“Stories are a communal currency of humanity.” -Tahir Shah
This post is going to be more of a storytime. Let’s begin.
I was ten years old. I was moving out of state for the first time. The housing situation was a mess so my family bought a trailer that was then deemed useless after the dust settled. The drive to Colorado took us two days. The end was in sight. The mountains were on the horizon. So close to our new life. That’s when in the blink of an eye it all changed. One of our cars broke down. It was the bigger one, the one pulling the trailer and most of our bags. In an instant, the fear of the unknown that was just barely starting to diminish hits me like a truck.
My parents handled the situation, a tow truck comes and I was praying that it’ll be smooth sailing for the next hour of the drive. My entire family of seven got into my dad’s car which could only comfortably fit four. I took a deep breath and attempted to calm my nerves. I was looking outside the window taking in the view of Eastern Colorado. When suddenly something didn’t look quite right.
To my right, there was a tornado forming before my eyes. If I thought that I had felt fear before boy was I wrong my heart sunk and my eyes started tearing up. My dad drove as fast as he can hoping that a cop would understand the situation and not pull us over. Storm chaser cars were on the same roads as us. It was complete and utter chaos not only in my head but everywhere. At one point my older brother looked at me and said: “It was nice knowing you Mia.” I cannot express how badly I wanted to punch him at that moment but simultaneously curl up into a ball and pretend like nothing was going on.
After some time of going way too fast through small towns, we were safe. We stopped in a hotel for the night before going to our new house the next morning to start an entirely new adventure. One with fewer tornadoes, but with more road trips, fires, and mudslides.
Whenever I look back at this memory I can’t help but think of how funny it would be as a movie or a reality show. You can’t plan something like that to happen, it just happens. Life will throw some crazy stuff at you, it doesn’t discriminate. You have to learn how to roll with the punches.