I am staring out the window of our temporary 2-month housing here along the bluffs of Pelican Lake. It is drizzling rain this morning, the distant piers and boat docks are here-and-there obscured by remnant clouds, and the lake is finally still and calm after days and days of unrelenting nor’westerly winds. “Nor’westerly”… a word I enjoy hearing and saying almost as much as the word “sycamore”. There are what sounds like a horde of rampaging children behind me in the community room playing and chattering away in their occupied nonchalance. A bowl of fish sits to the left of my laptop; two mottled goldfish, Sam and Isabelle, occupy it hovering near the surface, I suppose looking for food. Or perhaps they are just trying to avoid the neon-colored bed of rocks. I would too if I were them.

We left Nashville nearly two weeks ago (seems like an eternity) and we won’t be home until early August (seems like another eternity). In the meantime, we’ve managed to sign a contract for a new house and have our current home for sale. If all goes according to plan, we will move across the street. Literally. Our street address would increase by one digit. Since this would be our seventh move since our marriage in 1997, I kind of like the idea of not having to involve bulky rental trucks, trailers, crammed storage units or lengthy drives. If anyone is interested in obtaining a small (750 sq. ft.) 2 bed/1 bath house in historic east Nashville, please, by all means drop me a line. I know of a quaint little corner property with a great backyard filled with Bradford Pears and an elegantly shaped Dogwood. A la Fred Rogers and his wonderful zip-up sweater jackets, we could be neighbors. But I’m taking the Japanese Maple in the front yard with me. I’m just weird that way.

In our long four-day drive up to Detroit Lakes, we drove into the gut of a nasty storm that was spewing out a handful of tornadoes along I-29 near the South/North Dakota state line on into west-central Minnesota. At the point where I thought for sure our van windshield was going to shatter from the barrage of dime-sized hail, we pulled under an interstate overpass (along with several other folks jockeying for a safe spot) and waited things out until the sky’s disposition improved. While listening to the repeated radio warnings, I at one point, fully expected to see a funnel cloud barrelling down. I scoured the immediate surroundings for a hiding place since the radio’s advice was to “get out of the car and hide in a low spot away from your vehicle”. Super. I imagined myself running through the missile rain and across puddles of water with Ellis in my arms, sheltering him as best I could – all the while hearing the screams of sheer terror in his tiny voice – with Danielle close by my side, and the three of us hunkered down beneath a bridge or, worse, in an open field away from the car with nothing sheltering us but my flimsy 5′7″, 135 lb. frame and the grace of God and his silent hosts. I thought on the harrowing prospects and it made me uneasy, to say the least. Me being a glass-half-empty sort of fellow, immediately thought worst case scenario: separation, loss, death, aloneness. I could see my frail self in the middle of the storm, debris and reckoning all around, clinging to Ellis and Danielle as if my very life – not theirs – depended on the grasp of a human hand for protection. To bear such loss would ruin me more than any storm. To bear such loss would turn anyone inside out. Plainly (and thankfully), some sort of an emerging father is coming to life in me, and I am glad things did not come to such extreme, but necessary, actions. We waited out the storm and eventually made it to our ultimate destination along the lake, all the while driving the very route of those vortexes from just minutes before like stragglers to a battle already fought. Our story in a strange non-fiction.

In other news, I’m hearing rumors of a fall tour with fellow Square Pegs, Andrew Osenga, Andrew Peterson, Jeremy Casella and myself. I will certainly attempt to keep you updated as these plans develop. If you or someone you know is interested in booking a show in your town, please drop myself or The Breen Agency an email. We’re looking to fill dates in late September to late October.