The Microburst of 1992 and Why it Lives with Me Still

Short Essay #3

(This publication was previously, “Letters to a Leaving Mormon”. I will still write about post Mormon content every now and then, and as you can see here, it will often show up in unexpected way, but for now, my attention has moved from deconstruction of ideas, to building with new ones. I will be posting very short essays here a couple of times a week. The publication is set to be free through October.)

Because I was small, and the tree in the front yard had blown down in a windstorm while my mom was at work, I believed my dad when he said I should not get a job when I was older. 

In the same way the tree left a hole in the grass, the roots praying toward the gray sky, the line he said was so much bigger than I could have ever imagined.

When the storm started, I brought my little brother and two little sisters into the basement, with the old piano we were learning to play, and the tape recorder with the red, plastic microphone we spent hours interviewing each other with. 

The news outlets that evening called it a microburst, and all these years later, those thirty minutes of thrushing wind against our windows, the way we believed we were coming close to something catastrophic, still thrums somewhere inside me. 

Trees all over the city were downed, holes in lawns and in parks big enough to fit a small house. 

There was so much living in the undergrounds of our city, and in a brief moment, and for a brief moment, it was all pulled to the surface. We were god-fearing, Jesus loving people in the brand of Mormonism in the 90’s, literally the entire city. We didn’t have the internet, just a few Catholic relatives in California who were worried we’d joined a cult. My fervor was only fueled by their concern. 

My parents both left work as soon as they could that afternoon, tree branches and downed power lines littering the roads. The microburst was over, the power still out, and as the oldest daughter, I was in the kitchen making mac and cheese on the stove. I think my siblings trusted I would make it okay, that we could go outside when I said we could, that our parents would be there before it got dark. 

My mom made it home first, driving the Astrovan with the door that sometimes fell off if we pulled too hard. She worked at the hospital as a caterer for all the events, and the cookies swirled with cream cheese frosting that she brought home for us seemed to make the entire thing worth it. I was in the fifth grade and knew, even then, that she was always doing her best.

 My daughter painted a portrait of me for my 41st birthday.

We gathered at the edge of the hole where the giant oak used to be, the tree, felled like a giant from the sky onto the neighbors lawn. The absence where the tree once was really couldn’t have been as big as I think it was, because in my mind, I could hardly see the bottom of what had been undone. I had no idea roots went so deep, so wide, that they were nearly as big as the tree itself. 

It felt like looking into a mirror world, the underside of everything I thought I knew. At that particular time, I would have just been introduced to the idea of a second coming of Jesus in church and the understanding of temporality was settling over me. The upturned tree on the lawn was a signal that not everything I was sure of would stay. 

I remember the relief at seeing my mom pull into the driveway, the excitement of surveying the neighborhood, the rush of bringing her to the edge of the yard, so she, too, could peer into the hole. 

She, of course, set to making everything right and calm for us, simply with her presence moving through the house, turning on lamps even though it was still late afternoon and summer, pouring food in the bowl for our golden lab, untying her black apron from work and hanging it on the hook on her door. 

My dad came home later that evening, his work across town. I know he would have come sooner if he could have, but he was the only one who worked in his dental technician office, he was his sole employer, the only one who could make the teeth the dentist wanted for his patients, and he never said no to taking on another job. 

He always had a deep tenderness toward us, some understanding of protection akin to an animal in the wild, because, what else are we? 

And in his protection, and also belief that he had somehow failed his patriarchal duties because he’d abandoned Mormonism in his 20’s and 30’s, he hated that my mom had a job, that he could not provide everything we needed financially with his own two hands. Looking back, it was too much to ask of anyone. 

He came home that evening and started to cut the branches from the top of the tree. I watched him and he said to me “I don’t want you to ever have to get a job.” I felt that line move across the branch he sliced with the saw, through the tree trunk, the roots, down into the hole, and back up to me. Even then, I knew he said it because he loved me, because he wanted me to always be taken care of, and in my own child-like affection, I wanted to make that happen for him, as much as my insides constricted against the thought. 

I aligned myself both to him and to the church, which told me the same thing. 

I don’t recall the days post the microburst, I don’t remember the tree being hauled away in pieces, or the hole being filled, but I know I went to the sixth grade a few weeks later, and when I asked what I wanted to grow up to be, my sentence stopped short with three staccato-ed letters, m-o-m. It was, and is true, and still, I can’t help but feel that there was more poised to be written. 

I drove by the house just the other day, wanting to pay some homage to the scar left by an absence, by a living form cut short of its full potential, but steps had been built over the slope, a patch of unruly sunflowers spilling over the edge. No sign of what was thirty years ago, only evidence that something hearty and strong grew in its place.