changed direction until it was flying right at me. I turned my head just in time for
the rocket to singe my hair, instead of my face.
“Don’t tell Mom,” my brother begged. “Don’t tell Dad.”
This was two years after the 1988 summer drought, the hottest and
driest in Southeastern Michigan since the 1930s. That year, homeowners were
fined if their families used too much water. Lawns turned from green to brown to
dust under the relentless sun. Forests caught fire and disintegrated to ash. Water
levels sank to surprising lows and irrigation become impossible. Farms couldn’t
harvest their crops. Livestock died. Food costs skyrocketed. The drought spread
to thirty percent of the country and lasted throughout the mid-1980s. In total,
the lack of rain and the endless high temperatures racked up $39 billion in loss;
it had been the costliest in U.S. history of any natural disaster that had come
before.
22
Nearly twenty years later, Hurricane Katrina produced such strong
storms and sudden rainfall in New Orleans that the levees were breached.
Foundations eroded, embankments were compromised, and eventually the
flood-protection system failed altogether as water rushed over and washed
away the levees and eighty percent of the city along with them.
There have been other natural disasters: snowfall so fast and so heavy
that people had to climb on top of their houses and shovel their roofs for fear
the weight of the accumulation would cause them to collapse. Earthquakes
destroyed bridges in the faraway land of California.
Tornadoes tore apart homes and families and terrified me as a child. We
had tornado drills in school where we had to file into the hallway, sit on the floor
facing the wall, and tuck our heads into our chests.
One August in particular, everything around us went so quiet we could
almost hear the air getting thicker just before the rains came, followed by the
imminent threats of tornado warnings that flashed across the bottom of the
television screen. After we changed into pajamas, my brother and I would sit on