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I didn’t get it back then, that time so long ago when my father said, “I miss thunderstorms.” In the later years of his life, my father moved from Western Pennsylvania to Southern California, a place of good memories, a place he had loved during the prime of his life. After his move, the one thing Dad missed enough to mention was thunderstorms. When he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and deeply, painfully reflective, I sent him an audio cassette tape of a booming, drenching thunderstorm. When I sent the tape, I thought it was just a weather event that my father had been missing during his years in endless sunshine, but as I sit at my desk today, in the later years of my life, listening as the rain pounds down just outside my own window, I understand that his longing was for something more than rain. All around me I feel the growing stillness. Thunder is rolling in the distance. It is ten o’clock in the morning but dark as late evening. The tree outside my window begins to bend and sway in the wind. The leaves on the tree shimmy from the force of sudden, large, pelting raindrops. Traffic and outdoor activity cease. The birds that had been singing earlier are nowhere to be seen or heard. While the typical outdoor sounds are absent save for the thunder and the rain, the sounds inside my apartment are amplified: the ticking of the clock, the hum of the refrigerator, the quiet whir of the ceiling fan, the beating of my heart. Somehow, I am more alive and alert in the stillness. My busy mind is stilled too. I am aware of nothing but the sensory experience around me, the life force within me. A bolt of lightning makes me blink. It is followed by a crash of thunder that makes me jump. It is not a feeling of fear or helplessness, but one of a greater wisdom: it is wise to stop, to attend. The thunderstorm carries me away. I am here but not here. I am living inside a snow globe where it is the world beyond the glass that is being shaken. Time stops. I am given a free pass to do nothing but listen. Somehow the weather settles in me and on me. I am cloaked in humidity and sound. The thunder reverberates in my ears, and like an electric shock, stimulates my heart that moves in synch. I am in the rain but not in the rain. My body becomes a sympathetic barometer of the weather outside. I think back to my mother shouting, “Get away from the window,” as she chased me and my siblings off the couch where we had settled on our knees to watch the storm outside. She pulled the drapes. Mom never explained the science, but we grasped her fear that lightning could strike us through the glass if it chose to take such aim. But I am a grown up now, a taller version of that former curious, perhaps incalcitrant, child I sit in front of the window, drapes opened wide, and I watch: the eerie stillness as the storm whips up a fever, the thrashing, and then the return to stillness, the dark clouds hovering, taking a pause, re-committing to another downpour. I wonder: why am I not afraid of something so ominous? I take in the lesson from nature--facing the things so much bigger than us, so much out of our control, things that will pass. I am calm, a calmness that is something more than acceptance of the storm or its eventual passing. Somehow, I am joined with nature in the divine plan that all the things are one, the things that say: STOP. LISTEN. BE. There is nothing else but this. The storm calms. The leaves and the branches are still. They shake off the rain drops in the last breath of wind. They bounce back to full attention, listening for the sun’s commands. I hear the revving of a car engine. Someone making a break for it…whatever “it” is. A faint light appears in the sky through clouds that are now white and light enough to see the blue behind them. Do the clouds lift? Or do we? Cleansed by the pause, from the moments when we turn ourselves over to the forces of nature? For a brief time we are stilled, more aware of our authentic Garden-of-Eden selves, more aware than daily life allows us to be. We are quiet, outwardly attentive, inwardly connected to the electricity that powers all of nature. Life itself is a passing storm. We are given moments when nature brings man’s plans to a halt, moments to rest and reflect. Moments when darkness gives way to light. So much of what demands our attention is inconsequential--oil changes and laundry. The emerging light in the sky says, “Safe. At ease. As you were.” And so we pick up with chores of the day. But can we really be “as you were?” This life doesn’t really belong to us. It is a passing storm. There is peace and sunshine on the other side. I will see you there one day, Dad.
