50+ Lifestyles

Just Saying…

Born of the Storm: Maybe QC Jones has been Struck

By Q.C. Jones

March marks the beginning of spring for our beloved Quad-Cities. When I think of Spring I am magically, perhaps even magnetically attracted to the power of the weather events punctuating the launch of summer. Spring and summer thunderstorms draw me, like the porch light draws hungry mosquitoes.

Contemplating more on the coming spring storms, I revisited the picture of Andrew Jackson which graces my office wall. There is a quote: “I was born for the storm, and a calm does not suit me.”  I have always believed it applies to both Old Hickory and your Pal QC Jones. While I can’t speak for the Great President Jackson, there may be a reason for my proclivity to stormy circumstances.

Reviewing old weather records for the place of my birth, I have concluded that I was both conceived in and born in a storm. The Texas Gulf Coast, with its unpredictable skies and air thick with humidity, was my first witness. Near Houston, where the flat land meets an endless sky, the storm that created me was a force that shaped me before I ever took my first breath.

My parents never spoke of the storm as anything mystical, but I always felt there was something special about it.  The day I was conceived, the sky cracked open with the roar of thunder and a massive outpour of electro-magnetic waves. Maybe it was coincidence, or maybe it was something deeper. One friend who claimed special powers said my aura was blindingly bright. Another person whose lineage included great gurus said, “QC, you carry very powerful energy.”

Later, as my mom hurried to the hospital for my birth, the weather was releasing its fury.  The air pressure dropped, the Gulf winds rolling up from the southwest carried the minerals and scent of sea salt. As the lightning streaked across the sky in furious, jagged patterns massive levels of energy and ozone filled the atmosphere.

The experienced midwife or doula say babies cry at birth because they’re shocked by the cold, the suddenness of existence. But I wonder if I cried because I knew where I belonged—in the storm, in the chaos, in the beauty of the untamed.

The Texas Gulf Coast of my earliest years is a land of tempests. Storms don’t just come and go, they shape the land and the people who live there. I grew up with the distant rumble of thunder as a familiar companion. I felt peace while watching dark clouds roll in over the horizon like omens of change. I bathed in the power of Hurricane Debra – taking special note of the calm as the eye passed briefly overhead.

While living on the mainland just across the causeway from Galveston, I could feel the Gulf’s breath often.  The air before a storm is thick and heavy with anticipation. I’ve felt that same anticipation in myself.  Such is the nature of children born of the storm.

Scientists have told me that being born in a thunderstorm didn’t give me any special powers. They say there’s no evidence that lightning changes a person’s DNA, no proof that the atmosphere during conception determines fate.  Yet, I can’t shake the instinctual feeling that the storm left something in me.

Psychologists say that the stories we tell about ourselves shape who we are. Maybe that’s why I feel this supernatural connection with storms. I was born in its arms, and I’ve shared its energy ever since.  I thrive in movement, in change, in the moments where life feels electric and full of possibility. I am drawn to the edge of things, where the wind picks up and the sky darkens, because I know that after the storm passes, the world is never quite the same.

The weather channel informs us to fear storms.  Board up the windows, seek shelter, wait for the storm to pass. But I have never feared them. Instead, I head outside to wallow in the storm, like a pig to mud. Thunder rolls, the wind whips around me, the rain fills the air, and I feel the reflection of something deeper. My life, like the sky, has been unpredictable. It shifts without warning, bringing both destruction and renewal. To be born of the storm is to know that you, too, are resilient, wild, and unconquerable.

As you ride through your next bit of bad weather, think of your favorite 50+ pal. The ever self-aggrandizing QC Jones is the self-proclaimed son of the storm: Conceived in a storm. Born in a storm. Alive and well in the QCA.

Just saying…  QC Jones