Vulnerability
“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up, we
would no longer be vulnerable.
But to grow up is to accept vulnerability … to be alive is to be
vulnerable.”
Madeleine L’Engle
April 8 …
On the screened porch at home.
I was watching a big storm move toward my home from the
southeast – a huge one. Black clouds roiled across the horizon, rolling toward
me like a huge, dark blanket, about to smother me in a thick, gray quilt
of rain, thunder and lightning.
Then it was here, at my home, complete cover.
It rained cows and horses, pounding down so hard it seemed
the earth around me should be an inch or so shallower.
I had watched the storm coming, thunder rolling in louder. I
watched huge bolts of lightning burn down to the horizon as the sky cracked -
closer, more vivid, larger. I tried to stay on the porch as long I could,
attempting (unsuccessfully) to capture lightening on my camera lens. As the
storm came closer, I backed up toward the door to the house. Then it became so
fiercely close that I was afraid I would catch the lightening itself instead of
its image.
There was nothing for it but to retreat inside the house,
have a chocolate chip cookie, and curl up with the cats, whose coping mechanism
was to fall asleep.
Every time we have a storm like this, I am transported to a
time during our first year on this place. Richard worked nights back then, so I
was often out here alone. I did not mind that in the least, despite that fact
that the many locations where I had lived previously were in towns. Living in a
relatively open space was new to me, no matter how much I had desired it.
Along came the first severe thunderstorm since we had built
this house and moved in. There was nothing around our house but fields and
woods.
And lightning.
I walked through the house, room to room, seeing lightning
flashes repeatedly outside every window. Thunder crashed constantly and shook
the house, as well as the floor under my feet. I stood in the middle of the
living room and turned in circles – lightning was everywhere. I was standing in
a cage of flashing bright lights, any of which could pierce the house.
I stopped. What good would it do me to keep walking around,
spinning, watching the surrounding lightening? There was no escape. I would
just have to accept it, hope for the best, and roll with it.
It stopped, of course, and everything was fine. No lightning
had entered our house. I had weathered the first severe storm in our new
country home, alone – my first storm in the country.
There would be many more, of course, but none of those
experiences would be quite so intense, so surrounding, as that first one. Was
it really that way, or was it the huge impression it left on my memory?
There's one good word to describe how I felt then – vulnerable.
Fear comes from that, as it does from many sources. Or, maybe fear always comes
from the feeling of vulnerability, which comes from many things. It could be
due to a place, a situation, a person, or anticipation of the unknown –
something causing us to feel helpless.
Or, perhaps the feeling of helplessness stems from our
selves. We can change some situations – take shelter, move away, whatever. Some
we can just avoid in the first place – don't parachute from that airplane,
don't scale that cliff, don't jump into the deep ocean.
But, some people purposely do not avoid situations that can
instill helplessness and fear. Are they brave? Foolish? Or do they just don't
have the same sense of fear as most of us? I believe they do feel that
vulnerability, but instead of avoiding it they feed on it. The thrill of
overcoming it, every time, makes them want more. It can even become an
addiction.
As President Franklin D. Roosevelt so famously said in his
First Inaugural Speech: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, an
eloquent and useful phrase understood by many and, in variation, used by many.
Some of us accept challenges that are not necessarily
life-threatening, but are still strongly different from what we've done before.
We want to gain momentum, grow from the experience, become stronger. Each of
those, when we achieve them, helps us weather the things we cannot avoid.
The storms we have here in southern Indiana probably are not
as fearsome as a storm in, say, the Great Plains.
Approaching a storm in western Kansas
We do have our share of terrifying, destructive tornadoes in southern Indiana.
There is no feeling of vulnerability like being in the path of a tornado. At
our home, without a storm cellar or basement, we have to accept that situation
with a different kind of reserve.
But, what if you could see it coming from so many miles, can
see the huge storm on the distant horizon, not knowing what it will do as it
nears the place where you are? What if you are just out there? What if?
This is one of the most vulnerable places I have ever seen.
No wonder it is abandoned.
I had never been out West until mid-April of this year. It
was my first experience with the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains.
