I pushed myself out the door, to get out of the house and get one thing off my list. As I drove, listening to a mixed playlist, I was treated to an approaching tropical storm, filled with multilevel clouds in graduated shades of white and grays verging on purple. Looming over me was the flat upswing of an anvil shape cloud, its wetness seeping at the edges and disintegrating in a clear blue sky, while the rest of the mass was poised over the city, bulbous and nebulous, its water ready to let go, to release its pent up energy in furious waves of rain.
Inside the mass, clouds must have been boiling and morphing into different shapes, but the outside was frozen in space. Nothing moved. When I reached the Hillsboro exit, it became clear that I was driving straight into the solid gun-metal storm gathering northward.
I was driving too fast and didn’t care. Not the first time.
In the distance, lightning ripped the purplish gray above Carrolwood. I couldn’t hear the thunder over the blaring music, blasting my thoughts away. I was feeding my senses, pretending there was still life within.
More lightning strikes up ahead all over the sky, exploding in while lights, or just a pulsating glow deep within the gray cover. It didn’t rain on me until I reached Fowler. Starting with a spittle, it let go in a swift pounding rain, exploding in hard, fat, hail like drops, pummeling my car. It eased a bit for the couple miles leading to the campus entrance only to release another wave of angry, drenching rain that overwhelmed the music. I parked, turned the engine off and let myself be swallowed in the whiteness of the downpour, which slowly erased the familiar sights of my world, removing its features, leaving me alone, isolated, surrounded by raging sounds in the cocoon of the car. Unreachable. Immobilized. No place to go unless I wanted to feel the cold and savage dousing free falling from the sky.
Life giving water falling on sterile, paved-over soil. All that mega energy dissipated in waste, washing polluted parking lots and roads, channeled through drains and sewers to pour itself into the bay, carrying with it enough toxins to choke yet more life in shallow marshes.
I wondered how long I would need to wait for the rain to slow down enough to allow me to take the books up into my office. I read while listening to the rhythm of the rain, gauging its strength by the length of silences between drops. I waited patiently as time ebbed away measured by endless rivulets snaking down the windshield.
Eventually, the rain slowed to erratic and occasional drops. I got out, hoping I would not ruin my leather shoes in standing puddles, reached the back of the car, lifted the hatch, then coaxed and lifted the heavy tote of books onto the tarmac. Oaks dripped, gutters still gushed, people hiding under overhangs were beginning to venture out; my world was back.
I walked straight, my stride sure as I slipped back into the persona of the able professor, the confident woman I wish to be.