2023 Life Logs, Day 221: Afternoon at the Mall After the Big Storm
Date: Tuesday, August 8, 2023
Weather: Heavy Rain with Tornado Warning; High 77, Low 71 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA
What a storm we had this morning! There was thunder and lightning, pouring rain, a break with no rain, and then more pouring rain and a tornado warning. I was taking Ollie and Jonah to the Hyannis Mall for the afternoon. Jonah was meeting friends he met at his ASLP camp earlier this summer and Ollie and I were just going to hang out. When there was a break in the storm, I should have left to go get them. I didn’t, however, and when it was time that I had to leave, it was raining bucket loads. I put on my rain jacket and headed to the car to be met with a yard and a driveway with at least an inch of rain running across it. By the time I got to the car, I was soaked, but I was certainly not going to go back to change clothes. So, on I went. When I got to Heather and Jed’s, I called their home phone in the hope that one of the boys would pick it up. Ollie did and I told him there was no way I was fording the stream in their yard to come in and get them. I said that he and Jonah were just going to have to put on raincoats with a poncho over that if they could find one, take off their socks and shoes, and run to the car. They did that and still they got a bit wet., but on we went. It was slow going with traffic having to drive through deep water in some places. The water was so deep, we were making waves. And then Jonah got a message from one friend who was traveling to Hyannis from Nantucket on the ferry. The ferry had landed but they would not let anyone off the boat because there was a tornado warning. Whoa! We were halfway between Falmouth and Hyannis, and I just did not know what the responsible thing to do might be. So, once again, we traveled on, listening to the radio hoping we might get warnings, and constantly watching the sky. I told the boys that once we were in the mall we should identify where the restrooms were as they might be the safest places to be if a tornado hit. They have no windows. Jonah was going to a movie and a theater also seemed a safe bet. Still, I was a nervous Oma.
By the time we finally got to Hyannis, the storm was beginning to clear, and I hoped the tornado had passed us by. We went into the mall to wait for Jonah’s friends. Once he met up with them and headed to the theater to see Barbie, Ollie and I had a Thai lunch in the Food Court and then drove to downtown Hyannis to Mass Bay Company. This an upscale Army surplus store that Ollie wanted to visit. We went on to hobby shop to look at remote control vehicles, and then back to the mall. We looked at Legos at Target and then went to an arcade in the mall where Ollie spent more than hour playing arcade games. He loved it. AT 5 pm, we met up with Jonah and I drove home in the sunshine with two happy boys. Malls are not my favorite place, but it was not a bad way to spend a rainy summer day on Cape Cod.
And speaking of Cape Cod, Karen Baranowski forwarded a photo of Cape Cod taken from above. It was so dramatic, showing just how small and fragile our little niche in the world is . . . quite a jarring perspective.