Tallgrass Prairie
National Reserve, Flint Hills of Kansas)
The Flint Hills were like nothing I had seen before, and so
strange to me – wide, haunting, lonely.
For me, it was like being on a different planet. How did I feel out
there? Vulnerable. It's the kind of place where you can see all of the weather
systems around, and you keep an eye on them.
Any wisp of cloud extending to the horizon gives pause.
I wondered it people who were used to being in this kind of
place, born and raised here, ever feel vulnerable when they are in a place full
of forests, mountains or buildings? Does it make them feel insecure that they
can't see what or who is coming from miles away, and be ready for it? Does it
bother them that something could come around that grove of trees, that steep
slope, that cluster of houses, without warning?
My traveling friend Patti and I walked trails in the
Tallgrass, at that time devoid of tall grass, below and on top of gently
sloping hills, but always wide open.
There was an old stone schoolhouse in the distance, settled
on the hills, surrounded by mist and smoke. An empty swing set stood next to
it. I imagined children playing outside, the rhythmic squeak of the swing
chains as young legs pump and bodies stretch back, hair blowing in the breeze,
gathering energy for another lunge forward into the prairie air. Black clouds
in the distance approaching, the wind picking up. A teacher steps out of the
stone building and calls. Children jump off of the swing boards, hit the dirt,
and go running. They disappear, to be huddled in safety while empty boards
swing from chains flung wildly about in
the fierce wind.
Or, maybe a prairie fire. When we were there, firemen were
busy conducting controlled burns on many thousands of acres. But, if a fire
long ago was started by lightning and ran uncontrolled across the land, what
would it be like in that schoolhouse in the Flint Hills? Or to be in that small
wooden building in the middle of a wide, flat plain?
Into the Rocky Mountains.
Patti and I met up with our friend Angie for a few days in
Colorado.
I wondered if the majestic, huge mountains would make me feel
vulnerable. But, wondering that could make one feel that way. However, I had a
more “scientific”, rather than emotional, interest.
The mighty mountains – taller than anything I had seen
before. Taller than the older, rounded Appalachian Mountains that I have been
surrounded by and that I love. So many angles, cliffs, jagged edges, slanted
rock layers.
I thought of what it would be like to be at the top of one of
those taller peaks. How would I feel? Perhaps surprisingly, I was comfortable
with that thought. I have always loved climbing hills and rocks, higher and
higher, always wanting to see what was further up, what would be on the other
side. It is a drive, an intense curiosity that overcomes the things I could
fear.
I have no desire to scale a bare cliff face like a Big Horned
Sheep, however.
Being on the top of the mountain would be exhilarating. Would
I feel vulnerable? Maybe not. Maybe I would feel comforted by clouds, instead.
A lady I know once said to me, “I don't understand why people
climb mountains. A little hill, maybe, but not a mountain.” She and I are very different people.
Would I hang onto a hole in the side of a rock, so far from
the ground, like a Raven on its nest?
No.
But, we went places where I was higher up into the sky than I
had ever been (while still standing on Earth.)
And I did not mind at all.
In fact, I got to the top of a snow-covered rock with nothing
behind me but air, the valley far below, and more mountains way back in the
distance. I sat there and had someone
take a picture to prove I was there.
This may not mean a thing to someone who climbs rocks like
these frequently, or someone who scales shear rock sides. But, it meant a lot
to someone who had never before sat on a high, snowy, slippery rock with
nothing but vast air behind her, no one holding her there.
I was gaining momentum, growing, becoming stronger.
There are other situations where one can, figuratively, feel
as if one is on a high, snowy, slippery rock with nothing to hold one there but
one's self, one's acceptance, one's willingness to take the opportunity and do
the best that can be done with it.
A literal, physical experience can help one with any
figurative version that might come along. It makes one stronger.
One. We must rely on ourselves, first.
Meanwhile, back at home, the storm retreated and went on to
become a storm for someone else. It left behind small, temporary floods on our
property, and flash floods elsewhere in the area ….
...and a full bucket of water for the cats.
Still, though, I sure wish we had a storm cellar.
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