Last week, my oldest daughter and I went on a road trip to tour a college in the Midwest. Despite rainy conditions, we made great time on the way there, fueled by Starbucks and a Heated Rivalry-inspired playlist (yes, I’m obsessed; no, the show will never get old).
We were about 30 miles from our destination when our phones emitted a long, irritating beep. My daughter glanced at her screen. “Tornado Warning,” the notification read. “Seek shelter immediately.”
Ahead of us, traffic continued to move normally, but I noticed the rain had picked up a bit. “Hm, that’s not ideal. Let’s just see what the other cars do,” I said.
Meanwhile, my daughter was terrified. All she knew was that she wanted us to get out of danger immediately. Her solution was to tell me to drive faster. “We need to get out of here!” she insisted, her eyes trained on the sky, which was now a menacing gray color.
“Honey, I need to drive more slowly, not faster,” I told her, surprised by how not freaked out I felt. I grew up in California, where earthquakes were a far bigger threat than tornadoes. My knowledge of tornado safety is limited to movies. Back in the summer of 2024, my daughter and I had watched Twisters together. If the moment hadn’t been so tense, I would have laughed at the irony. I tried to recall how the characters had survived during emergencies, but the only image that came to mind was Glen Powell in a white, rain-soaked t-shirt.
The road ahead of us began to blur as rain pelted the windshield. I flipped on my hazard lights and slowed down further, looking for an exit. There was nothing nearby, and visibility was dropping by the second, so I did something I’ve never done in my life: I pulled onto the shoulder. “I’m gonna hang out here for a bit with my hazards on, just until I can see better,” I told my daughter, who looked at me like I’d just doomed us to certain death.
It was only then, as vehicles rumbled past us, that I felt the first tremors of fear. I knew the situation was bad, but I didn’t realize just how dangerous it could have been if we’d been closer to the action. (I later learned that staying inside a vehicle is the worst option for sheltering during a tornado.)
I asked my daughter to call her dad. “Maybe he can look at the radar, give us a sense of how close we are to the trouble,” I said. Soon we were talking to my husband over FaceTime, almost yelling to be heard above the rain hammering the windows. He could see on the map that we were passing through an intense part of the storm, but he thought we’d be through it soon.
And he was right: After a few minutes, the rain eased up enough for me to edge back onto the highway. In the distance, I could see scraps of blue sky. 20 minutes later, we’d arrived safely at our hotel.
Fear Versus Anxiety
As the movie Inside Out 2 reminded me, anxiety and fear are distinct emotions. While anxiety is worry about what might happen in the future (what if that lingering cough is actually pneumonia?), fear is related to what’s happening right now (there’s a snarling dog in front of you that looks like it might bite).
Staring at the darkening sky, wondering when the rain would stop, I definitely felt fear. But I didn’t experience anxiety related to the tornado. I didn’t spend that morning worrying that the weather might be dangerous, or envisioning what might happen if we got stuck in a storm. (In the future, though, I probably will have at least a bit of anxiety about driving in tornado-prone regions!)
I realized that day that fear can be a useful emotion: It prompted me to pull over and wait until conditions improved. But if I’d been anxious, my judgment would have been clouded with what-ifs. I would have wasted mental energy trying to guard against potential threats, rather than focusing on the immediate problem.
Reflections on Parenting
Now that I’m back in rainy (and also tornado-prone) Wisconsin, I’ve reflected more on that day. I’m still perplexed by how calm I felt in the midst of that crazy storm. Maybe that’s because my default mode is to be anxious. I’m always scanning the world for danger, ready to pounce at any potential problem. I’ve fallen into the trap that Mark Twain described when he said, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”
This anxiety influences a lot of the parenting decisions I make. When my kids were sick with influenza B for several days, I was calling their doctors regularly and diving down Reddit rabbit holes about prolonged symptom management. (They returned to school and were okay.) When my daughter had a long drive ahead of her, I worried about her safety and began mapping out the easiest routes. (She arrived just fine using her own maps app.)
I know that this anxiety stems from magical thinking: the idea that if we worry, we can somehow prevent disasters from occurring. But as I learned on that highway, it’s possible to tackle a problem successfully without ever bringing anxiety into the equation.
Parenting can be full of scary moments. But in life and tornadoes, maybe anxiety doesn’t need to be in the driver’s seat.
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