Today I woke up with a migraine to fog I hoped would last.
This afternoon the sun came out and I whimper-screamed for my wife to close the curtains against its piercing rays. The migraine crawled up the back of my neck into the base of my skull and my left arm and hand have been weak and shaky all day.
Someone posted on a local Facebook group that the whole Puget Sound region southward is at risk of twisters tomorrow. I do not know if this is true, I do not know if that is real.
I just know that I have to cross the bridge. I just know that I have to take the ferry.
The FB post had a picture of a map with different-colored areas. The biggest color blob was BROWN. The map’s key said BROWN is at the highest tornado risk tomorrow.
The bridge I have to cross is in the BROWN blob. The ferry that I have to take is in the BROWN blob.
The FB post linked to a blog where the information came from: the source of the BROWN blobbed high risk twister risk map. The blog is the name + METEOROLOGIST.
I do not recognize the NAME of the meteorologist. I do not click to find out more or try to figure out whether it’s “fake news”. I do not know if BROWN is the established map color to indicate tornadoes.
I did not see the second Twister movie. I did not want to: it looked too flat, and fake, with perfect white-tooth unmussed hair veneered actors. But then I saw it was playing in 4D, with shaking chairs, scents, and other atmospheric additves choreographed in the theater for heightened REALISM.
By the time I noticed this option was available, it was too late for me to catch it. It is probably all for the best since all of that smelly shaky lightning-flashing heightened REALISM triggers migraines. I think there is even a warning for it re: 4D, but I thought it might be worth risking it for all the fun and fake petrichor and the pretty lady’s hair that stays PERFECT while the windy storms are twisting.
Now, at bedtime, the headache is sitting on my right brow / in my right eye socket.
I do not know if it is true that migraineurs can sense when storms are on the horizon before the clouds become visible and other people feel wind. I do not know if it is real that migraines are an evolutionary advantage built in so we who get them will be forced to seek the nearest deep dark cave, sending us to shelter and keep ourselves safe well in advance of the storm actually striking and the twisters picking us up.
All I know is I have to be on the other side of the water tomorrow to take my mom to her radiation treatment. And I know that having a headache would sound like a fake excuse adding to the rest of my family’s heavy burdens. Heavier than my headaches. Heavier than BROWN on the map, that probably doesn’t mean anything anyway.
My alarm is set for the five o’clock hour.
Maybe my headache will be better tomorrow. I do not know if the bridge will be closed to traffic due to big waves crashing over the roadway. I do not know if the ferries will be canceled or delayed or if I will just get sick on choppy water. I do not know if I will be late and cutting it very close to get to the cancer place on time.
I do not know if my headache will get worse when I make it over the water with a suitcase and heavy backpack tightening my shoulders and neck. I do not know how much lost time I’ll have to make up or if my headache will get worse when I’m hurrying up the streets and up the steep steep hill as bad as San Francisco in parts or how fast I will have to worry or if the light rail will even be operating / on time when/if I get there.
I do know from experience that they will not recognize or understand what it took to get there.
I am grateful my ORCA card is charged up. I am grateful for my family and having a place to stay while we are there for a series of radiation treatments. I am grateful for the radiologist and the groundbreakingly precise technology she is master over and for the places and people doing all of this work that are all losing funding and being treated as expendible inefficiences so a gold plated toilet and his apartheid bro can bribe gullible voters with imaginary payouts in their unrepentant treasonous criminal takeover of our whole entire country and then some.
I do know that nobody has ever thanked me for having migraines, for my early severe storm warning detection system. I also know that nobody posted in the local Facebook group about the Hanford office being chopped.
After my sister declined yesterday to plan on picking me up in their car at the ferry, I will not explain the reasons why I asked in the first place. I will not ask again with the updated information of the migraine and the elevated twister risk, which may or may not be true, but probably won’t touchdown anywhere near us, if at all.
It’s possible this headache will go away. It’s probable we’ll make it through tomorrow, and the next day. It’s possible everything will be okay despite all of the serious warnings of very bad weather churning up devastation in the months and years ahead.
I do not know if it is true that warning systems do any good at all anyway. I do not know if it is real that enough people heed them.
I do not know if this migraine was caused by eating too much dark chocolate, or the room being too hot while I was sleeping, or not drinking enough water, or not having the proper amount of salt, or my shifting PMS hormones, or eyestrain from reading too long with poor lighting, or my sensitive system detecting subtle electromagnetic changes in the atmosphere signaling THE BIG BROWN BLOG OF STORM. Probably a mixture of all of those factors, plus or minus one. I do not know if it could be what my dad attributed spells like this to: JUST DAMNED MEANNESS COMING OUT.
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