The weather was always hot and sticky growing up near the Maryland Seaboard, creating a pressure system that always invited thunderstorms to venture down towards us. The best part was, I never knew where they would come from. The pilot side of my dad taught me how to watch for fronts and different kinds of clouds. I was the only six-year-old who knew how storms traveled from west to east and that different clouds sat at different elevations. I didn’t know which Power Rangers had which powers, but I knew a cumulus cloud’s base hovered around 6,500 feet. I knew the jet streams would bring the storm clouds over our house from the backyard to the front.
But living close enough to the coast meant that hurricanes could whirl in from the east and catch me off guard. I loved that surprise. Whenever my neighbors started boarding up their windows and charging extra batteries, I would sit and stare out our screen door, waiting for the dark clouds to roll in. Every so often I would glance at the floor at my retriever, Bailey. She hated storms, so whenever one would get close, she would start getting nervous and I would start getting excited.
I will never forget 1999’s hurricane season; it was one for the record books. That summer, our house was under construction and for sale while I slowly accepted the fact that I would be starting the school year in Michigan instead of in Columbia. My mom put me to work everyday packing, painting and purging the house. I kept to my assignments pretty well for a thirteen-year-old who would rather be doing anything else. But I disappeared every time I smelled rain in the wind.
The week the moving truck rolled in, so did Hurricane Floyd. It was the second week of September and I remember all of my friends praying the storm would get us so the county would have to close the schools. I remember my mom praying the storm would stay out over the ocean so all of our stuff didn’t get soaked as the movers loaded the truck. I remember sneaking off to climb a tree.
The thicket behind our house sat on a little hill facing east. The trees on the hill’s edge were the closest high points I could climb to get a better view of the storm’s front line. As the winds picked up and the sky darkened, I headed for the hill. As my mom dictated to the movers which boxes should go next, and which boxes were worth more than their lives, she looked out of the sliding glass door to see her dumbass daughter climbing a tree while a hurricane headed straight for her.
She threw open the door, demanding that I get down. I could hear the tone of her voice, but I couldn’t make out her exact words over the howling wind. All I knew was she was pissed, but that was nothing new. While I wasn’t a “rebel child,” I was familiar with how fast my mom’s face could turn red when I skipped the bus to hang out with my friends after school or when I decided to take an impromptu fieldtrip to Baltimore without asking. From the tree branch, I interpreted her gestures as a suggestion to get down, but my excitement and lack of common sense told me to go one branch higher.
As the time delay between the lightning strikes and the thunder crashes shortened, I knew the storm was almost on top of me, and the feeling of butterflies hit me. What I didn’t realize was the minute the butterflies hit my stomach, a lightning bolt hit the tree next to the one I was in. That jolt snapped the tree’s branch in half, sending it straight for me.
I don’t remember the branch hitting me or crashing to the ground. I just remember waking up in the soaking wet grass. My dad was worried sick and my mom was livid. The gash on my forehead wasn’t that horrible -- I’d had worse -- but it was enough to send me to the Howard County General Hospital one last time.
The detour to the ER delayed our departure by a few hours, leaving me to listen to the wrath of my mother for nine hours as we headed north to New York for my dad’s last air show of the season, ironically following the same path Hurricane Floyd decided to take up the coastline.
While I did sustain one gigantic tongue-lashing, the look of shock on the kids’ faces was priceless when the new girl told them the stitches were from a hurricane.
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