Some years ago, my friend Ken, who grew up in the rural southland of our great nation, introduced me to an expression I had never heard before. He proceeded to explain the meaning of the phrase “come up a big cloud.” That’s the way his part of the old south described a huge thunderstorm, what those near me call a thunder-gah-whopper, cloudburst, or lightning storm. The story he told me concerning the expression “come up a big cloud” resides in my memory to this day.
Like many upper middle-class families in the southland, it was not uncommon to have a cook or housekeeper in the family who spent much time raising the children of the household. Ken and his sister lived such a life. So, whenever there was a “come up a big cloud” event, their faithful nanny would gather them into her protective arms, race them down the hall to a large bedroom, toss them into the center of an expansive featherbed, and throw herself atop of them to protect the youngsters for the storm.
This routine occurred throughout their childhood until Ken was of the age to question the thinking behind this emergency procedure whenever a storm was brewing. Their nanny would eventually share the logic. “Well in a big storm, the safest place to be is on a featherbed.”
Ken and his sister, innocent as they were, accepted the explanation and dutifully complied as their nanny tossed them onto the feather sanctuary, covering both with her expansive and protective body as a soldier in battle would fall sacrificially on a hand grenade to protect his comrades from harm.
Ken, however, later learned the realities of physical science and the conductivity of electricity. He came to the conclusion that the bed their nanny used to protect them from the ill effects of a huge electric storm was made of brass and steel, hardly reliable insulation from high voltage threats. In time Ken mustered the courage to share his newly acquired knowledge of electric currents and asked, “Nanny, why do you think a featherbed protects us from an electric storm?” To which she knowingly replied, “Well, child, have you ever seen a chicken struck by lightning?”
Ken and his sister would continue to comply with Nanny’s battle drill more out of love for Nanny than love of science. In her heart there was no need for electrical engineering. Only the instincts of a protective woman who was willing to lay down her life for those she loved.
In that regard, love is the most powerful motivation for those charged with the protection of the innocent. And children remain in that category, even beyond the point when they get a passing grade in science.
There is something comforting in standing beside a loving guardian during a thunderstorm. As children, we may flinch when a string of lightning stretches menacingly across a stormy sky. We may jump when thunderous reverberation shakes the rafters. We may cower a bit when the rain pelts the siding of our homes amid a relentless downpour. But there’s a hand nearby. One that holds us fast and gives the assurance that bolts of lightning, peals of thunder, or torrents of rain will not harm us. Our small hands were cradled in larger ones, ones that may not have been of a scientist, but rather a protector. Those protectors are our blessings. And they frequently are commissioned by a higher power with a transcendent purpose to teach, protect, and love us.
Somehow and despite all the trouble we see now, we should pause for some simple reflection that involves people in our personal past who were devoted to us then so that we could experience the present now. Indeed, we need to slow down from our busyness, our outrage, our preoccupation with things that don’t matter to reflect on those that do.
It’s hard for some to accept that most of us are not here to individually save the world, but rather to make it a bit more—maybe a tiny bit more—loving. Our calling may not be to be a crusader, but a crucible in which love is refined and has significance for those near us and ourselves.
At 73, I wonder how much of my time on this terrestrial ball has been wasted pursuing things that don’t matter. To be sure, I am happy to have had a productive life as a soldier and a legislator, and now an author. But these pale in significance to that of being a grandfather. I have large hands for small ones now. And when the “come up a big cloud” moments occur, I’m happy to resort to a featherbed to show my love for those precious to me. It may not be scientific, but those feathers matter.
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