samson doesn’t find his father’s stupidity amusing.

“Do you think Meowalicious wants to go outside with me?”

“Dad! We need to go downstairs now.”

I stop being a fool and follow Samson downstairs. We turn on the weather and huddle on the futon in our basement. As far from the windows as we can get. Samson wraps himself up in a blanket. He gets so worried. I feel bad for him, I really do.

During the most recent warning, I gave him some advice about dealing with anxiety. As though I know anything. I told him to take deep breaths. To think of something happy. To get his mind off the storm. He was receptive and it sort of worked. I wish those techniques worked for me when I am anxious. Baby steps, I guess. I’ll get there. We’ll all get there. Fear and anxiety don’t get the final word.

***

There was a tornado that came through our neighborhood a few years before we moved here. Our house was untouched. A few people in our neighborhood got new roofs. We’ve heard tale told from our neighbors.

Maybe I’m not worried about tornados because I’ve never actually lived through one. Just countless warnings and watches. Bad thunderstorms that don’t destroy houses or, God forbid, kill people.

I always get anxious when I need to fly somewhere. Like, really anxious. But then I get onto the plane, remember I’ve flown countless times, and relax. My newest anxiety is white coat syndrome. After the pandemic, I get anxious when I go to the doctor. So much so that my blood pressure gets high. And trying to make my blood pressure not be high only makes it higher. Deep breathing and thinking of my happy place be damned. And yet I’ve been to the doctor countless times in my life. It doesn’t make sense to me.

I don’t know what to tell Samson. The body gets anxious about what it gets anxious about. Even when it doesn’t make sense to us. Being a human being is a strange thing. Making peace with this terrifying reality is a strange thing. Heck, writing a short blog about those strange things is, in and of itself, a strange thing.

So be it. We are strange things learning to make peace with strange realities. I guess we just keep going down the road, tornado warnings be damned. Tornado watches too.