Tornado in a box.

Satu has started sailing on Tuesday nights on the lake with a group of women. It seems like a really fun time for her and she is naturally athletic and naturally social though she would tell you otherwise. Last Tuesday, I worked a bit late because I was in no real hurry to get home, but when I drove up, Satu's car was still in the garage.

I figured that sailing had been cancelled, but then I saw that her bag and some clothes were behind the car and kind of piled up. When I went inside, Satu was furiously going through some clothes in the bedroom. She had lost her keys in the house. I did my normal thing when I don't know what to do. I just started doing random stuff, walking around and moving things and looking at stuff as if her keys might be in the potted plant or under the dog food bowl.

I started asking questions, but this just made the fire hotter, and the woman that is normally calm and level headed in any situation boiled over. Witnessing the energy that she generated in her hands and chest was amazing, but scary. It was like watching a tornado in a box with no place to go. She just kept churning and throwing out her hands. Wanted to hold her and reassure her, but that is never what a tornado wants.

Finally my brain cleared up and I thought about giving her my keys so she could get to the meet and I could look for the keys. My brain wasn't clear enough to remember that I was almost out of gas, but Satu reminded me when she called. I had to do some googling to find the address for the right marina, since she'd only gone from work before and never from home. Luckily, she made it at the last second and I fished her keys out of the junk drawer in the kitchen where she must have dropped them when she was getting a bag for her snacks. In that drawer there is a basket of miscellaneous stuff, so to a busy brain, it just says, drop keys here.

Though I never want to see Satu get mad at me like that, it was really great to see how much raw, emotional power she normally contains under her cool exterior. I know that if anyone ever messed with me, I could count on that little tornado to shut them down. She really is an incredible force of nature. I am pretty sure that I saw fire exploding from her fingertips when she tensed her hands and swung them out at the world. I am thrilled at the contrast of how lovingly she can use those same hands to comfort me and to make me feel safe.