It was pouring down rain, but my
cousin Reta was in town from Texas. The plan was to go to my mom’s house at
Versailles, and then Mom, Reta, and I were going to drive to my brother Mitchell’s
house for a jam session. My brother Jimmy and my sister-in-law were going too.
Saturday morning I called my mom. “Are
we still going?” I asked her. My phone had lit up time-after-time with AccuWeather’s
areal flood warnings.
“Yes, Jimmy says we’re still on.”
“Okay, I’m on my way, but if water
is across the road, I’m turning around.” I’d always been afraid to drive into
water, especially on Sinkhole Road where I’d lived until a few years ago.
Radar showed a swath of rain
covering most of the state and the entire area included in my travel plans were
a bright red. As I drove in a pouring down rain, I noticed impromptu lakes in
fields and ditches that looked like mini-rivers, bank full. My wipers worked
overtime to keep the splish-splashing rain off my windshield.
After a grueling drive, I pulled
into the parking lot next to my mom’s and turned off the engine. The wipers
kept going. How odd. I turned the car on; shut it off. Wipers swished merrily
along. How great is that? I couldn’t imagine getting out of my car and leave
the wipers running. I called Harold. “Take the key out,” he said. The wipers
kept going. I couldn’t get them to turn off. The rain came down harder.
Harold called the car dealership,
and they said I’d have to bring it in for them to see what was going on. Great.
That would involve driving an hour back home. “Well, I’m going in to visit Mom
anyway.” I put on my raincoat and opened the door. The wipers shut off.
I crossed the parking lot and splashed
through the water pooled on the sidewalk in front of Mom’s door. “Well, I’m not
going anywhere else,” I announced as I removed my coat, thankful I’d worn my
waterproof boots. My jeans were drenched. Mom called my brothers, and they were
fine with the cancellation.
“I think it was a sign when the
wipers wouldn’t shut off,” I said. The constant rain and “severe” flash flood
warnings were other signs.
Sometimes, we have to pay attention
to clues. Sometimes gut feelings tell you not to do something, and it pays to
heed the warning.
I can easily think of several times
I had gut instincts about people. When Jim and I were first married, a “salesman”
came to our door and wanted to know if my husband was home. “Yes, he is. Do you
want me to get him?” I asked through the locked storm door. I turned away as if
to get Jim, closed and locked the door. The man practically ran to his vehicle
and sped away.
Researchers say that our
subconscious minds notice something is slightly out of kilter; dopamine neurons
alert us to this. Bottom line, there’s a scientific explanation why we sense
danger. Our brains are our early-warning systems.
Jim was an intuitive thinker and
believer in gut feelings before he developed dementia. Many of the symptoms
related to Alzheimer’s disease may be due to a massive disturbance in dopamine
regulation in the brain. One of the jobs of dopamine is to regulate the flow of
information to different areas of the brain to aid cognition. Some researchers
believe dopamine is responsible for many of the non-cognitive symptoms in neurodegenerative
brain diseases, including anxiety, depression, apathy, and mood.
A “sign,” intuition, gut feelings,
whatever you want to call it—I take heed. After I’d been at Mom’s for about an
hour, a bad storm blew through. Thunder, lightning, and a strong wind, made us
all glad that we’d stayed put. Out of control windshield wipers helped keep my
trip shorter and had me headed toward home earlier.
After our visit, I returned home in
a rain that caused floods, which in turn, were responsible for cars being swept
away. I breathed a sigh of relief when I pulled into my garage and shut off the
engine. What about the windshield wipers? They stopped immediately, as they had
every other time until today.
Copyright © April 2017 by L.S.
Fisher
No comments:
Post a Comment