Lullaby of the Sirens

Dearest Rachel –

Last night found me home from the first night of VBS, watching videos in the bedroom, when I realized that there was a sound that didn’t quite mesh with the video I was watching. Sure, it was a compilation of creepy stories, and the sound was similarly unsettling, but it didn’t “go” with the background music. So I hit the spacebar to pause what I was screening.

The noise continued; it wasn’t a part of the video at all.

It was, in fact, the local emergency siren, which we almost never hear except for a few minutes after ten in the morning on the first Monday of every month. Upon listening more intently, I realized that upon the roof and oversized the windows, there was a clamoring rainstorm going on, that I hadn’t been aware of apart from the sirens’ call announcing it. Moreover, upon further investigation, it turned out that we were now under a tornado warning for the next hour or so as this band of severe weather raked past us.

Back at my parents’ house, when I was a kid, we would be bundled off to the basement to wait this storm out, lest we get buffeted by the twister’s destructive force, but in our split-level home, there really wasn’t a good place for that. Apart from the bathrooms on the ground floor and lower level, there isn’t a room in the house that doesn’t have at least one wall with a window or two, or is otherwise directly exposed to the elements. There aren’t really any truly safe rooms in the house. And normally, this wouldn’t matter, but if the vortex touched down right here, well… there wouldn’t be much that could be done to spare us.

So what did I do? Thus assured as to the origin of the sound, I simply hit the space bar, and finished the video as if nothing was out of the ordinary. What else, after all, could I do? If it were to land on top of us, we were helpless; I might as well go on in the hopes that the remote possibility doesn’t come to pass. I did, however, shut down the computer after that video, and bid the boys goodnight; and a good thing, too, as no more than ten minutes later, there was a lightning strike that knocked out the power for perhaps a couple of seconds before firing back up again. No need to have to deal with that power surge coursing through my computer’s circuits, even if it was plugged into a surge protector at the time.

It was definitely a moment putting us on notice that we all might as well call it a night. Certainly, the drumbeat of the rain would have been music to your ears; you used to talk about falling asleep to the sounds of a raging nor’easter numerous times while on the island. But could I find rest while the tornado sirens were playing their lullaby on top of that?

It turned out to be a question I didn’t need to answer, as they stopped blaring once the clock struck ten. Evidently, the worst of the emergency was over, as if it had been scheduled to end. Even the rain seemed to suddenly diminish in its intensity. I could sleep in peace, if I so chose to. All I had to concern myself with were the occasional flashes of bright light, and the subsequent rumbles seconds later, as the thunderstorm continued to move away from us to terrorize another series of suburbs to the east.

I won’t say it was soothing – certainly, not to the extent that you might have, back in the day – but the growing calm was more than infectious. There’s nothing like the passing of imminent danger, a sense that the worst is over, to allow one to let go and relax. I’m sure that, at the moment, there are others who have been through much worse fairly recently that could agree with me. But since the only perspective I have is my own, I can only speak from it, and acknowledge that I slept quite soundly once the sirens stilled.

Of course, I still have to get up and deal with today’s troubles, and that will probably be a story in and of itself. Until I can get that together, honey, keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.