What I’ve Gathered: Watching the Weather

These days, Toby and I check the local weather almost every morning. We pull up Weather Underground to see what the temperature will be today in Santa Fe, what next week looks like in Logan, and, on wistful days, what the sky is doing over western Costa Rica, where we sometimes dream of a winter escape.

Truthfully, our curiosity about the weather is mild now. For me, it’s mostly practical -what to wear, whether showings will be affected, or if the ground around my office will be muddy. I’m guarding those new rugs like they’re treasure. No muddy footprints allowed, not this early in the game.

But for my dad, weather was everything.

Growing up on the farm, it ruled our days. There were no smartphone apps or radar maps, just the evening news from Amarillo or the morning farm report from the Tucumcari radio station. Up until a couple of years ago when Dad passed away at 91, he still stayed up for the 9 o’clock news to hear the forecast. He wanted to know what the week ahead might bring.

When Mom would hand him the phone after she told me who was on the prayer chain or who got the bad diagnosis this week, weather was always part of the conversation. “Dry line’s east of us,” he’d say. “No rain this week.” His hearing was spotty near the end, and sometimes he’d hand the phone back, muttering, “Can’t hear her today.” 

And honestly, on the days when I didn’t have the energy for a rambling talk about tires for his blue truck or forecasts for rain that never came, it felt like a small mercy. I thought there’d be plenty of time for those conversations. Turns out there wasn’t.

When I was little, I’d stand with him on the back porch of our farmhouse eight miles northwest of Logan in the evening, watching the sky fade to gold and red. He’d shade his eyes toward the horizon and say, “They say there’s a chance for rain tomorrow, so that’s what we’ll pray for.”

And we did. We prayed for rain, and when it came, we prayed it wouldn’t be too much.

One summer evening, when I was seven or eight, we stood on the front porch instead, facing east. Clouds were building in a direction they rarely did. A cool wind swept across the broomcorn field south of the house, the stalks waist-high and heading out beautifully. That field was our hope. If it thrived, we could pay off the bank note for that year.

The wind picked up. Dad yelled for my brothers to move the cars into the barn. We didn’t have a garage, just that big red barn where he “mechanicked” on tractors and trucks. We stood as long as we could before the storm hit, first rain, then hail. The electricity went out, and we huddled in the dim house, listening to the deafening drumming of hail on the tin roof. It grew from peas to plums, then to baseballs. The old timers had warned of softball-sized hail. I knew this was bad.

When the sky finally cleared, Dad drove out to check the field. He wouldn’t let me go with him. That silence said more than words. Mom sent my sister to the washhouse to get hamburger meat out of the chest freezer. She made flat enchiladas, Dad’s favorite. We girls chopped lettuce and tomatoes, pretending everything was normal. I watched Mom’s eyes when she came back from the garden, rimmed in red. She called our neighbor, Marcene: “What did it do at your house?” Her voice was calm, but I could hear the strain.

Dad sat in his truck when he came home, engine off, before stepping out. I ran to him and hugged his leg. He patted my head and said softly, “It’ll be fine, nubbin.” That was his pet name for me, which was also what farmers called the smallest ear of corn on the stalk. He said what I heard him say over and over in my life when something disappointing occurred. “It’ll be fine.”

Inside, he smiled. “Boy, it sure smells good in here, Betty.” He bowed his head at supper and prayed, “Lord, we thank You for who You are. We don’t understand everything, but we’re grateful for this family, for our health, for this roof over our heads, and for the moisture we received this evening. We’re sure You’ll show us the way.”

No one mentioned the broomcorn again.

A few days later, when the fields were too wet to work, Dad decided we’d go to the mountains. That was his answer to loss or fields too wet to plow. Pack up, head to Tres Ritos, breathe mountain air, wade through icy creeks, and wait for the world to right itself. It was a favorite time for me – every other farm kid I knew was in the same boat, so we almost always ended up with a pile of cousins and aunts and uncles in the same campground or cabins, sharing casseroles, fishing stories, and hope.

When we got back, he and his friend Irvin Barber planted pinto beans. They chose them because they sprouted fast. I thought of them as tiny green promises. For a week or two, that bean crop looked like salvation. Until a late August wind came that was hot and merciless. Those tender plants dried up and shriveled into nothing. 

That’s another story for another day.

But here’s what I gathered then, and what I know now: life is weather. It’s a series of storms. Some we see coming, some we don’t. We can’t control the weather, literal or otherwise. We can pay attention, and when it starts to go sideways, we can get the trucks in the barn. When it feels like it might destroy us, we can take a break and spend time with people we care about. We can even go to the mountains for a day or two.

We can control how we meet it. With gratitude when we least feel like expressing it, and if you’re like my dad, with prayer, with faith, with supper around the table, and with the quiet belief that, hopefully, somehow, it’ll be fine.