Riding Out the Storm

“You can dance in a hurricane, but only if you’re standing in the eye.”

Brandi Carlile

I was seven years old when I first experienced the electric calm of being in the eye of the storm. 

We were living just outside of Chicago, a city in the midwestern landscape that has earned its pet name “Tornado Alley” with bells on. Because I was seven and lacking other aspirations, I wanted the newly released technicolored My Little Pony. Like, desperately. And because I also happened to be a sadist, I begged and pleaded with my mother to please, please, please drive my brother and I twenty miles outside of town to the Toys R Us in Aurora county to acquire it.  

This was before Instagram and Twitter and non-stop news in your palm. It was a simple time when tornado warnings happened mainly on the radio or your friendly neighbourhood cable network. Either one of these mediums would have worked to alert us of the impending threat. But on this day, since we were driving all that way, we wanted to make an experience out of the drive, so we listened to a tape instead. We turned it up as we peeled out of the driveway and onto the open stretch of highway, slicing through the wind. 

We were almost there when my mom got a call on the car phone from my very panicked father. He was wondering where we were and if we had listened to the radio. I’m sure the words he used were bolder and shorter than this. I’m sure I could call and ask my mother. But I’d rather not stir it all up again.

It’s unimportant. What’s important was the difficult decision she had to make in that moment to move her two children from the bones of her Jeep to the unknown belly of Toys R Us immediately. This is how the three of us found ourselves huddled together Toys R Us’ bike room, in the dark, with the manager, a handful of teenage brace-faced employees, and a few dozen unlucky, cassette-loving shoppers. 

The bike room was selected by the panicked manager because it had the distinct allure of being underground. Everyone had agreed with the plan. It wasn’t until we all got down there that we stumbled upon the unfortunate fact that all of the bikes were mounted loosely to the ceiling. 

In crisis, no option is perfect.

With the electricity cut and the future uncertain, this group of strangers got closer to one another than any of us would have preferred and said nothing at all. I remember thinking about the My Little Pony in its perfect plastic packaging upstairs. How we might never meet. How I may never get to style her rainbow coloured hair with the pint-sized brush. This is what children do. They innocently self-prioritize despite the wind speed. 

It was very quiet and kind of scary. It was also kind of exciting. There is no choice in chaos except to accept the precious, fleeting, unscripted truth of what is right now and will never be again. 

The tornado bypassed the store by two or three miles. No bikes fell.  I left with My Little Pony. My mother started listening to the radio.

There is no question that we are in the midst of a challenging and defining time in the face of a new worldwide epidemic. The next few weeks will be fringed with fear. A few weeks may turn into months. The economic ramifications will likely bleed into a few years of recovery across the board, regardless of industry. There is a lot of noise and while much of it is warranted, much of it has been catalyzed by shared anxiety and the breadth and demand of our digital appetites. 

Yet as long as two things can be true at once, there is still a great deal of hope here. 

The core realization that global connectivity comes with its price like any other movement of its size and audacity is an unbiased truth. So is the human being’s expandable capacity for resilience and rebirth if we maintain a healthy empathy for one another and accept the communal compromise of a new normal.

Every storm passes to make way for a new one, but it may be comforting to recognize that there has never been a time when we were not, as a webbed world, in the eye of one. We feel it now this in our comically Westernized way, in the toilet paper aisle. But the previous generation viewed disaster preparation as simply par for the course in an unpredictable life. 

Wars have always been fought; some won some lost. Some with great purpose and others with great greed. Famines have ravaged. Women have been subjected to unspeakable violence. Men and children, too. The markets have raged and sunk to the ocean alongside our air quality and Rose’s ring. 

Chaos, you may realize if you’ve been engaging in more listening than talking lately, is and has always been the status quo.

I hate to throw another bone to the prophetic Joan Didion, but in strange times, I slouch back to her church. She wrote this passage in her essay on self-respect:

“[Our grand-parents] had instilled in them, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible, comforts. 

It seemed to the nineteenth century admirable, but not remarkable, that Chinese Gordon put on a clean white suit and held Khartoum against the Mahdi; it did not seem unjust that the way to free land in California involved death and difficulty and dirt. 

Again, it is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has its price. People who respect themselves are willing to accept the risk that the Indians will be hostile, that the venture will go bankrupt, that the liaison may not turn out to be one in which every day is a holiday because you’re married to me.”

Today there are real dangers and deaths to be grieved. There are businesses that need help and healthcare systems that need something stronger than our prayers. And while the largest war is being fought by those rationing hospital beds, we are each fighting our own little battles in our daily lives. These should be respected with as much tenderness as we can manage before we have to move forward to tomorrow.

I could not have predicted that my most treasured item would be the Aloe Vera hand sanitizer I bought from London Drugs in 2017. I don’t feel particularly elated about riding the bus with all of you towards the unknown instead of driving my car with a custom Google Map to my preferred destination. Control is addicting for a reason.

But we have to trust in deeper values now. We are challenged to accept that impermanence, just like jolly old Buddha projected, has always been the main course. 

I’ve called my parents more times in the past few days than I would have allotted for the year. My brother, the one who comforted me under a bike rack in Aurora county when I was seven, told us all he loved us out of the blue. This comforted me just the same. 

I’ve realized I only like being alone when it’s a choice. And choice is a privilege, like touch.

I smile when I see children running with flushed cheeks towards a playground, unafraid of what is next. I’m trying to embrace the peace and creativity that comes when the world takes a communal pause, when we all must work together to catch our breath.

I think we’ll all appreciate a meal out, a concert venue, and a strong handshake ten to fifteen times more at the end of this. We will all look at doorknobs differently. I hope we all learn to value human connection, fortitude, and the power of love to withstand any impending disaster more viscerally too. 

I hope we learn this before the next wolf winds its way to our door. We’ve cried out a few times, but maybe this time we’ll be ready to tango.