A Storm Is Coming

One of my sons jumped into my bed last week. “I’m scared daddy. I don’t want to see a tornado.” I asked him why he thought there would be a tornado. He thought the sky had turned green before bed. There had been a little hint of it, maybe. I told him there was nothing to worry about. It wasn’t that kind of green. It was a different shade, a kind you see in these days after midsummer, when the sun is setting just slightly earlier, over a canopy of trees in full summer bloom. I’m sure if the English language had, instead of just four seasons, versions of all 72 of ancient Japan’s micro-seasons, each about five days long, I’d have been able to name it exactly.

My son is in a micro-season of his own early childhood in which he is powerfully attracted to danger and destruction. Just that day and the next, he reiterated his desire to grow up and become a storm-chaser. He has it in his head that he’ll become as calm as his parents are about the weather, but admits that even now it still scares him. He boyishly desired to see a YouTube video about the biggest bombs, and laughed a little maniacally at the narration of the rapidly increased numerical yields and power as the video proceeded up from Hiroshima’s Little Boy to the Tsar bombs. But when the narrator named radiation sickness as one of the results, his mood instantly spoiled, and he winced.

About the Author

Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review Online.

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One of my sons jumped into my bed last week. “I’m scared daddy. I don’t want to see a tornado.” I asked him why he thought there would be a tornado. He thought the sky had turned green before bed. There had been a little hint of it, maybe. I told him there was nothing to worry about. It wasn’t that kind of green. It was a different shade, a kind you see in these days after midsummer, when the sun is setting just slightly earlier, over a canopy of trees in full summer bloom. I’m sure if the English language had, instead of just four seasons, versions of all 72 of ancient Japan’s micro-seasons, each about five days long, I’d have been able to name it exactly.

My son is in a micro-season of his own early childhood in which he is powerfully attracted to danger and destruction. Just that day and the next, he reiterated his desire to grow up and become a storm-chaser. He has it in his head that he’ll become as calm as his parents are about the weather, but admits that even now it still scares him. He boyishly desired to see a YouTube video about the biggest bombs, and laughed a little maniacally at the narration of the rapidly increased numerical yields and power as the video proceeded up from Hiroshima’s Little Boy to the Tsar bombs. But when the narrator named radiation sickness as one of the results, his mood instantly spoiled, and he winced.