The Storm

As Mother's Day approached this year I began to think more about my mom. She died three years ago just a few months before I began doing this blog for Psychology Today. A number of my first blogs about resilience were about her and her struggle with macular degeneration and eventual blindness. In the last few years of her life I learned much about resilience from her struggles. But I learned a lot about resilience from her before I could spell the word.

One of my earliest memories of her was when I was four or maybe five. I was playing out in our backyard. It was a hot summer afternoon.I had hardly noticed that the sun had gone behind the clouds and that the wind was getting stronger. Suddenly she was standing next to me. She took my arm and said we needed to go inside the house. I started to make my usual protest but stopped. The expression on her face told me that I should do exactly what she said.

We hurried into our home. My mom closed all the windows and the shutters. We laid down on top of the big wooden bed in my father and mother's room. She pulled me close to her as she peered out through a slit in the shutters at the dark cloud that was approaching our small community. I didn't know about tornadoes but she did. It was hot. Very hot. I felt I could hardly breathe. The wind blew louder. The shutters and  windows rattled. The rain came, beating hard against the roof and the windows. My mom pulled me closer. But in the middle of the storm I felt safe. I fell asleep.

When I woke the air was cool. The windows were open. The storm had passed. My mom sat on the edge of the bed. She smiled at me. We were safe.