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 A wealthy white male politician with three children, a wife and available in-laws has put childless cat ladies in the news. He did not do this to uplift childless cat ladies or to garner their votes. No, he did it to demean them and keep the attention on himself. He stated outright that the United States is “being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He asks: “And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” Wow, J.D. Vance! You might want to hike up your pants. I think your soul is showing. In response, I want to honor the childless cat ladies in my life, women who gave their lives to others, investing in the future and in me. First, shout-outs to family women: Aunt Phoebe, Aunt Lillie, Aunt Gen, and Ellie, remarkable women who, while they never bore children, were never childless. They invested in me and my large pack of cousins, their communities, and their country. They made the world a better place. Lillie, Phoebe, Gen, and Ellie, you never birthed or adopted children, and it never occurred to me to question your marital or parenting status. You always belonged to me and to all of us. It was just the way it was. Lucky us! Perhaps you had your reasons or even your heart breaks. I will never know. If you were sad or unhappy with your life, it never showed. And one thing was always clear to me, your lives were never focused on yourselves; your lives were always about others, about us, about the future, and not just our futures, but that of your community. You offered us examples of different choices and circumstances, of acceptance for what life gives and takes. Without your own children to care for, you were free to care for all of us. And you did. To Aunt Lillie, I want to say thank you for sharing your name with me. I am proud to carry it. I want to thank you for your service to our country during World War II caring for soldiers injured in Europe. You showed me that a woman can serve in uniform and in war. By your example, you showed me that a woman can live a life of adventure and still be nurturing, generous, and a master of the home arts. You taught me to keep house and to cook, to adapt to the needs of others and the demands of life, and to sacrifice for family when crises occur. You showed me how to stay on my feet when illness strikes. You introduced me to Gidget movies, Tammy movies and Johnny Carson. For all the sleepovers, summer respites, and wise counsel, I thank you. To Aunt Phoebe, you showed me that a woman can be an entrepreneur and savvy investor without selling her soul. You ran a local store where I met my neighbors and learned about commerce, kindness and generosity. You took the time to learn the many languages in your immigrant community. You offered credit to folks when times were hard. You sent us to leave surprise bushels of groceries on front porches. You worked standing all day, sometimes until your legs looked like they might burst. You showed me when to hold your tongue and how to get along with everyone. I watched you at night studying the stock market reports in the daily newspaper. You showed me that one does not have to go to school to learn. You were self-taught in everything and a master of it all. You left a small fortune to your family and to your community. I thank you for the security that came from always knowing that no matter what happened, there would always be food on our table. To Aunt Gen—you married but never had children. I don’t know why. You showed me what a happy marriage looks like. Thank you for bringing Uncle Harry into our lives with his humor and his ability to fix anything, and for showing us all how to nail down a bargain! You shared your finds with all of us so generously and so often. You will be happy to know even my children are bargain hunters! And to Ellie…you were not born into our family, but you might as well have been. You came to us as a mother’s helper when you were just a child yourself. You came and you never left us. You moved from one growing family to the next. You showed me that faithfulness is not born of blood but comes through the love that grows from time, commitment, and sharing lives together. You know more about my family roots than I do. You saw it all. And wisely, you accepted it and kept your mouth shut! As Mary Pipher would say, each of you, all of you “did the hard work of loving me into existence…Through (your) eyes, I began to see myself.” When politicians carelessly label and categorize, I feel a personal sense of outrage and the need to stand up for you and for all women. All of you taught me that. You were never miserable. You always gave me somewhere to turn, and I would turn the country over to any one of you. While I have spoken of family, I cannot disregard the many, many childless cat ladies in my life who have been my teachers, medical professionals, and lifelong friends. They taught me to read, cared for me when I was sick, filled my life with adventure, and rushed to my aid in emergencies. They had a flexibility that I did not have as a single parent, and they used their skills, money, and time to care for me and for others. My life would have been so empty and so hard without them. Please, J.D., don’t mock the childless cat ladies. They are part of the backbone of America. They make it all work.  Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity. The soul must see through these eyes, and, if they are dim, the whole world is clouded. - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe It was back to the church of the broken. Different location. Same religion. This time it was for me, not my son. Somehow, in the year of one-darn-thing-after-another, I left a colonoscopy with terrible groin pain. My whole world was clouded by a growing fear that a sudden, unexpected stab of pain might take me down. And so I came to physical therapy twice a week to clear my soul eyes which appeared to be connected to my hip bone. The church of the broken is a friendly place. The members smile at each other as they arrive in the waiting room. Familiarity quickly develops. Without exchanging information, we all understand what we have in common, and we all have hope that our faith shall heal us. The receptionist is this church’s greeter. She recognizes each of us as we enter through the automatic doors. She waves at each of us as we arrive, and from behind the glass she mouths: “I’ll check you in.” This is not a place where people can stand in a line to wait. There is something holy about mending the human body. Perhaps that is the proof that our bodies are tied to our souls. And in this particular church, there is something awesome about the officiant who performs my services. He wears no fancy robes. No bells sound his arrival. No incense forms a fragrant cloud that precedes him. The door to the inner sanctum opens, and he steps out. Dressed in black scrubs and athletic shoes, he calls my name. I notice his broad smile, his straight white teeth, and his strong hands. He is radiant and his skin appears to be the color of kindness as he holds the door open for me to pass. Over the weeks, this priest’s gentle sermons are about comfort and support, form and function, strength and flexibility, limitations and possibilities. He makes me a believer. I do my at-home exercises religiously. My hip pain is relieved, and my leg gets stronger. But what really heals my soul and lingers in my ears is the way this priest speaks of his wife and three young children, of their fairy gardens, yes days, and trips to the zoo. His love for his family is so deep, expressed so naturally and so earnestly that I feel like I am listening in on someone’s sacred prayers. I am certain that this man knows God, and God knows him--and his wife and children too. How special they must be to be loved so deeply, so openly, so honestly. His life is a prayer for them. The experience feels so wondrous, so moving that I want to call his family and tell them the good news, what I have overheard. I want to be certain that in in the ups and downs of life, when hardships come, they will never be doubters. I want them to know that this is the kind of love that raised Lazarus from the dead. I came to this church of the broken to fix my damaged leg, but I find healing in another part of me, the part of my soul that has been gravely injured by our current social, political, and media climate. And so, I share the good news with you today: Love lives! |
AuthorLilli-ann Buffin Archives
June 2026
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