Storms don't unnerve me.
When other children would scamper away in tears, I would always watch calmly as the clouds darkened and the lightning flashed.
You see, I had a very unusual experience with a storm when I was a boy. My companion during that particularly bad weather was not afraid in the slightest, and at six, I guess I absorbed some of his confidence.
An old Amish man with a wooden leg, Kristian was not what you might picture as the ‘typical Amish’ person. He wore a straw hat, rather than a black one; he smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, could swear in both languages and did so with a joyous relish that even a boy of my few years knew was somewhat against Amish doctrine.
Krist, (it rhymes mist, and that is what everyone called him), was an expert barn-raiser. He had many, many giant constructions under his belt by the time he came to be part of our own special crew. One of my stepfather’s carpenter friends recommended Krist because of his vast knowledge of shaping and moving massive timbers. So, when the men were working on rebuilding a two-hundred year old log cabin on our property, Krist was the man for the job.
Rumors surrounded him, though.
Stories of a collapsed beam pinning him to the ground for many hours. Stories of a house he built with his own bare hands in the hottest part of the year that later burnt down and which he rebuilt before winter and many other legendary tales grew up around him. For a boy my age, you can imagine how much I admired him.
Looking back, it must be how young Jim Hawkins felt about Long John Silver, at least initially.
One day, in the heat of the afternoon, Krist stood balanced on a crossbeam shading his eyes under his straw hat staring out North and West. He puffed his cigarette, spat and said in thick Pennsylvania-German, “Shturm Kommt”. The men working around the building looked somewhat bewildered by the words he’d used and gazed back stupidly, like dogs waiting for a familiar command .
“Storm is coming,” he said in English.
Suddenly everyone began to scramble to get tools put away and machinery covered. Krist slowly hobbled down the ladder and began to put his tools into a hand-made tool box. Of course I tried to help, since he had a wooden leg, I thought I could go faster and I reverently gathered the scattered tools from the piles of sawdust and shavings. He pointed silently at each tool and I retrieved them.
Thunder cracked overhead. Krist grabbed me up under one strong arm and with his tool chest in the other, he moved with surprising, though jostling, agility from the log cabin to a small shed attached to the back of our house. As we got through the door, rain fell in sheets behind us and lightning flashed.
As we, a mismatched pair of beings in every way, stared out the window, a bolt of lightning sliced down and hit the ground only several feet away from where we were standing. Only the flimsy out-building separated us from certain atmospheric static vaporization.
I jumped with fear at the flash and crack. I remember seeing a blazon of purple before my vision for several hours after. Despite the howling tempest just outside, Krist stood stock still, fearless in the face of nature’s wrath. His old gnarled brown hand sat gently but reassuringly on my shoulder and my fear left me.
Since that day, I have experienced every storm, regardless of intensity, with grim-faced fearlessness. A part of that old man passed to me and it has always held me firm.
Today, whenever a storm comes through, I’m more likely to be found smiling and enjoying it rather than cowering somewhere.
Until last night.
Last night, as we all trailed off to bed, a storm raged just off the coast.
By the time our Beach House was dark and everyone was asleep a gale was blowing like mad outside.
Beach houses this close to the water are almost always on stilts. So when winds howl in from off the water they tend to rock the place.
Laying in bed, listening to the thunder and rain and wind, the whole house wiggled nervously below us. With each flash of lightning, I felt the likelihood of the house being ripped off the stilts and flung carelessly out into the water growing.
I took a deep breath, trying to gather my wits in case we were forced to flee the wreckage of a demolished house. Unexpectedly, I felt a deep sense of calm spread through me, beginning in my right shoulder.
In my mind’s eye, I saw a gnarled brown hand resting there and I knew that the old Amish man with a hitchy gait and a penchant for cussing was somewhere thinking of me too.
I suddenly didn't mind the storm so much.
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