Summer Storms

Memories from a Past

We had a hail storm the other day.  It was not too bad.  The hail was about the size of marbles. It did not scare me too much this time.  I felt safe and secure in a solid brick building. When I was in Dauphin,  I lived in a mobile home which I loved very much.  A mobile home is light and airy, not like a regular house.  What also helped to make it pleasant was that I liked the area I was in.  We all owned our lots so our subdivision was always well landscaped and meticulously manicured by owners who took pride in their yards as well as their homes.

Then came that fateful day in August of 2007 when a viscous storm rolled in from the northwest and trashed us mercilessly, leaving the whole town of Dauphin devastated.  No home was spared, no car was undamaged and no garden or flowerbed was salvageable.  The baseball sized hail whipped by forceful winds left me with a lasting fear of summer storms.  As I sat cowering in my mobile that day, I felt totally exposed and vulnerable to elements I had no way of escaping.  Fearing a tornado, I vividly recalled a whirlwind I had seen when I was a child.  I watched it pick up a frantically flapping chicken and carry it up into the wild sky.  I never did see that chicken come down.  As this storm raged around me and I heard the glass shattering under the onslaught of the hail, I imagined myself, in my mobile home, being hurled into the great beyond of outer space.

Luckily, both my mobile and I escaped irreparable damage. After replacing the siding, windows, fences and repairing the fist-sized holes in my roof, my life returned fairly well to normal except for my uncontrollable fear of  storms.  My love for my mobile home was now tainted with a feeling of vulnerability and helplessness.  Coupled with some other factors, I decided to move away.  I am happy here and I love my apartment, but I still think of that "home" I had in Dauphin where I enjoyed so many good times.  Only during that hailstorm last week, did I thank my lucky stars that I had moved and escaped that irrational terror!