Driving Back from Michigan

The day I left Michigan there were tornado warnings.

I stayed for church to hear my brother sing, stayed for dinner with my mother at the retirement home for one last goodbye, guilty that a part of me was relieved to be going.

I heard the radio weather reports as I rushed eastward, hoping to outrun the storm, but it hit: blinding sideways rain howling gray and unimpeded across the flat Ohio fields. I pulled over, but the road signs were ripped loose, the car rocked, the lone trees twisted and torn.

Should I keep going, maybe drive away from it, or sit helpless while the car rolled over and over? My heart was pounding, I who love wind, and I went on slowly for more than an hour before it finally let up. Later I heard that tornadoes had touched down several places along the Ohio Turnpike.

That night I dreamed I was in a car with my mother. One road was rutted ice by a cliff's edge, the other so steep it went upside down. I steered toward the cliff road and woke in a sweat, turned on the light.

When will I become like my mother? Far from fearing death, her memory fading, slipping her thoughts away from unpleasantness. We asked her to sign a DNR form, then she looked out her window:
"What is that little bird on the feeder? Have you ever seen such shaggy bark on a maple tree?"