Chasing More than Storms

By Laura Forrest Hopfauf 

I have a habit of chasing things, and I can’t sit still. If there’s a minute, I’m going to fill it with activity. When I was younger I filled those minutes with typical kid things—kicking a soccer ball, riding my bike, dealing a game of solitaire on a rainy day. As I’ve gotten older, that’s transitioned to reorganize a closet, clean the sink, pick up my kids’ toys.  

Patience is not my virtue. I’ve wondered if this is a patience thing—this constant need to do, to be, to chase. To be honest, I don’t think it is. I think it’s a life thing. From as far back as I can remember, I’ve wanted to squeeze the actual life out of life. Like every day I needed something to show why I was here. What I did. How I moved myself, or on days when I think really highly of myself, how I moved the world forward. What good I contributed. Why I matter. 

During the summers of my childhood, my father had a habit of shutting the television off right when the most important moment of the whole show was going to happen and forcing me outside most likely right into the hottest part of the day. I never did figure out how Kelly Kapowski and Zack Morris got together on Saved by the Bell. Or why Topanga and Corey broke up that one time in Boy Meets World. I think maybe this happened enough times that it rewired me.  

By the time I became a full-fledged adult, I couldn’t have found a way to sit still if I tried. It wasn’t always physical ways I needed to move forward. It was mental too. Memorizing a recipe. Reading 100 books a year. Labeling all the countries of the Caribbean on a blank map. Trying to understand anything Carl Sagan said. 

Summer became my favorite time of the year. It wasn’t just that it was hot. It was that the days were endless. I could cram work, a four-mile run, an entire book, and part of a soccer game into one good day in the summer.  

Unless it stormed. 

My father and I used to spend a lot of summer days on our porch watching a summer thunderstorm. It wasn’t nothing. And it never felt like I wasn’t doing anything either. Standing on the porch with my father watching rain come down like it was in a hurry to hit the ground, having thunder shake my chest, and lightning make me blink felt like doing something. I was giving respect to an event that had, quite frankly, earned it just by showing up at my door. 

But I was also spending time with my family in a way that didn’t require action. By the time I was 20 my father was losing a war against cancer. Watching a thunderstorm was one of the few times his health didn’t have to be the excuse for his lack of momentum. For a couple minutes, everything just was—him, me, the world. A good thunderstorm can nearly bring a stop to time because there’s nothing you can do but wait it out, let it finish what it started. 

It’s humbling. No matter what I do, who I become, a summer thunderstorm can stop me in my tracks. 

I guess I could work through them now. I could clean up after my children; make dinner; fold the laundry. But I don’t. I’ve taught my kids, who are in perpetually motion until they fall asleep, not to either. When we hear thunder we run inside. I open the blinds and my daughters push dining chairs into a makeshift bench in front of our back sliders and sit close, even my baby joins them. They look out the windows and shout “Mommy, did you see that?” every time there’s a flash of lightning. 

And in those moments with my daughters, I’m not chasing anything. I am richer than I’ve ever deserved to be. While the rain pelts and the wind drives and the thunder cracks and the lighting strikes, I know exactly why I’m here, and I don’t feel the need to do anything to prove it.