LOVE, Kloudiia

Happy July 4th! That’s what people say to each other today in Iowa. I said that to the smiley lady cashier with short blond hair at the supermarket too.

It has been a week since I’ve arrived in this city of literature. Ten days of reading, writing, more reading and more writing has not dampened my urge to want to read more. It has been such a liberating experience for me. Until now, the TV has been sitting in my room, observing my every movement and listening to my every breath, without uttering a single sound, as I haven’t allow it to. So, living without a TV is okay, after all, when there are better things to do.

Summer time in Iowa means long days and short nights. Every morning, the glare from the window makes my heart skip two beats as I thought that I have overslept again. But, a quick glance at the black boring radio clock perched on the old wooden table across my king-sized bed always says 5:35 A.M. I plump my head back onto the pillow, pull the quilt over my bed and go back to sleep. This is as much of the sleep disturbance I get daily, except for one real hullabaloo that happened on my very first night.

Groggy from the twenty-four hour flight journey from Singapore to Iowa, and the acute lack of sleep, I barely slept for an hour when I was rudely awakened by a sharp shrill of siren wailing outside my window. I took the shrilling sound in for the next three seconds, and froze in bed. The siren sounded like some fighter planes were about to land some nuclear bombs on us, and I would just perish on the spot, without having the chance to say goodbye to my beloved ones at home. I didn’t know what to do. So I did what I knew – I prayed while I remained in bed motionless. After what seemed like an eternity, and probably a dozen rounds of Hail Marys, the siren decided to quit. Peace was restored. I went back to sleep, with much difficulty, wondering what the heck that was.

I discovered the startling truth the next morning, during the first orientation for my first workshop.

That was an alarm.

For tornado.

I thought my ears had played a very mischievous trick on me when I heard that word “tornado”. So, I verified it with the person sitting next to me. She said yes, that was an alarm for tornado. I gasped, and I blurted out to her, ‘What the hell am I going to do if there’s a tornado?’ She replied, ‘I don’t know! You better ask the owner of the B&B!’

That was the first thing I did when I came back. And I learnt this: there is no shelter. A tornado came about two years ago, but it didn’t really hit this part of the town. If I hear that again, I shall run down to the first level (I’m on the 2nd), place myself against the wall and stay away from the door, which is merely less than two metres away. Tornadoes rip off the top parts of the building, the person said, so the lower you go, the safer you are. That’s all the safety instructions I have.

I think, praying to God for the tornadoes to stay away is probably a safer bet.

God has been kind.