Quivering before lightning

The first flash lit up the room, and I looked across at Gatsby. Our Swiss Shepherd was beneath his weighted blanket, looking like a large, anxious parcel we had decided not to post. I was holding my phone, checking whether the little rain cloud on the screen had moved. 

Gatsby was receiving help with his fear. I was wondering, with apologies to the high holy day liturgy, whether “Who by Gauteng thunderstorm” had somehow been left off the list. And whether I was, in fact, on it. 

Gatsby is frightened of thunder. I understand him, although thunder isn’t really my problem. Thunder is all bluster. Lightning is the main event. It arrives without consultation and before I’ve had time to prepare. 

I count the seconds until the thunder. This is supposed to tell me roughly how far away the lightning is. What it actually does is give me something to do with my fear. I refresh the radar. I study the clouds. I ask ChatGPT whether the storm is moving towards us. A few minutes later, I ask again, in case the weather – or its opinion – has changed. 

Even ChatGPT is getting tired of me asking. 

This fear is awkward for me to admit. I take on people, organisations, and governments in public. I speak about Islamism, challenge lies, and argue with people who’d prefer that I stop. I receive death threats with depressing regularity. Many of them amuse me more than they frighten me. An angry person can be answered, ignored, or turned into a column. I know how to do all three. 

Jew-haters are predictable. Lightning is not. 

Lightning has never read a word I’ve written. It doesn’t listen to me on ChaiFM, doesn’t follow me on X, and would be unmoved by my best argument. 

On Sunday night, I developed a migraine that stayed with me through Monday. Then came the storm. Someone suggested that the headache might have been a warning. Changes in atmospheric pressure may trigger migraines in some people, although I have no idea whether that explains mine. Still, I liked the possibility. It made the headache seem almost useful. Gatsby and I could both claim to have sensed something coming, although his response was to seek shelter and mine was to develop a theory. 

Perhaps my composure depends on being able to imagine the next move. With lightning, it’s the suddenness that gets me: the knowledge that a perfectly ordinary evening can be interrupted before I’ve had time to prepare my response. 

Watching Gatsby beneath the blanket, I wondered why his fear seems perfectly reasonable while mine requires a weather app, a radar map, and a second opinion from ChatGPT. He can take on the neighbourhood cats and the Checkers Sixty60 drivers, then come inside and ask to be tucked in. Nobody accuses him of inconsistency. 

Perhaps courage is like that. It isn’t something we either have or don’t have. We can be brave in one world because we understand its rules, and frightened in another because there don’t seem to be any. Gatsby knows what to do with a cat. I know what to do with an argument. Neither of us knows what to do with the sky. 

It’s an uncomfortable thought at this time of year. We have just spent the high holy days speaking about how little we know of what lies ahead. Now, for Sukkot, we sit beneath a roof deliberately unable to keep the weather out. 

It is easy to admire the sukkah’s vulnerability when vulnerability feels symbolic. It becomes more complicated when the sky begins flashing and the symbolism starts behaving like weather. 

The next time a storm approaches, I’ll probably check the radar too often. Gatsby will head for his blanket. I may sit beside him, where I can still see the sky but don’t have to watch it alone.