Dating : I’ve Always Been A Storm

Storms are interesting, don’t ya’ think?

One minute, it’ll be a blue sky day, classic Florida keys — balmy and beautiful. Then the next, the sky’ll darken and the clouds’ll become the earth’s blanket, lightening strikes so darn terrific, and the rain a life giver, somehow for us all. That’s why I moved here from the plains of Kansas. Yup, for the storms, I am here!

Now I guess you’re probably gonna’ ask me about the mosquitoes and the gators, but I’ll just tell ya’ there’s the weather. To sit under my veranda whilst the swamp spreads out before me, to watch the world morph and do its thing. It’s fuckin’ fantastic. Still. As fascinating and wonderful as storms are, that’s not the simplest explanation of why I moved yonder.

Back in Kansas, many years ago, I was a farmer’s daughter. That’s what the townspeople knew me as — pretty un-god-darn-remarkable right. But, it was a comfortable existence; there, wandering in golden fields, meadows so flat that you could watch a prairie disappear into the distance, and all the horses that roamed the land with it. I grew up lovin’ that land and I wouldn’t change it. It was the kinda’ place where men wore straw hats and old dungarees. Mothers tucked jacquard shirts into their flares, rolling sleeves to milk the cattle. It was mid-west at its best, with all the people working the land that lay so flat. It was so darn flat that sometimes I watched a field of barley just end, wondering if that was where the world fell away and heaven began.

Anyways, that’s where I grew up — a Kansas country girl. Then there was the family. Daddy was always good to me. I didn’t work much. He’d been a fighter pilot in the war. Said he flew Mustangs, but he never spoke a lot about it. Ma’ was good too. I thought her a real strong woman — to have waited through the war for Daddy like that — but she died in 67′ when I turned twenty. I wasn’t ready for that. When she passed, I spent all day locked in my bedroom, pulling a pillow into my face, wishing the days weren’t so hot and dry. Daddy didn’t take it too well neither. Sometimes I sat on our porch and watched him drive the tractor back into the barn. He’d be at the wheel, pulling his hat down, hiding the tears from me. I remember watching him cry so hard from my room one day that I wasn’t sure whether I ought to just run outside and hug him. He’d jump from the cab and raise his arms, throwing his hat on the ground, his eyes closed.

Darn, it hurt to watch.

In the late Kansas summers, dry spells were often broken with the most intense rains you ever saw. Our golden fields would turn grey with the shadow of the world, and Daddy would rush to take me out and watch the weather put on a show from beneath our roof. It was the realest moment of father daughter time that I’ve ever known.

That’s when I realised I loved storms.

He used to tell me that a gal’ could do anything. You see, to him she wasn’t judged only by what she looked like and the fella’s whom she courted with, but by her own soul, because to be a woman is to be a storm. That’s what Daddy told me.

“Girl you’re a storm,” he’d say, “and that storm out there is your mother. Even when she’s gone she’s looking out for us and showing us that she ain’t to be messed with. You see that lightening? That’s for you,” and then he’d gesture to the horizon, pointing at the cobalt forks as thunder boomed.

I’d smile whenever he told me that — it was a fine time, those moments with Daddy — I figured it had to mean that whenever the world lit up, I too lit up. But you know how it is. Ain’t no one a kid forever.

I stayed on the farm until well into my thirties, but when Daddy died, I decided it was time to move elsewhere. He was there, in the skies now, back flying his Mustang, or maybe he was with Ma. I took comfort watching him go when the time came. He looked peaceful as he went, and it was raining, with lightening rolling in the distance. I remember around one o’clock in the morning, that he rose up one last time, asking me to open the curtain a little so we could watch the storm together. Outside the win was howlin’, the sky silver and wonderful, but as the rain hit the window, I turned back, and he had passed.

I decided that wherever I went after that, the storms needed to be more frequent and more epic. I needed to go some place where the folks might watch me.

That’s when Florida happened, with storms so terrific that I know they’re up there in the big blue heavens. Hell, Daddy’s probably flyin’ his Mustang amongst the clouds, and Ma is probably watching him, waiting for him to come back and land amongst that white and puffy world.

Sittin’ here on my veranda, it’s nice to think they’re watching out for me when the world lights up, and it lights up frequently.

I like to think I can do anything I want ya’ know, for I too, am a god darn storm.

Julia King, August 1983

~ Samuel Hodges, December 2019 — England