99 degrees in the shade

It is hot and humid, with glorious thunderstorms moving through, dousing everything and leaving a deliciously earthy scent in its wake. Yesterday, we had a tornado warning in Flint, so we all had to go to the first floor of a rather bulletproof building and sit in a small auditorium for about an hour until the all clear was called.

Before moving to Michigan, I didn’t know that tornadoes could be a thing here. But the people who have lived here for a long time connect with them in a similar way that Seattleites connect to earthquakes: Sure, there’s always the potential for “the big one,” but the last tornado that came through and left a large body count in its wake was in the 1950s. So, people get a bit buck about it, and instead of heading to their shelters, often head out onto their porches to watch the sky as the weather shimmies and shakes around them.

My favorite part of the tornado situation here is the monthly siren tests held on the first Saturday of tornado season. We used to live very close to a siren, so the puppies have spent their whole lives engaging in a deeply ancestral howl session for several months of the year. There really isn’t anything cuter than a five-month-old puppy feeling herself, arching her back, and howling in unison with a siren. And they have since taken that practice and applied it to basically any siren they hear, no matter how faint, singing along while wagging their tails. Over the years, their howls have transformed from little cute puppy strains to what can only be compared to demonic, as Max has a rather unhinged bass note to his howls, and he sustains the note far beyond what would be considered reasonable or sane.

I have yet to move the window rattlers up from the basement, and so even though we’re in a heat advisory with warnings of index temps of over 100F, I am sitting here in this humid little office, damp and smiling, happy to feel the embrace of this viscous heat. These are not days of productivity and perfection; they are composed of languid windwaves and birdsong.

Walking around barefoot in the moist grass in the early morning, feeling the slush and gush between my toes, breathing in the lushness and humidity, and relishing the cool droplets of rain transferring from blades of grass to my toes — how gorgeous!

It is strange, sometimes, to feel so much peace and contentment. I can’t remember the last time I did — or, even, if I have ever. Even in some of my more halcyon days, I felt the overarching pressure of the future, of becoming, of creating, of doing, being, needing … and now, I feel just fine, simply inhabiting each moment.