The Big Bad Wolf

I spent my first nine years living in a seventh-floor apartment on the Upper West Side. When I turned nine in 1990, my family moved to a two-story house in New Hampshire.

If there was ever a storm in the 1980’s, I do not remember it. I do not even remember rain. When I looked out my bedroom window, all I ever saw were buildings. Nighttime: buildings in macadam shadows. Daytime: buildings so visible I could comfortably leer at their inhabitants.

If there were trees in New York City, I never saw them move. Trees were just as fixed as buildings were. They grew from the concrete, like fire hydrants and homeless people. They didn’t sway. They were guarded by fences like castles, but didn’t have moats.

And if the wind ever blew, it didn’t ever rustle my feathers.

But there is a picture of me as a toddler in a bright pink snowsuit, cheeks rosy, surrounded by snow drifts several feet high. This is proof that my memory serves me wrong. So why didn’t my brain register weather as a child?

I think it is because there were no trees that were seven-stories high.

In New England, nothing stood still. Our house, a relic of the late-1800’s, creaked each time a cloud passed by. The shrubs scratched the windows on blustery afternoons. The trees were not trees but whole forests of leaves that weltered, confused, trying to obey the Gods as best they could lest they be torn from their branches sacrificially.

As a nine-year old girl, New Hampshire was a wild and obnoxious land and it terrified me. I was especially frightened of the wind. My bedroom was on the second floor of our old house. Outside my window, on inclement evenings, a wire would slap against the rotting shingles, keeping me awake. I would only breathe sometimes.

When I heard the wire, I would pull back the curtain and stare at the American flag that marked the entrance to the cemetery across the street. If the flag was horizontal, that was It, that meant the end, and I became a frozen statue. I could not take my eyes off of the whipping reds, whites and blues, willing them to be less brazen. I never succeeded and watched the wind wake the sun countless times.

When Hurricane Bob ventured further north than anyone expected, I created a fort made of stuffed animals and pillows behind the recliner in the living room and stuck my fingers in my ears. I hummed loudly while my family lit candles and mouthed the words, ‘Don’t be afraid.’

But I was afraid, and it didn’t matter to me that I didn’t know why.

When I returned to New York in 2002, I lost my fear of the wind. In fact, I was taking a nap when a tornado came to Queens last year. Perhaps I missed the storm of the decade because of all those sleepless New England nights.

When I have children, I will introduce them to the wind. We will say hello to it. I will walk my children through parks and say, ‘That tree is not bowing down; it is actually putting up a fight against the angry air. As long as its roots grab the earth it is winning a battle against its most versatile predator.’

It’s even possible my parents said those words to me. Perhaps I was simply unable to grasp the concept of unseen forces.

Now, my fear has begun to creep back and I am stuck somewhere in the middle of my former selves. If I see trees move I become tense. If I am home, I pull back my curtains to watch the sky. And then I remember that I cannot will the weather away, nor can I manifest anxiety if my drapes, and eyelids, happen to be closed during the onset of the Apocalypse.