My mom grew up in a tiny three-bedroom house in Savage with her six brothers and sisters. That house didn’t have a basement, so whenever the weather would get severe my Grammu would freak out and pace the living room, chain smoking Pall Malls. If things got too bad, she would gather up the kids and go to the neighbor’s house to ride out the storm.

When I was a little girl, before the first grade my parents, Sister #2, and I lived in a mobile home in Blaine. It didn’t have a basement, obviously. My mom picked up Grammu’s fear of thunder storms and her habit of packing us up and heading over my Aunt Eileen’s, who had a basement.

For me thunder storms were anxiety-filled affairs which usually ended in a harried trip away from home. By the time we moved into a house with a basement my phobia was so ingrained that any sound of the Severe Weather System would send me straight to the basement, flashlight and transistor radio in hand, and my three little sisters not far behind me.

Today has been a weathery day here in the Twin Cities. The clouds were so thick and so dark that I had to turn the lights on at like 9:30 this morning, much to the delight and dismay of the Tibbles. One clap of thunder sent Cade, who is six now, scurrying to my lap asking me about where would go in a tornado, what we would do if it flooded. The second clap had him asking me to turn the TV on so we could watch the weather.

I’ve always been a little in awe about how this phobia has traveled from generation to generation, and today I felt a little guilty. I thought about telling Cade the counting trick that I learned from watching the movie Poltergeist, and that helped me cope through most of my adolescence. But there wasn’t enough lightning to explain it properly.

Right now, however, as I type? I am totally counting the time between thunderclap and lightning strike.