Parallel Paths Through the Storm: Three Autoethnographic Sketches

1

I was six. We lived in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in a trailer park called Weslin Creek. We lived four miles from the beach. I remember my aunt being in town from North Carolina. As someone I admired growing up, my aunt being at my house was the best thing ever. Having her there always meant I had someone to play with. The night she was visiting that summer, I was so terrified of the wind and rain repeatedly smacking my bedroom window that I slept with her on an air mattress in our living room. I curled up next to her. We laid there and watched the living room light up for hours. Lightning does that.

The next morning when I felt my aunt slide off the air mattress, I got up right behind her. It wasn’t until then that I realized just how strong the winds from the storm were. They had been so strong that my trampoline was now across the street in my neighbor’s driveway. The winds had picked the trampoline up over our home, which had to have been about 13 or 14 feet tall, slung it against my father’s old white work truck (leaving countless scratches and dents), and dropped it in our neighbor’s driveway, completely demolished. I vividly remember standing in our front door in my favorite fuzzy blue pajamas, seeing this through stinging, blurry eyes. There had never been anything more unfair. I was always a fun-loving kid, but that day not even my favorite aunt being there could have made me less upset.

2

The first time I realized how afraid I was of tornadoes, I was sitting scared in the hallway of our Plummer Lane house. My parents were away and I was with a favorite babysitter. I remember waking up, coming down stairs and being told to get into the interior hallway. Though most homes in Minnesota have a basement, ours did not. The interior hallway was the safest place to be. She told me that there was a tornado in the area and that we should be careful to stay away from windows. I don’t remember how old I was, somewhere between five and fifteen, in the way youth blurs with age. The tornado spared our house and it didn’t even touch down in or near our town. There may have been a sighting a few dozen miles away. But Southeastern Minnesota has been associated with tornadoes for me ever since.

My fear endures. Perhaps, it endures because I never had an experience with an aunt like Jordan did. I’m envious of that memory. I find myself retreating into the bonds I did have: with my parents, my extended family, the people and places I adore. My own experience with, and fear of, tornadoes came into fuller focus through and after working with Jordan. I long for the vivid image of watching lightning. I can’t pinpoint anything like that for myself. I have experiences, but none like Jordan’s. None of them quite quenches the same need. I wonder how I might make that real for someone in my own life someday.

3

We have each read one another’s autoethnographic sketches (Rambo, 2007). Dr. Gloviczki writes: I read Jordan’s to her. Jordan writes: I read Dr. Gloviczki’s to him. In hearing one another’s words, we recognize the parallel paths alive in our stories. We find where our built worlds converge as we write to make sense of our pasts (Richardson, 1994). We each “increase self-reflexivity” (Humphreys, 2005, p. 842) by benefiting from one another’s accounts. We come to understand how weather brings each of us back to childhood.