A Mighty Wind

An Easter Story from 2009.
I vow not to repeat this scenario on Sunday...
damn the winds,
I'm going to get my confetti head this year!



On this Easter Sunday I have foregone the tradition
of having children crack cascarones upon my head.
I normally derive exquisite pleasure from this ancient ritual.
That look, as they “sneak up” to attack you with forceful,
tiny blows…their little faces ejecting peals of laughter
as you stare at them indignantly for having done you wrong.

Today I am lost,
with no stew of colored bits of paper to surround me.
I mourn for those confetti eggs my nephews so lovingly designated for me
by writing my name on them.
They may still sit in the carton,
inevitably settling on some other, less-appreciative, head.

Scent of 7-bone wafting from the grill
cannot entice me to venture outside.
I am all about the womb-like safety of my home.
Untold disasters could befall me here,
but I try not to think of my natural graceless fumblings
and their ability to wreak havoc in my life.
No, today I think only of infernal wind
and the sensation of air blowing at me—
static, cold, dry, and volatile.
I can still hear it out there, horribly gusting and surging.
Incongruously, my husband thinks it is a beautiful day.
Foolish soul that he is,
he has left me here to face my demons alone.
Secretly envious, I sit here sipping hot tea.

This irrational sensation has followed me
to the beautiful beaches of California,
the icy frigidity of Indiana and Alaska,
and here in my favorite desert oasis.
It literally creeps me out.
Oh yes, I have always known,
there is the Devil in that wind.

Through blasts of sand
stinging my eyes and skin
as I attempted to walk home from school,
the dirt-deviled tumbleweeds swirling about me,
forcing my small self: 1 step forward, 2 steps back.
Boulders tumbling down the Franklins at break-neck speed,
pushed along with awful force towards the 54
as I dodge them in my father’s Trans-Am.
Bent remains of a massive billboard, steel-beams twisted
and tortured by this freak of nature
will forever be embedded in my mind.
My broken and bent garden, plants with tattered leaves,
and chewed-up blooms suffering in their silent screams.
I am sickened to think they may not survive its force.
I hate the wind.

What is it that makes it so?
It has always been this way for me; a deep-seated fear
of the almighty El Paso wind.
Keeping me indoors yet again,
the thought of it on my skin instilling some ill feeling....
an impending sense of doom.

It may have something to do with Marilyn Monroe
standing over a heating grate in that all-too-famous photograph,
holding down her skirt for dear life.
As girls we always wore shorts beneath our dresses
to avoid such embarrassment, forcing us
to be embarrassed anyway by our grandmothers
who disapproved of such ill-mannered dressing.
More than likely the root of all my hatred for wind
could stem from my first memory
of bursting from my mother’s loins
on a blustery, thunderstruck evening,
meeting the world with my shock of black hair,
my non-stop shrieking at the horror of it all.


April is the cruelest month....