Venom and Velocity

My mother moved in mysterious ways…

My mother had a thing for snakes and tornados. Somewhat similar in shape, one horizontally inclined, and the other displaying vertical superiority dropping from clouds above. My mother knew snakes, the garden variety which lived tucked away in the stone fence of our rural Massachusetts’ home. Tornadoes, on the other hand, were a rare New England occurrence. I can only remember one when I was a child that hit nearby Worcester in 1953 and which people talked about with a sense of doom for years after. But here in our new town outside Chicago, when the weather conditions were right and held a promise for change, my mother became obsessed with them. When the sky would turn that greenish hue and air unmoving, she would go, binoculars in hand, to the southwest corner of the yard and stand, waiting, alongside endless rows of corn. She'd usually beat the town's siren, remaining in harms way long after the alarm had sounded. I, on the other hand, took shelter by the piano, the heaviest object in the house; we had no basement to seek shelter in. I'd wear a yellow hard hat borrowed from my father's work site and held onto one wooden piano leg for dear life. This became my personal safety protocol just in case the cyclone and my mother shot through the living room leaving a wake of debris as they blew by.

And while this scene was repeated regularly, especially in the late spring, nothing ever touched down, no path was ever carved through our yard during those two years we lived there. There was something about her waiting, though, scanning the horizon for signs of a coming storm that defined her. A dark anticipation about life, her's, mine, all of ours, that marked her with a certain otherness that both attracted and repelled the dangers of the world.

Snakes, on the other hand, were frequent visitors, silently appearing when least expected. My mother encountered them most but she was no ophidiophile. It seemed, rather than her seeking them out, they found her. Sometimes they'd be waiting for her in the basement of an old Pennsylvania farm house on the side of a hill we rented after leaving Illinois. Some were harmless, the smaller green ones, and others not as familiar, were large and black. This was the house where the stone foundation was beginning to show an unusual deterioration: cracking, crumbling, collapsing and falling to pieces for no apparent reason.

Moving to a new house in the next town over was a solution, my father thought, that would end our serpent infestation as well as residing in a structure that seemed to be ready to slide off the hill. But once settled in, the problem seemed to have followed us. It seemed to intensify. Now snake sightings happened in the first floor hallway and kitchen. And beneath the house there appeared to be sets of claw marks, evidence of scratching and digging along earthen walls in a crawl space off the basement and discovered by an unsuspecting plumber who thought it a sign of the beast. He quit after his discovery.

It was at this time that my mother's simple act of standing on the back porch signaled deer from the surrounding woods to approach the house, it seemed, just to be in her presence. Maybe they had come to offer a gentle counter to the perceived evil of indoor snake sightings or maybe it had something to do with the crawl space claw marks. At any rate, the arrival of the herd was a much better alternative to serpents and demons or even tornadoes for that matter. t once settled in, the problem seemed to have followed us. It seemed to intensify. Now snake sightings happened in the first floor hallway and kitchen. And beneath the house there appeared to be sets of claw marks, evidence of scratching and digging along earthen walls in a crawl space off the basement and discovered by an unsuspecting plumber who thought it a sign of the beast. He quit after his discovery.

It was at this time that my mother's simple act of standing on the back porch signaled deer from the surrounding woods to approach the house, it seemed, just to be in her presence. Maybe they had come to offer a gentle counter to the perceived evil of indoor snake sightings or maybe it had something to do with the crawl space claw marks. At any rate, the arrival of the herd was a much better alternative to serpents and demons or even tornadoes for that matter.