Alert! Imminent Connection!

This was my plan: I was going to use all of the fresh peas and asparagus and spinach I had collected from the farmers market last weekend and actually make dinner from scratch. Over the last two months, inspired by a chef on TikTok, I had begun making pasta sauces thrown together not with a set recipe, but with whatever I could find in my fridge. But about halfway through my late afternoon chopping, the sky turned dark and the rain clouds burst. I’m used to a summer storm, but every few minutes, the alerts on my phone grew in intensity from a possibility of danger to a certainty of it. When the National Weather Service alert interrupted the podcast I was listening to to declare a tornado was imminent and to take immediate shelter, I retreated to the safest place in my apartment: the bathroom. After a minute or two, I heard a knock. Then another knock. Then another. Leaving the bathroom, I opened my back door to find two young women, complete strangers, who were staying in the AirBnB upstairs. “Hi! We’re from Sweden. We got the alert. What is going on?” one of the women asked. “For the tornado watch?” I questioned. A lifetime in the Midwest had made me, if not jaded, then relatively ignorant about how this situation was uncommon. It had not occurred to me how unfamiliar most people would be of our summertime storms. “We don’t know what to do,” the other woman said to me. I am a Seeker, the sort of person with a deep curiosity for life, both good and not so good. I thought about the excitement of being in a new place and the fear of not knowing its particulars. Of not knowing its traditions and its dangers. Not knowing its people and its possibilities (both good and terrifying).

I am a Seeker, the sort of person with a deep curiosity for life, both good and not so good.

So I said the only thing I’d want someone to say to me if I were in the same position. “Do you want to come inside?” And they joined me in my cozy space, keeping far from the windows, as I shared what comes next. It was only about 10 minutes or so, and I surely rambled in my own fear, but a connection was made. They told me about their Route 66 road trip, about where they’d been and where they were going. I told them about what to do when all of this was over, about places not to miss and things to do while they were here. And at one point, we even laughed, talking about the absurdity of what led us here. And then suddenly, it was all over. The citywide sirens stopped. The clouds broke and the rain turned into a drizzle. “I’m here if it happens again, or just in general,” I said. A few moments after that, we said goodbye.