Sirens In The Dark
Being a parent scares me.
That isn’t much of a provocative statement: Parenting is terrifying by it’s very nature. Humans are born helpless drooping poop-machines hell-bent on trying to murder themselves with everything they can reach. Then, if you’re lucky, they become teenagers.
No, my fears are not for the daily battle of bottle and diaper which are now past, nor for the sass and endless ‘Why?’s which are my present. My fears are for the person my tiny human will become years from now and how much my screw-ups are looming over his life decisions.
Allow me to share a story which perfectly illustrates my fear.
We live in the Midwest. Specifically, we live in the heart of Tornado Alley. To everyone unfamiliar with the sights and sounds of this interesting section of the US, tornado sirens sounding means that a vortex-based doom is hurtling towards them at Mach 50.
Not so for people like me, those born and raised within the cradle of weekly tornado siren tests, of storm warnings every week during storm season, and the amateur storm chasing all of us attempt. Let me put it another way: when tornado sirens go off near me, I’m outside looking for the tornado instead of in the basement.
Enter my lovely, empathetic four year old tiny human. He’s… well, he’s four. So like any good four year old, he’s forming lasting life lessons from every single interaction he’s having right now just like most of us did once we acquired long-term memory and a fully-connected stream of consciousness. A few months ago, the sirens blared in the night. Nothing unusual, but it had been a stormier day than normal and the wife was justifiably more spooked than usual. You get a sense for when things are bad, and when things are bad. Therefore, it was to the basement with us, despite my protests. After a few minutes spent there being bored while entertaining my very active tiny human, I decide to head up and check out the storm.
It’s important that you have all the information for this situation, otherwise my gaffe won’t pack the scorn it deserves. My son is only now figuring out what a tornado siren means. Before now, it was just a siren that went off and then mommy would put down her book and grab her phone while daddy went outside. Now, armed with a full-blown id and all the opinions that go with it, he wants to know what’s actually going on. Upon asking, his mother and I sit him down and explain everything, and thanks to the glory of the internet we have video’s to share so that he can understand the full scope of why there are sirens and why we occasionally visit the basement. He’s over-awed by the videos, rocked on his heels in the same way someone seeing a mountain for the first time after a life on the plains would be. Nature is equal parts beauty and terror, and his reaction was a reminder that even the terrifying can become mundane given enough exposure.
We return to the basement, now fully aware of how much my son is in the thrall of the terrible majesty of tornadoes. I tell my son that I’ll be right back as I leave to go for a looksie, because of course I’ll be fine and it’s an easy thing for me to say to assuage his concerns. I go up the steps and out onto the drive, and to my complete lack of surprise, it’s nasty but not dangerously so. You get a sense for when you’re in the thick of the danger, and for when you’re on the outskirts of it.
Now, dear reader, behold my ability to create nightmare fuel out of nothing.
I didn’t go back downstairs to inform my family of what I had seen. Instead, I went inside to check the weather on my computer. Five minutes later, I’ve ADHD’d into a game of Hearthstone because I’m not worried and I’m in front of my computer. I am also failing to remember what I have just told my son I would do.
My sweet, caring, and highly impressionable child was told that I would be right back. Now, I’ve created a void where the right back should’ve been. My son has only recently learned that a tornado is actually a howling death-machine and daddy went outside after the siren heralding the arrival of the death-machine has gone off.
Clearly, daddy just got sucked into the tornado and died. There exists no room for another explanation within his young mind.
I can’t blame him for drawing this erroneous conclusion. After all, my wife and I just showed him what a tornado can do, and he doesn’t have the experience to know that a tornado actually sounds like a freight train on crack if you’re unlucky enough to be near enough to it. A tornado isn’t going to land on the ground like a ninja, snatch dad from the parking lot, and disappear after a job well done.
My wife can’t leave the basement to find out why I’ve failed to return. Care to take a wager on why that is? You guessed it! My son is in her arms, clinging to her while he bawls his eyes out because a tornado got daddy. Yeah. Yeah. He’s a blubbering mess, unable to do anything but cry and cry that daddy is gone and a tornado got him and he’s never coming back and he just wanted daddy to hug him and wear batman shirts with him and play cars and now he’s gone because of the tornado. My wife is doing her best to comfort the tiny human and tell him that everything is okay and that daddy is fine. Once she’s worked her magic enough to leave the basement, she finds me in front of my computer like the vacuous air-head I occasionally resemble.
Based on the look I received upon her return, I assume the first thought which went through her mind was the dark wish that a tornado had sucked me up, up, and away.
To this day, my son will occasionally ask if a tornado is stronger than “X”. Some examples:
“Mommy, is a tornado stronger than a dinosaur?”
“Mommy, can a tornado beat Batman?”
*Tiny human spies a tiny rain-cloud in an otherwise clear sky*
“Daddy, a tornado is going to come get us. We should go to the basement so we don’t get sucked up.”
Moments like these keep me up at night, the ghostly echo of sirens my only company as I cringe at my own stupidity. I survived the sleepless nights of the newborn, the endless harvest of poopy diapers and desperate removal of forks before they arrive inside the socket, and the unfortunate vomit timings of the average toddler only to slip up when the stakes were upped.
I’ve doomed my son to a lifetime phobia of tornadoes because I am a space-cadet and checking the weather became a video game became a forgotten calming statement of certainty. Or worse, I’ve given my son a fixation of tornadoes and weather which lands him in the storm chasing or weather forecasting business. While they are fine professions, it means I have failed in my fatherly duty to help him realize his dream of being a firefighter jet-pilot astronaut.
So I toss, and I turn, and I wonder what I’ll screw up next.
Stormfully,
The Unsheathed Quill
