Category: Uncategorized

After I moved to the Bay Area of California from Milwaukee in the 1980’s, I was struck by the diversity of people in the Bay Area. I love the diversity, which I have always known to be a strength, and I love it here. I observed that in Wisconsin, the weather was more interesting, and in the Bay Area, the people are more interesting.

And there is nothing like the storms in the Midwest, that place where winter settles in early, and leaves late – often into early May.

Yesterday morning, as I was talking to a friend via ZOOM, a flash of lightening lit the sky outside the window, and a moment later, a boom of thunder. Just like that!

Later, I remembered a time, lying in my bed in my parent’s flat, when I would listen to the storms coming – the thunder, quiet in the West, and slowly, with each boom, the thunder, louder, until it was overhead. And then it passed to the East, out over Lake Michigan. Only after the storm passed did I settle down to sleep.

On one visit to Wisconsin, my husband and I sat with friends and family in his mother’s living room in a suburb of Milwaukee. It was summer, and the heavy, humid air was bright with sunlight as we talked. We were more interested in each other until the air changed, the sky clouded over with a storm, and we heard thunder in the distance. I rushed to open the front door, so that I could smell the storm through the screen. We sat silent then, listening to storm, as we heard the thunder clap in the distant West, move overhead, and then grow quieter as it moved to the East. For a few moments, the storm was more interesting than our visitors. Having relished the change in the air, we continued to visit.

I love living in the Bay Area, this place where a rainy winter is worshipped, heartily, this place where we suffer from years of draught. I love to see the shadow of San Francisco from my windows. I love the early spring and the daffodils that begin to bloom in February.

But I’ll always miss the storms in the Midwest, booming overhead, then passing to another place.

I love to see the shadow of San Francisco from my windows…

Summer mornings in a small, narrow, Milwaukee flat, I’d sleep in a bit when I wasn’t in school, and spend my summer days bicycling through the city streets with friends, reading, or sitting on the front porch, taking in the sun, summer days so precious in the Midwest.

Every morning at 9, I heard the phone ring on the heavy black rotary phone that sat in the alcove in the small hallway that separated the bedrooms and the bathroom with its claw foot tub. Mom hurried from the kitchen to the hall, and from my room I could hear my Dad’s deep voice, loud above the noises in the factory, as he talked to my mother on his break from work. He must have made sure he had a dime in his pocket every day to be able to call home. He talked; she listened, saying a few words now and then. Then she’d go back to her housework, and the house was quiet again.

Later each morning, the phone in the alcove rang again. Mom walked from the kitchen to the hallway again, this time to answer the call from her sister, my Auntie Anne. Anne talked; Mom listened, answering with a word or two. Years later, I’d learn that Auntie Anne was a victim of domestic abuse, but I expect she didn’t talk about that, even with her sister. It will be a mystery that continues in my life as to whether my mother knew. Like all of us, I was surrounded by family secrets, unspoken agreements that had been alive before my days and will be alive when I’m gone.

Mom hung up the phone and returned to her work. Sometimes, she’d call to me to come out of my room, to go outside – it was summer! Or she’d see me reading in the big arm chair next to the door to the front porch, calling again to me to go outside – it was summer! The air is heavy in the Midwest, heavy with humidity and with secrets.