Merrily, merrily, merrily
Weather report
This time, the worst of the storm missed us. The wind was loud last night to a degree that sounded almost artificial to my modern mind, though of course it was precisely the opposite. Weather makes the ancient thoughts of the ancients seem less remote. It sounded like our overlords were whistling trouble.
About a year ago, the worst of the storm got us. Our house did not flood, but many houses nearby were inundated. My daughter’s playhouse was destroyed, so we put the remains out by the road in the front yard with the rest of the debris to be taken away, eventually, by the city. Other people had to put the remains of their actual house out front to be taken away, so that our yard looked like crisis in miniature. Some friends of ours took only a couple of inches of water, but the resulting damage required them to take the walls in their home down completely. They promptly moved to Iowa.
My son is beginning to make sentences. Like: “I did it, yay!” “Cook chicken, yeah.” “Read book, dada.” He may have been saying similar stuff much earlier and we couldn’t quite parse the subtleties of gibberish. He has long been a good communicator. He knows how to get what he wants. His word for milk is “muk” (rhymes with book). His word for “dog” is “god.” He toddles around, always busy, the blossoming machinery of his grammar grounded in his little body in the big world. His tummy has a message for him; then he has a message for us. “Pasta,” he says.
It’s all a wonder. I also enjoyed a brief period that came before this phase started, when single words were left to roll in their own directions like threadless beads. On one particularly brutal day, I took him outside and he said “hot!” and then “wow!” and then “agua.”
I’ve never met anyone named Idalia. According to a quick internet search, the name is of Italian origin, meaning “behold the sun.”
Someone close to me is struggling with a mental health crisis with a paranoid flavor. The other day they texted me, “Ratted out danger people,” but accidentally used the “Loud” effect on their iPhone, so the text arrived jiggling and popping out. Like an informercial, or a prophet. I laughed out loud, which was nice.
According to another quick internet search, the word “hurricane” comes from the indigenous Taino people: Huricán, an evil spirit of the wind. And that in turn was derived from Huracán, the Mayan god of wind, storm, and fire.
On the day of the Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came, it arrived like a powerful wind. So too, in the beginning, from the formless void, when something new swept over the face of the waters. The Spirit of God, according to the King James translators. Or as others translate, the wind of God, or a mighty wind.
My son loves to play outside and we thought he would enjoy helping us pick up the minor debris today, but the wind was still pretty strong and he did not approve. It spooked him.
My mother in law follows weather updates like a sports fan. When referring to the intensity of a storm, she does not say “Category 2,” she says “Cat 2.” I appreciate her commitment to the lexicon. The weather is always and only just the weather. But then there’s what we make of it. There’s what we say. It is surely among the oldest and most enduring topics of human conversation, perhaps even the first. When the mighty winds come, you need a grammar for the reckoning.
Sometimes, I call my mom and ask her how she’s doing and she’ll say, “Well— ” and then there’s a pause, because she’s gathering it all. There’s a lot to report. There’s a lot to say.