Tornado Weather

The first day of Spring is just around the corner. Here in California that usually means our jade-green Irish hills gradually turn the color of a lion's mane, but due to recent drought, it's probably going to be more like fading from olive to burnt toast. We're getting some rain this week but probably not enough to correct a full dry season. Hopefully we'll be spared another round of mudslides to the south.

I come from the Midwest, where precipitation happens all year long. The part when it turns white is mostly what propelled me toward the west coast. I'm not nostalgic about shoveling out of six-foot banks of snow, but I do miss how lightening sparked across a forever sky, followed by booming thunder that sometimes punctuated my dad's hellfire and brimstone sermons. When people ask why I set my first novel in Michigan they assume it's because I grew up there. That's partly why, but it's also because Michigan weather makes for a more interesting backdrop. Rain, thunderstorms, hail, blizzards, ice storms; and let's not forget when the air turns eerily still and the sky a sickly shade of yellow that we call tornado weather.

One of my favorite scenes to write in THIS I KNOW is when the family huddles in the basement of their home as a tornado passes overhead. Just recalling the hush of a sticky wind right before the warning sirens pierced my young ears sends me reeling backward in time. I can feel the humidity on my skin, smell the dank corner of our parsonage basement, feel the fear of my family as we waited for the all clear on our transistor radio.  

From chapter 16 of THIS I KNOW:

A huge crack of thunder booms above us, rattling the windows. Chastity scampers over to Mama and Daddy and I follow. The lights flicker on and off twice before the room goes completely dark. Above us our whole house shakes, the wind leaning it one way and then the house fighting its way back to center. Mama starts humming “A Shelter in the Time of Storm,” which is meant to comfort us but for some reason makes me even more scared. 

We don't experience tornadoes as a rule in California, but we do have earthquakes. Mother Nature usually gives you time to take shelter before a funnel cloud reaches for the ground but these tremors come without warning. The best we can do is strap furniture to the wall, keep glassware secured inside cabinets and pray we're not in the grocery store when it hits. 

What about you? How does Mother Nature earn your deepest fear and respect in your neighborhood?

I Only Know What I Don't Know

Lately I've been thinking a lot  about birthdays. Not just because I'll be completing another trip around the sun this month, but because I've witnessed so many people at the end of their journey. Having recently midwifed more than a few dear ones across the fragile veil of this life, I've realized just how similar these transitions are to birth; the labored breath, the physical pain, the emotional whiplash and at long last, the rush of love that overwhelms us.

Family legend says I was born in a hospital elevator between the labor room and the delivery theater, all ten-and-a-quarter pounds of me! I don't know if the story is true but I tend to believe it. Patience is not one of my most stellar virtues. On the other hand, I do enjoy my comforts and I'm just as apt to believe I was one of those hangers-on who waited long past my due date to leave the safety of my mother's womb. And to do so on my terms, not the will of my poor mother or the hospital staff.

While writing the opening prologue of THIS I KNOW, I tried to imagine the final moments  of unborn twins who communicate their last thoughts to one another right before birth. Do babies experience fear? Excitement? Sadness? Or is the whole experience just a lollapalooza of love during a newborn's entry into the outside world? Here's how my young protagonist Grace Carter describes her memory of a time before birth:

Folks don’t believe me when I tell them I remember being in the womb. They think it’s my wild imagination. “There goes Grace in her fantasy world,” they say. But I know what I know. The thing is, they could remember, too, if they wanted. Maybe they don’t because they’d be sorry they were ever born if they recalled the sweetest place they’ve ever been and how they had to leave it.

As I lean into the final bend of a new decade I'm more inclined to believe we don't know any more about what happens before life than what follows death. When people ask me what I think happens after we die, my answer is that I only know what I don't know. For now, I choose to be awed by the gift of another moment, another day, another candle on this sweet slice of life before me. Because every day is new birth. How will you celebrate that gift today?

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Pssst! In celebration of my birthday, we're announcing a Goodreads giveaway for 20 print copies of THIS I KNOW beginning March 3. If you add the book to your Goodreads want-to-read-list you'll be reminded when the giveaway opens. Good luck!